“Resources-Demands Ratio”: Translating the JD-R-Model for company stakeholders

Abstract

Objectives: Practitioners and organizational leaders are calling for practical ways to explain and monitor factors that affect workplace health and productivity. This article builds on the well-established Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model and proposes an empirically tested ratio that aggregates indicators of job resources and demands. In this study, we calculate a ratio of generalizable job resources and demands derived from the JD-R model and then translate the ratio into the language of company stakeholders.

Methods: We calculated a ratio based on measures applied in a large stress management intervention study (n = 2983) and report the findings from cross-sectional analysis with health and productivity outcomes from same-source and separate-source data.

Results: Findings showed a strong and unambiguous increase in health and productivity measures with each step of increase in the ratio. Loss in explained variance due to aggregation of two factors into a single ratio is small for measures which are known to be predicted by both factors simultaneously.

Conclusions: A translation and visualization of the ratio that is accessible to practitioners and organizational leaders is presented and its use in companies discussed.