2020 Award Recipients: Leslie Hammer and Ellen Ernst Kossek
This award recognizes a work-family researcher or research team who have/has contributed break-through thinking to the work-family field via theory, measures, and/or data sets that led to expansive application, innovation, and diffusion, including the sharing of research opportunity in the spirit of open science. The award recipients were selected by the review committee Aixa Cintron-Velez, Ryan Johnson, Ujvala Rajadhyaksha, and Amy Wharton (Chair).
Leslie Hammer is Professor at the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences at the Oregon Health & Science University, where she is Co-Director of the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center. She is also a Professor at Portland State University in the Department of Psychology where she is Associate Director of the Occupational Health Psychology Program. She is an Elected Fellow in SIOP, the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, and APA. She received her doctorate from Bowling Green State University.
Ellen Ernst Kossek is Basil S. Turner Professor of Management (Chaired Professor in OB/HR) and Research Director of the Butler Center for Leadership Excellence at Purdue University Krannert School of Management. She is an Elected Fellow in the Academy of Management, SIOP and APA. She received her doctorate from Yale University.
Their nominators (Nicholas Smith and Shaun Pichler) focused on Professor Hammer’s and Professor Kossek’s combined efforts as related to the NIH funded Work, Family and Health Network and the impact of identifying and measuring family supportive supervisor behaviors (FSSB). In summarizing the contributions of this incredibly productive research team, they write:
Leslie and Ellen’s work in the area of work-family research is theoretically and practically far-reaching and impactful. Their areas of research are expansive and include work-family, work-life, flexibility, supervisor supportiveness, diversity and inclusion, among others. In the work-family space, Leslie and Ellen’s work is great in magnitude and has enhanced theoretical and practical understandings of how organizations can improve positive work and family outcomes by facilitating formal and informal supports. In particular, their expertise and interdisciplinary efforts led to the NIH funding the Work, Family, and Health Network in which the measurement of specific family-supportive supervisory behaviors (FSSB) was developed (Phase I) which led to multiple experimental field intervention studies in which supervisors were trained on how to engage in FSSBs (Phase II).They have also shown that family supportive supervision is related to many other positive outcomes such as improved performance, sleep quality, safety performance, health outcomes, and mental health. This work has positively impacted thousands of employees and shows the importance of drawing upon interdisciplinary research teams, engaging with organizational partners and practitioners, and utilizing multi-method multisource longitudinal designs, along with the important role that supervisors play in the well-being of employees’ work and family lives.