Employee Well-Being, Perceived Psychological Safety, and Multidimensional Performance in Knowledge-Intensive Organizations

Based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the study explores the relationships between employee well-being and task and contextual performance and aims to analyze the statistical mediation of perceived psychological safety. The data were collected using a purposive, cross-sectional, self-report questionnaire and analyzed by Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with a sample size of 390 knowledge workers from five knowledge-intensive industries in Pakistan. The measurement model showed acceptable reliability, convergent and discriminant validity. Task performance, contextual performance and perceived psychological safety were positively related to employee well-being, and perceived psychological safety was positively related to both performance dimensions. However, in the bootstrapping model, there were also important indirect effects of employee well-being on task performance via perceived psychological safety (β = 0.094, 95% BCa CI [0.061, 0.135]) and of employee well-being on contextual performance via perceived psychological safety (β = 0.126, 95% BCa CI [0.082, 0.174]). The pattern was consistent with complementary mediation in statistics, as the direct associations remained significant. These results are interpreted as associations only because of the cross-sectional design. The study builds on COR-based research by investigating the relationship of employee well-being and perceived interpersonal safety with different types of self-reported performance in a knowledge-work context that has been under-researched. The results could also be used for wider debates on the level of social sustainability of employees, but not as an actual measure: the SDG achievement and practices of HRM were not measured.