Employee health and well-being after a crisis – re-imagining the role of workplace inclusion

ABSTRACT Covid-19 left many employees with life-altering challenges— deaths or illnesses of loved ones, health problems, and economic upheavals. Even during ordinary years, adverse events affect around 50% of employees, exacerbating work/non-work demands and depleting personal resources. In order to identify supports for employee recovery from the pandemic and similar crises, we examine inclusive relational practices. Drawing on a conservation-of-resources framework, we posit that inclusive practices are a greater resource for employees following adverse life-events. Using data on U.S. employees from the 2016 National Study of the Changing Workforce, we examine relationships between workplace inclusion and self-rated health, presenteeism and work-to-personal/family spillover. We find that inclusive practices are negatively associated with poorer health/well-being, with benefits significantly higher for employees following adverse life-events. Our study contributes to work-life and diversity-inclusion scholarships by studying dimensions of inclusion rarely captured in nationally-representative data and replicating prior evidence in a more diverse sample of U.S. employees. This is the first study to investigate the role of relational practices among coworkers and between employees and their leaders, in aiding recovery following adverse life-events. Findings indicate that workplace inclusion may be an underutilized resource for supporting recovery from the pandemic and in a post-Covid world.