Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

WSC Advisory Council Member, David Blustein, is part of a team that recently published a paper in the Journal of Counseling Psychology that tackles what it means to have your needs satisfied by your work. If your job meets your survival needs you also tend to be more satisfied in your life, but not necessarily the job yourself. If the job meets your social connection needs, that you also tend to be more satisfied in both your life and your job. If the job meets your self-determination needs, you similarly are more satisfied in your job and our life, but the relationship between self-determination needs and job satisfaction is the strongest relationship found in the study.

Sleep is necessary to increase focus and productivity, both vital traits to workers. Japanese workers, however, are accumulating massive sleep debts (i.e., consistently sleeping less than 7 hours per night without rebound sleep such as naps or sleeping in) due to a prevalent mentality that sacrificing sleep means you are working hard (Lewis, 2018). The issue has become so prevalent that in 2014, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare acknowledged the existence of a “sleep is expendable” attitude in many Japanese workers (Lewis, 2018).

Work published by Jeske, Lippke, and WSC Network Member Kenneth Shultz, suggests that employers who require applicants to share their social media account information for cyber-vetting may be limiting their applicant pool on traits that are not necessarily relevant to job performance (e.g., preference for privacy). These results, in addition to the range of potential legal issues associated with cyber-vetting, suggest that organizations should proceed with caution and care when venturing into these murky waters.

Although older workers contribute valuable experience to the workforce, this can be overshadowed by the potential loss in innovative ideas and physical abilities. A solution may be bridge employment, which is a type of partial retirement taken between fulltime work and full retirement. Bridge employment is similar to short-term work, with the hours being more flexible than part-time employment, but the end goal being full retirement in a relatively short amount of time. Bridge employment allows the workforce to take advantage of older workers’ benefits, while limiting the amount of time their disadvantages would negatively impact their working ability.

WSC Network member Sharon Parker examines strategies people use when designing work roles, and how to make it more likely for people to create more enriched jobs.

Modern healthcare organizations are adapting and innovating in response to the boom in artificial intelligence. A recent paper details two distinct branches of use for artificial intelligence in healthcare: virtual and physical.

Members of the Work Science Center Advisory Council, Tara Behrend and David Blustein, recently published a groundbreaking study, led by Alexander Glosenberg , in the Journal of Vocational Behavior exploring the fit between individuals’ vocational interests and their current careers across the globe.

A misalignment of incentives between the company and the drivers, coupled with the lack of control over drivers’ schedules, has lead Uber to explore methods to influence the decision-making of drivers. 

In a recent review, Dr. Malissa Clark and colleagues provide a clearer understanding of the nature and role of empathy in the workplace. 

organizations are struggling with a relatively new phenomenon: cyberloafing. Cyberloafing is the use of technology at work for non-work-related purposes (e.g., checking social media, watching YouTube videos).