A weary soul needs to recover! A study on the impact of supervisor support for recovery on employees’ thriving at work and job satisfaction

While existing research has provided preliminary insights into the role of SSR in workplace wellbeing, these studies have not systematically differentiated the effects of SSR across distinct dimensions of workplace wellbeing, nor have they fully elucidated the underlying mechanisms or contextual boundary conditions. To address these gaps, this study conducted a questionnaire survey of 429 employees from 10 organizations and analyzed the data using latent moderated structural equations (LMS), enabling the examination of complex moderating effects within the proposed model. We found the following conclusions: First, SSR has a positive direct impact on employees' thriving at work but it does not have a significantly direct effect on job satisfaction. Second, job burnout and intrinsic needs, respectively, mediate the relationships between SSR and job satisfaction and the relationship between SSR and thriving at work. Third, job demand positively moderates the relationship between SSR and job burnout but it does not moderate the relationship between SSR and intrinsic need. This work enriches the theoretical research on SSR in positive organizational behavior and also provides practical implications for the team leadership style and time management of employees in enterprises.