The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-2019)-induced changes in the workplace present a timely opportunity for human resource management practitioners to consider and remediate the deleterious effects of noise, a commonly cited complaint of employees working in open-plan office (OPO) environments. While self-reports suggest that OPO noise is perceived as a stressor, there is little experimental research comprehensively investigating the effects of noise on employees in terms of their cognitive performance, physiological indicators of stress, and affect. Employing a simulated office setting, we compared the effects of a typical OPO auditory environment to a quieter private office auditory environment on a range of objective and subjective measures of well-being and performance. While OPO noise did not reduce immediate cognitive task performance compared to the quieter environment, it did reduce psychological well-being as evidenced by self-reports of mood, facial expressions of emotion, and physiological indicators of stress in the form of heartrate and skin conductivity. Our research highlights the importance of using a multimodal approach to assess the impact of workplace stressors such as noise. Such an approach will allow HR practitioners to make data-driven recommendations about the design and modification of workspaces to minimize negative effects and support employee well-being.

This study investigates whether the perceived opportunity to craft (POC) is related to job crafting (JC) strategies and whether these strategies are related to thriving at work, in terms of both vitality and learning. It aims to verify the mediating role of JC between POC and thriving. Data were collected from 424 accounting professionals in Canada. The structural equation modeling based on bootstrap analysis was used to test mediation. The results indicate that POC is positively related to increasing structural and social resources and challenging job demands and negatively to decreasing hindering job demands. They reveal that increasing structural and social resources enhances learning and mediates the relation between POC and vitality and learning, as do challenging job demands, whereas decreasing hindering job demands does not. This study is one of the first to confirm that POC influences vitality and learning via JC behaviors as mediators.

This study uses Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as a lens for informing the process for building on employees' existing wellbeing within one Australian organisation, using the ‘discovery, dreaming, designing, and achieving destiny’ process. Using POSH as a theoretical framework, we worked with a large Not-For-Profit healthcare organisation as part of the ‘discovery’ phase to identify elements of what was positive, flourishing, and life-giving in the practices of their employees. During the ‘dreaming’ process, employees' wellbeing was identified as a strength. During the ‘designing’ phase, a training program was co-designed to build on employees' existing levels of wellbeing. This paper reports outcomes as part of the ‘achieving destiny component’ of the AI process. In particular, the outcomes show that employees' knowledge of, and ability to use positive emotions increased, which is a positive first step for increasing employees' wellbeing and organisational resilience.