Featuring scholarly and practitioner insights from HR and people leaders, industry experts, and researchers.

In this HCI Webinar, I talk with Bradley Hamner about moving from from rainmaker to architect of your business. Bradley is the founder and CEO of BlueprintOS, creator of The S.C.A.L.E. Assessment, author of S.C.A.L.E, and host of the Above The Business Podcast. He guides small business owners doing between $300K to $3M in annual revenue to transition from being the Rainmaker – where everything depends on them – to becoming the Architect of a scalable, self-sustaining, and profitable business. The ultimate outcome? Business owners have a successful business that creates the freedom and flexibility they desired from the start.

This research highlights crossover theory, which demonstrates how emotional states, health conditions, and work behaviors transmit between closely related individuals. Drawing on a comprehensive meta-analysis of 183 studies, the research reveals that spouses, supervisors, and coworkers significantly influence an employee's happiness, health, and productivity. Distinct stakeholders exert varying degrees of influence on specific outcomes, with spouses most strongly affecting happiness, supervisors impacting health, and peers shaping productivity. Furthermore, the research refutes traditional management models that view employee well-being as strictly isolated by proving that empathy, social support, and toxic interactions act as primary transmission channels. Ultimately, organizations must treat career sustainability as a shared, relational responsibility and cultivate supportive workplace environments to harness these powerful contagion effects

This research highlights crossover theory, which demonstrates how emotional states, health conditions, and work behaviors transmit between closely related individuals. Drawing on a comprehensive meta-analysis of 183 studies, the research reveals that spouses, supervisors, and coworkers significantly influence an employee's happiness, health, and productivity. Distinct stakeholders exert varying degrees of influence on specific outcomes, with spouses most strongly affecting happiness, supervisors impacting health, and peers shaping productivity. Furthermore, the research refutes traditional management models that view employee well-being as strictly isolated by proving that empathy, social support, and toxic interactions act as primary transmission channels. Ultimately, organizations must treat career sustainability as a shared, relational responsibility and cultivate supportive workplace environments to harness these powerful contagion effects

This research highlights crossover theory, which demonstrates how emotional states, health conditions, and work behaviors transmit between closely related individuals. Drawing on a comprehensive meta-analysis of 183 studies, the research reveals that spouses, supervisors, and coworkers significantly influence an employee's happiness, health, and productivity. Distinct stakeholders exert varying degrees of influence on specific outcomes, with spouses most strongly affecting happiness, supervisors impacting health, and peers shaping productivity. Furthermore, the research refutes traditional management models that view employee well-being as strictly isolated by proving that empathy, social support, and toxic interactions act as primary transmission channels. Ultimately, organizations must treat career sustainability as a shared, relational responsibility and cultivate supportive workplace environments to harness these powerful contagion effects

Abstract: This article examines the phenomenon of crossover—the interpersonal transmission of experiences between closely related individuals—and its implications for employee happiness, health, and productivity. Drawing on a landmark meta-analysis of 183 studies by Nguyen et al. (2026), the article translates crossover theory and sustainable career research into actionable guidance for organizational leaders, HR professionals, and career practitioners. The evidence demonstrates that stakeholders including supervisors, coworkers, and spouses meaningfully influence employee outcomes through empathic reactions, social support, and social undermining. Importantly, different stakeholders exert differential influence: spouses are most strongly linked to employee happiness, supervisors to health, and coworkers to productivity. These findings challenge conventional people-management approaches that treat employee outcomes as individually determined. The article outlines evidence-based organizational responses—spanning empathy cultivation, social support infrastructure, relationship-quality monitoring, team composition design, and work–family boundary management—and proposes long-term strategies for building contagion-positive organizational cultures. Practitioner implications are grounded in both academic research and industry examples.

This research highlights crossover theory, which demonstrates how emotional states, health conditions, and work behaviors transmit between closely related individuals. Drawing on a comprehensive meta-analysis of 183 studies, the research reveals that spouses, supervisors, and coworkers significantly influence an employee's happiness, health, and productivity. Distinct stakeholders exert varying degrees of influence on specific outcomes, with spouses most strongly affecting happiness, supervisors impacting health, and peers shaping productivity. Furthermore, the research refutes traditional management models that view employee well-being as strictly isolated by proving that empathy, social support, and toxic interactions act as primary transmission channels. Ultimately, organizations must treat career sustainability as a shared, relational responsibility and cultivate supportive workplace environments to harness these powerful contagion effects.

In this HCI Webinar, I talk with Guy Berger about new data that shows that immigration policy is slowing the jobs market. Guy Berger is a macroeconomist with expertise in US labor markets. Aside from his role as Chief Economist at Homebase, he is currently Senior Advisor on Labor Markets at Access/Macro. He was previously the Principal Economist at LinkedIn, and has also worked as an economist at Bank of America and the Royal Bank of Scotland. His work includes the creation of novel economic indicators, the development of models linking the macroeconomy to business performance, and the design of economic reports. His commentary has been featured frequently in the media, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Marketplace, CNBC, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance, and Axios. Guy holds a doctorate in economics from Yale University.

Recent research highlights how a household member's active job search creates spillover effects that negatively impact an employed professional's focus and productivity. When family career transitions occur independently without coordination, they trigger family-work conflict and drain valuable personal resources. Conversely, high levels of planning and communication can transform these household career pursuits into shared, supportive projects. To mitigate these hidden workplace stresses, organizations must implement proactive strategies such as flexible scheduling, boundary management training, and family-supportive leadership. Ultimately, employers who acknowledge this broader ecosystem of home demands can build long-term resilience while improving overall employee retention and wellbeing.