The Vitamin Model

Organizations are living organisms that need to be nourished. Just like any organism, they need different vitamins to support their growth and well-being.

Peter Warr, workplace psychologist and scholarly genius (if you ask me), developed a model called the Vitamin Model, to describe the most common (and most researched) job characteristics that impact employee well-being and development. These characteristics include:

• Supportive supervision
• Opportunity for personal control (autonomy)
• Opportunity for interpersonal contact (quantity and quality interactions between employees)
• Externally generated goals (e.g., job demand, task demands, role responsibility)
• Availability of money ($$)
• Variety (task/job variety)
• Opportunity for skill use (showcasing what you’ve got!)
• Physical security
• Environmental clarity (the use of policy and consistent procedures)
• Valued social position (task significance, meaningfulness of job)

According to this model, just as people need different kinds of vitamins for nourishment, employees need different kinds of job characteristics or ‘vitamins’ to be fully productive at work. Similar to the effects of vitamins on the human body however, the appropriate amount depends on the individual and other external factors, like where you live and what kinds of resources are available.

For example, although vitamin D is essential to growth, in excess or in depletion it can be quite harmful to development therefore the right dose is extremely important for maintaining a healthy body. In the same way, job characteristics that influence well-being at work, such as the availability of money, may be essential up to a certain point, but in excess can actually act as a de-motivator. Likewise, hands-on supervision may be important in the early stages of a project for example, but can also be harmful if it limits personal autonomy. Opportunities for task variety is another example that when taken to extremes, can contribute to work overload and increased stress.

Warr’s Vitamin Model demonstrates the challenges researchers face in understanding the diverse characteristics that influence well-being at work, and the interplay between these characteristics. There are simply too many variables to consider! However, as much as there are variations in what organizations need to promote well-being, there are also fundamentals, described by Warr’s job characteristics, that provide a solid frame for discerning and measuring the health of an organization.

Photo Credit: Steven Depolo via Flickr.

Warr, P. (2002). Psychology at work. Penguin UK.