Nathalie Bernard

Composition of the Jury

Abstract

At a time when companies, facing numerous upheavals, are more focused than ever on performance, and when employees, denouncing working conditions and management practices, have never been so demanding of well-being at work, reconciling employee well-being and company performance is a current topic and a strategic challenge for businesses. A review of the literature and the results of an exploratory qualitative analysis conducted using semi-structured interviews with 55 employees of the RESSIF group (French Inter-Company Social Services Network) lead us to consider "well-being at work" and "company performance" in terms of a paradoxical meta-perspective and to propose ways to resolve this organizational paradox. To this end, we conducted two quantitative studies. The first study is based on 5,300 observers from the French Ministry of Labor's "Working Conditions" survey. The second part is based on responses from 270 companies to an online questionnaire on human resource management practices. Ultimately, our empirical results conclude that the factors that reconcile well-being at work and company performance are, among working conditions, combating work intensity and unsustainability, and among human resource practices, developing employee participation in company decisions, training, promotions and career prospects, and, to a lesser extent, performance evaluation. To conclude this work, we present the theoretical, methodological, and managerial contributions, as well as future research directions.

Read the thesis