Social Dynamics in the Workplace: Does Social Support Enhance Thriving at Work of Newbie Employees in the Private Sector?

Abstract

Newly employed workers (newbies) usually find it difficult acclimatizing with their new life at work. Although modern-day organizations acknowledge this and attempt to buffer their stress; however, it is not known if social support dimensions can help their course. The objective of this study is to ascertain which dimensions of social support will predict thriving of newbie employees. Being the background to the study, responses of 274 newly employed workers (183 males and 91 females) aged 28yrs to 52yrs with mean age of 38.50 and SD = 2.20 were drawn as sample from universities in Anambra State, Nigeria were elicited. Mult-stage sampling technique was utilize in the selection of the participants’ institutions, faculties, departments and offices while a simple random sampling was used to selected actual participants from their offices. The study was anchored on Cohen and McKay’s Stress Buffering theory which emphasized that without buffering, work strain and stress may ultimately reduce workers’ thriving. The design of the study was correlational and multiple regression statistics was used to test the predictive influence of social support dimensions on thriving at work. The result of the analysis confirmed the three dimensions of social support (family support, friends’ support and significant others’ support) as predictors of thriving at work at β = .54, p < .05 for family support, β = .49, p < .05 for friends support and β = .37, p < .05 for significant others’ support (n = 274). The result accounted for 42.5% explanation of predictors of thriving at work among newbie employees. It is recommended that organizational climate be designed to provide more buffers to pressures of work especially for newly employed workers in order to boost their adaptability and effectiveness.