Young people are at the heart of many service organizations (ABS, 2021; Price et al., 2011). Yet we know little about how this cohort experience and engage with work and if there are any work and motivational differences between this group and other workers. We identify this shortcoming in knowledge as particularly concerning, given the importance placed on the optimisation of workers’ resources through the fit between the person and the work characteristics in organisational literature (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005). Yet, the vast work design literature only considers the ‘average’ worker (e.g., Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006), with minimal consideration for differences by age.

In addressing youth in a work context, the focus is on employees in their adolescent years. Mapped to the second decade of life, adolescence is characterized by numerous developmental changes, including neurological, biological, cognitive, psychological and social characteristics (Steinberg & Morris, 2001). Most brain-related changes during this period occur in the prefrontal cortex, which does not reach its full development until a person’s early 20’s or beyond (Johnson et al., 2009), yet is responsible for critical functions such as personality expression, decision making, and social behaviour, all important requirements for frontline service roles (Kuhn, 2009; Nelson et al., 2006). These changes are likely to have impacts on how a young person experiences work and engages with work, yet little knowledge exists about the exact manifestations of these in the workplace. This translates into the primary research question for this paper – how does adolescents’ work engagement differ from adults?

Data from an Australian sample of working adolescents (13-20 years, n=213) and adult workers (30+, n=207) was analysed using multi-group structural equation modelling. This study offers evidence that not all expected work characteristics have the same positive impacts on adolescent work engagement particularly so for autonomy and social support. Furthermore, the study illuminates the role of dignity in facilitating positive work attitudes, among workers of all ages. In addition, adult workers (but not adolescents) who were able to use and develop a variety of skills (skill discretion), and to a lesser extent who experienced autonomy in decision making at work, also experienced higher levels of dignity, which resulted in positive work engagement. This study addresses the lack of attention to psychological conditions in work engagement theory (Saks & Gruman, 2014), and demonstrates that workplace dignity may be another salient psychological condition of work engagement.

This study contributes to understanding young service workers in three important ways. First, it advances organisational scholarship in the context of adolescent employment. Specifically, it identifies adolescents as a distinct group of the workforce population and focuses on the overlooked construct of adolescent engagement within a work context (Strong, 2019). Second, the study explores and empirically tests the role of workplace dignity as a (positive, psychological, explanatory) mechanism for driving work engagement. Finally, the paper extends work engagement theory (Saks & Gruman, 2014) and promotes emerging humanistic perspectives.

Service employee innovativeness (SEI), the discretionary behaviors that seed novel ways of elevating customer experiences in frontline interactions is critical for organic growth in service organizations. Yet the success in mobilizing capabilities for SEI remains severely limited. A McKinsey survey finds that only 11% of companies have effective practices for organizing service employees to enable innovation for growth. Past research has overlooked that SEI is multifaceted and typically conceptualized it as a unidimensional construct. Service employees (SEs) contribute to innovativeness in at least two ways: (a) engaging in the process of generating novel ideas such as by sharing ideas with others, reaching out to colleagues to discuss new ideas, and experimenting to discover novel ideas, and (b) locating outcomes for innovative ideas by formally proposing suggestions, approaches, and methods for new ways of doing things to a responsible manager or unit within the organization. We refer to the process and outcome dimensions as investing and harvesting innovativeness; investing contributes by promoting collective innovativeness while harvesting contributes by promoting self-attributed innovativeness. Investing and harvesting innovativeness are likely to be distinct constructs that respond to different mechanisms and interventions. Conflating them, as is common in past research, likely impedes the fostering and mobilizing of SEI.
Moreover, past research has scarcely examined SEI from a social network lens relying primarily on either individual actor accounts (e.g., employee traits) or organizational level analysis (e.g., culture, incentives). Studies of SEI as a function of social network structure and of the communications it enables are rare. Theories of bottom-up and pragmatic learning suggest that social networks warrant attention especially in terms of their flow, diversity, and action features. Flow pertains to the movement of new knowledge horizontally and vertically within the organization, diversity pertains to different perspectives that the knowledge flows connect, and action pertains to the behavioral acts motivated by knowledge flows.
To address the preceding gaps, we examine social networks of SEs in a hospitality context to model (a) SE’s network betweenness centrality and connectedness with customers (antecedents), (b) diversity of knowledge flows (KE) – sharing of new ideas between employees in varied roles, and diversity of decision-making flows (DM) – distributing of decision-making agency for service work (moderated-mediation mechanism), and (c) investing and harvesting innovativeness (outcomes). We also examine the heterogeneity due to SE status—part- or full-time—as the hospitality sector tends to rely heavily on mixed employees.
Building a within- and between-function network structure based on data from 201 SEs and measuring the knowledge and decision-making flows that this structure enables, we find that part-time SEs’ betweenness centrality position positively influences diverse idea sharing networks and increases investing innovativeness whereas full-time SEs’ customer connectedness augments diverse and distributed decision-making to enhance both harvesting and investing innovativeness. Further, DM strengthens the impact of KE on SEI for full-time employees. The findings contribute to services marketing literature by demonstrating valuable insights from social networks with moderated-mediation role of DM for SEI and expand knowledge on SEI’s dimensions and levers for different type of employees.

In public services, the everyday contributions by frontline employees (FLEs) are key to success. For example, a social worker directly influences whether those most vulnerable feel included and supported even in difficult situations. However, recruiting frontline heroes is increasingly challenging in the public sector and calls for new approaches to be tested. Responding to this call, we investigate how co-designing a job advertisement with service users impacts FLE recruitment. Our line of theorizing suggests that service users have unique insights into what competencies an FLE should possess, which in turn, may help attract experienced FLEs because they are more fine-tuned towards soft values defined in a job advertisement.

We conducted a between-subjects scenario-based field experiment in the context of Swedish language programs, which is a social service compulsory for all Swedish immigrants. During this program, the FLE takes a central role in helping immigrants to integrate into the new society. However, recruiting frontline heroes for this job is challenging, underscoring the need to test new methods. In designing the experiment, a job advertisement from the underlying organization was reviewed with immigrants enrolled in the program (n = 15), focusing on (re)defining the FLE's competencies, resulting in a co-designed job advertisement. Immigrants who completed the program (n = 54) were asked to rate whether the co-designed (vs. original) job announcement better describes the competencies needed for the job. Finally, potential job applicants (n = 75) were randomly assigned to one of three job advertisements: original vs. co-designed (user involvement not disclosed) vs. (co-designed user involvement disclosed) and asked to respond to a series of questions.

Findings reveal that 72% of the immigrants perceived that the co-designed (vs. original) job advertisement better described the FLE’s competencies. In addition, independent samples t-tests find that potential applicants rated the co-designed advertisement significantly higher in terms of informativeness (M = 3.64, SD = .83, p = 0.003) and their intention to apply for the job (M = 3.73, SD = 1.05, p = 0.043) compared to the original advertisement (M = 2.8, SD = .89; M = 3.04, SD = 1.12). This finding was independent of whether user involvement was disclosed or not (p > 0.05), which means that it was the users' contribution to the advertisement’s content that made the difference of an applicant applying or not. To test whether the co-designed advertisement attracts more experienced FLEs, we ran a moderation analysis using the applicant's age as a moderator. The analysis showed a significant interaction effect between the co-designed (vs. original) advertisement and the applicant's intention to apply (b = .06, t = 2.10, p = .04). Users, in fact, can help attract older, more experienced FLEs in the social service context.

Our study is the first of its kind to test co-designed job advertisements and its findings challenge the traditional way FLE’s are recruited – a typical internal process. We encourage public service organizations to allow users, who are ultimately affected by the recruitment outcome, to directly contribute to finding tomorrow's frontline heroes.

INTRODUCTION

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the notion of frontline employee (FLE) safety into stark relief with studies revealing a high prevalence of safety-related anxiety and psychological exhaustion among FLEs worldwide (Sasaki et al., 2021; Tan et al., 2020). In parallel, there is evidence that FLE perceptions of organizational responsiveness to the pandemic (e.g., clear communication and safety-related practices) mitigate some of these negative outcomes (Hu et al., 2021; Nabe-Nielsen et al., 2020). Together, these early findings highlight the importance of a detailed exploration of workplace safety practices (WSPs) enacted by service organizations in response to pandemic events such as COVID-19.

We extend service safety literature by attending to the influence of organization initiated WSP on FLE wellbeing outcomes. Using a framework grounded in job demands-resource (Demerouti et al., 2001) theory, we propose that FLEs who perceive their workplace as effectively implementing WSPs will experience lower levels of threat (i.e., risks and hazards) from COVID-19, which will lead to lower levels of emotional exhaustion and higher levels of work engagement. Simultaneously, high levels of WSPs will enhance FLEs’ perceived organizational support (POS), and lead to reciprocation in the form of FLE work engagement and lower levels of emotional exhaustion.

HYPOTHESES
(1) The relationship between WSPs and FLE wellbeing outcomes (work engagement and emotional exhaustion) will be mediated by FLE experienced risks/hazards.
(2) The relationship between WSPs and FLE wellbeing outcomes (work engagement and emotional exhaustion) will be mediated by POS.

METHOD

Two-wave panel data were collected from 310 FLEs (70.6% employed full-time, average working hours of 37.4 hours/week, average job tenure of 7.4 years).

WSPs were measured using an 18-item scale based on the US Occupational Safety Health Administration guidelines for workplaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. The perceived threat of COVID-19 pandemic was measured using four items developed by Pew Research Center (2020). POS was measured using Eisenberger et al.’s (1986) 8-item scale. Emotional exhaustion was measured using the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure and work engagement was measured using Schaufeli et al.’s (2002) 17-item Utrecht scale. We also included four controls (gender, change in customer contact, residence area, and a containment index) in our analyses.

RESULTS

FLE-perceived WSPs negatively influenced experienced risks/hazards (β = -.15*); risks/hazards negatively influenced work engagement (β = -.12*) and positively influenced emotional exhaustion (β = .15**). FLE-perceived WSPs positively influenced POS (β = .64**) which, in turn, positively influenced FLE work engagement (β = .38**) and negatively influenced emotional exhaustion (β = -.37**). Both the indirect effects - WSPs to work engagement (β = .26**) and WSPs to emotional exhaustion (β = -.26**) were significant.

CONCLUSION
We discovered that employees working in workplaces perceived as implementing WSPs experienced lower levels of risks and hazards during the pandemic, which in turn, influenced their work engagement and emotional exhaustion levels. In parallel, positive FLE perceptions of WSPs were associated with higher levels of POS, and consequently better work engagement, and lower levels of emotional exhaustion.