Workplace Interactions and Coworker Support: Does Employees’ Age Matter?

Given that employees spend about one third of their day at work, contact with coworkers is almost inevitable. In this talk, Dr. Fasbender from Justus-Liebig-University Giessen will explain how high-quality contact can facilitate employees’ coworker support, and discuss why the benefits of high-quality contact are contingent upon employees’ age. In doing so, she will first employ a social mindfulness lens to explain the motivational mechanisms of high-quality contact on coworker support via perspective taking and empathic concern. She will then utilize the socio-emotional selectivity theory to challenge the current age-blind view on workplace interactions and highlight the indirect moderating effect of age via future time perspective on the relationship between high-quality contact, social mindfulness and coworker support.

Short Bio

Dr. Ulrike Fasbender is Assistant Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen in Germany. In addition, she is Visiting Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London and at Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom. Dr. Fasbender’s research is about diversity management, intergroup relations, intergenerational knowledge transfer and coworker support, late career development, older workers’ job search and transition to retirement. Specifically, she is interested in age-related differences in work motivation and behavior, and in the relationship between younger and older workers as in how they feel, think and behave toward each other.