Our research
We examine the role of work in the context of aging, health, and environmental sustainability from an action regulation perspective. This perspective assumes that people are self-regulating actors who do not merely react passively to (work) demands. Instead, individuals actively shape their environment and lifelong development by setting goals, pursuing, adjusting, and/or abandoning them, employing different action strategies along the way.
We use various methodological approaches (e.g., longitudinal studies, experience sampling studies, and experiments) to investigate the complex and dynamic interplay between work and employee experiences and behaviors.
We study work in the context of aging, health, and environmental sustainability at multiple levels. This includes the individual, the work context (e.g., tasks), the social context (e.g., teams and leaders), and the organizational context.
Our research aims to derive practical implications that help various stakeholders (e.g., governments, organizations, leaders, and employees) act in socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable ways, and shape work in a way that contributes positively to a sustainable future society.
Work and Aging
Due to persistently low or declining birth rates, the aging of the baby boomer cohort, and increasing life expectancy, the average age of the population and the workforce is rising globally. This demographic trend requires careful consideration of how to ensure that older employees can continue working beyond the traditional retirement age, not only in a physically and mentally capable state but also motivated, engaged, and productive.
We investigate which individual and contextual factors in the workplace help employees maintain or improve their health, work engagement, and performance with age, while also experiencing fair treatment and job security:
- How should work be designed to promote the cognitive, emotional, and social abilities of employees across their lifespan?
- Under which conditions can age diversity enrich teams?
- How can age-related biases be countered in the workplace?
The insights from our research allow us to derive recommendations relevant not only for governments but also for organizations, leaders, and employees. Our goal is to support and promote active aging in the workplace to create an inclusive, intergenerational work environment.
Work and Health
Promoting employee health is one of the most important challenges of our time, not only for society at large but also for organizations. The experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, have highlighted how crucial insights into the relationship between work and health are. We seek to better understand the complex interplay between work and employee health:
- How do work conditions and work-related experiences and behaviors impact employee physical and mental health and well-being?
- What influence does employees’ health have on their work-related experiences and behaviors?
- What role does work play in the development of civilization diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and depression?
- How should work be designed so that employees remain healthy in the long term and experience high levels of well-being?
The goal of our research is to generate insights that contribute to the development of practical measures and guidelines for promoting health in the work context.
Work and Environmental Sustainability
Environmental sustainability is not only an ethical but also a strategic necessity for organizations. More and more organizations are trying to encourage and instruct employees to act in environmentally sustainable ways. We aim to understand which individual factors, work characteristics, and organizational factors contribute to employees engaging in more or less environmentally friendly:
- How can employees proactively and effectively engage in environmentally friendly behavior and develop positive environmental sustainability habits in the work context?
- How do organizational practices for implementing environmental sustainability influence environmentally friendly behavior?
Additionally, we investigate how environmentally friendly and harmful behavior affects employees (e.g., well-being or work performance) and organizations (e.g., green organizational climate). We also consider potential negative effects that may arise from environmentally friendly behavior and aim to understand how these can be minimized.
Our findings are translated into practical recommendations for employees, leaders, and organizations interested in becoming more environmentally friendly. These recommendations aim to help employees, leaders, and organizations act in more environmentally sustainable ways and contribute positively to environmental sustainability.