# Family Supportive Supervisor Training and Workplace Assessment Tool

> **NIH NIH R42** · WORK LIFE HELP, INC. · 2022 · $486,181

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
The aging workforce with rising personal health, family, and eldercare demands are the defining work-life and
public health issues of the 21st century. The number of Americans over age 65 will double over the next 25
years, and half of working adults are eldercare and sandwich (elders and children) caregivers. Most U.S.
employees rely on their employers, especially their supervisors’ support to be able to access and use work-life
policies (flexible schedules, family care, sick leaves). This proposal is based on an occupational health science
Total Worker Health approach, which assumes that the workplace is a key social determinant of work-life
stress and aging workers’ abilities to jointly manage their job, personal health, and caregiving demands. As
supervisors are gatekeepers to implementing work-life policies, workplace interventions that train supervisors
to have the knowledge, skills, and motivation to support employees’ family, personal health, and caregiving
needs is an effective way to foster societal health and well-being. Yet, there are no evidence-based workplace
supervisory training interventions to address this public health concern. In our STTR Phase I project, Work Life
Help, our start-up company, developed the prototype workplace intervention, Family Supportive Supervisor
Training (FSST), a 1-hour web-based training intervention with two weeks of learning transfer activities, based
on cognitive-behavioral science. It is the only randomized control trial (RCT) tested work-life supportive
supervisor training available with proven employee mental and physical health, family, and productivity
benefits. Building on Phase I results showing a strong market need for FSST, in Phase II, we propose to
enhance FSST by creating FSST 2.0, a workplace intervention package, that addresses two key areas: 1)
enhancing supervisor motivation and compliance for improved implementation; and 2) developing one
additional module focused on supervisor support for employee use of family care and sick leave, a critical
unmet need. Phase II includes these aims: 1) develop FSST intervention implementation support products to
enhance usability and adoption (Follow-up Supervisor Webinars, Trainer Certification); 2) develop an
eLearning management system to enhance user experience, and delivery processes including an improved
feedback report system to motivate behavior change and enhance change sustainability; 3) develop the
Supervisor Support for Family Care and Sick Leave Use Module to augment the core FSST program to
increase supervisor support for employee use of personal sick time and family leave policies; 4) deliver, test,
and evaluate the enhanced FSST 2.0 for commercialization readiness. This project’s outcome will be the
availability of FSST 2.0 with enhanced infrastructure to improve intervention implementation, augmented by a
new module to target specific support for using family and sick leaves, resulting in improved employer...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10359767
- **Project number:** 5R42AG050347-03
- **Recipient organization:** WORK LIFE HELP, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Ellen Ernst Kossek
- **Activity code:** R42 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $486,181
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2015-09-15 → 2024-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10359767

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10359767, Family Supportive Supervisor Training and Workplace Assessment Tool (5R42AG050347-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10359767. Licensed CC0.

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