Drawing from the psychology of working theory, this study aims to understand how decent work is related to employee well-being. Specifically, it explored the role of need satisfaction in the relationship between decent work and employee well-being, and compared the mediating effects of the three types of need satisfaction. After collecting a sample of 421 millennial employees in China through online questionnaires, the study conducted the analysis of the data and found that decent work positively predicted well-being of millennial employees. (...) While social contribution need satisfaction and self-determination need satisfaction partially mediated the effect of decent work on well-being of millennial employees, the mediating effect of survival need satisfaction was not significant. Compared with social contribution need satisfaction, self-determination need satisfaction had a more significant mediating effect on well-being of millennial employees. The study does extend the literature on the antecedents of employee well-being and the results can offer some implications for managers to enhance well-being of millennial employees. (shrink)

Meaningful work is a key element of positive functioning of employees, but what makes work meaningful? Based on research on self-determination theory, basic psychological needs, and prosocial impact, we suggest that there are four psychological satisfactions that substantially influence work meaningfulness across cultures: autonomy (sense of volition), competence (sense of efficacy), relatedness (sense of caring relationships), and beneficence (sense of making a positive contribution). We test the relationships between these satisfactions and perceived meaningful work in Finland (n = 594, employees (...) of several organizations), India (n = 342, collected through Mturk), and the USA (n = 373, collected through Mturk). Regression analyses show that – except for competence in USA – all four satisfactions are significantly and independently associated with meaningful work. Moreover, structural equation modeling shows that they fully mediated the relationship between occupational position and work meaningfulness in India and in the USA. In sum, the results support the importance of these four satisfactions in explaining the psychological underpinnings of meaningful work. (shrink)