Advancing Job-and Health-associated Outcomes for Employees of Small and Medium Enterprises in Hong Kong: A Study on Workplace Supervisor Support with Smartphone-based and Capacity-building Interventions

Dual-income families are becoming very common in post-industrial cities such as Hong Kong. This, however, causes tension between working parents due to demands for resources from two competing domains: job and family. The local working population reported work-family conflicts between their jobs and family life (Hang-yue, et.al. 2005). Providing family-friendly programs (FFPs) is thus a crucial policy in modern-day human resource management for reducing work-family conflicts. Empirical studies highlight how supervisor support for subordinates’ work-life balance (i.e. supervisor flexibility and supervisor sensitivity) is directly associated with lower levels of work-family interference; and how workplace interventions (e.g. alternative work arrangements; perceived flexibility) have to be implemented alongside supervisor support to achieve desired outcomes (Julien, 2007; Kelly et al., 2014; Bagger and Li, 2014). A family-supportive work environment features family-supportive policies and supervisors. It encourages organizational efforts towards balancing work and family responsibilities (Poelmans, 2005). Therefore, in reducing family-work conflict, the supervisors are key targets for interventions. However, most relevant studies focus on the United States; there is none yet in Asian perspectives. Likewise, almost none of these studies have capitalized the benefits of big data and communication technology to enable efficient data collection, real-time analysis and effective stakeholder interaction. Using a cluster-randomized experiment design and a process of smartphone application development, this study evaluates the impact of supervisor training interventions on their subordinates’ job- and health-related outcomes in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) based in Hong Kong using ecological momentary assessment. The study proposes a 6-month randomized controlled trial (RCT) intervention. Using a 2x2 factorial design, 480 supervisors will be randomly clustered into f

Funding Source: HKSAR Govt - Public Policy Research Funding Scheme (PPR)