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Receiving unsolicited help at work can strain employees' autonomy and well-being, suggests recent research from Germany. The research sheds light on the impact of unwanted workplace assistance on mental health.

Modern society demands significant time investment in work, making workplace experiences crucial for overall well-being. Support availability, a key factor influencing both employee and organizational well-being, can have varied effects depending on how it's perceived and received.

The study, led by Anika D. Schulz and her colleagues, aimed to explore how unwanted help from supervisors and peers influences employees' psychological needs and subsequent mental states. They hypothesized that unwanted help might frustrate employees' needs for competence and autonomy, leading to post-work rumination and hindering psychological detachment from work.

Psychological detachment, crucial for rest and stress reduction, involves disconnecting from work-related thoughts during non-work hours. Affective rumination, on the other hand, entails emotionally charged contemplation of work issues.

The researchers conducted two surveys involving hundreds of employees. Results revealed that unwanted help correlated with increased frustration of autonomy and competence needs, leading to higher levels of affective rumination and reduced psychological detachment from work.

"Our findings highlight that autonomy frustration resulting from offered unwanted help does not quickly dissipate; it has effects over weeks, leading to increased post‐work rumination and hindering psychological detachment from work," the study authors said, PsyPost reported.

The study published in Stress and Health, shows the importance of thoughtful and wanted support in the workplace to safeguard employees' basic psychological needs and overall well-being. However, the research design does not definitively establish cause-and-effect relationships, nor does it consider whether recipients accepted or rejected the unwanted help.

"These results suggest that offered unwanted help as one facet of potentially unhelpful support has adverse effects on its recipients. For help providers, it seems advisable to only offer help when it is wanted and to do so thoughtfully and skillfully to protect the basic psychological needs of help recipients as effectively as possible," the researchers explained.

The paper titled "When help is not wanted: Frustrated needs and poor after-work recovery as consequences of unwanted help at work" was authored by Schulz, Doris Fay, Ina Schöllgen and Johannes Wendsche.