Home Resources Supporting Workplace Resources: an Investigation of Moderated Intervention Effects From the Study for Employment Retention of Veterans (SERVe)

Social support directly impacts psychological outcomes both within the home and work domains. Hammer and colleagues suggest that social support at work from supervisors is related to a number of positive workplace outcomes. Kossek et al. elaborated that social support from supervisors is additionally effective when it is tailored to the unique needs of workers (i.e., role demands). The Veteran Supportive Supervisor Training (VSST) educates supervisors how to better support former service-members employed within the civilian workplace. Additional sources of social support are also key to positive outcomes for workers. Research shows that support from a partner or spouse can impact both home and work outcomes. Thus, the present study (1) investigated intervention effects of the VSST on both workplace (i.e., job satisfaction, turnover intent, and perceived stress) and home domain (i.e., work-family-conflict and work-family-enrichment) outcomes among a sample of married and partnered workers (n = 406, a subset of the larger SERVe sample N = 497), and (2) investigated the moderating effect of marriage quality on VSST intervention effects. Investigated through the lenses of Conservation of Resources Theory (COR) and Social Support Theory, the present study considers strong marriages and domestic partnerships as a resource that contributes to work and work-family outcomes for current and former service members. Results showed that relationship satisfaction did, in fact, moderate the relationship between the training and two home-domain outcomes, though not in the directions hypothesized. Possible explanations and opportunities for further investigation are discussed