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challenging situations as well as going through emotionally tough experi- ences or then sharing general frustrations and anecdotes. Some informants had their own personal support networks and were of course utilising them.
A further interesting topic is indirect organisational support. One example of it can be the company culture (Plakhotnik, 2017) which can lead to e.g., hav- ing time to discuss experiences as an FTM with someone in the organisation as well as having a psychologically safe environment (Dubouloy, 2004 cited by Austin et al., 2013). Also, this indirect support was visible with many of my informants in the form of being trusted, allowed to make mistakes as well as superiors and subordinates being empathic and supportive toward them.
However, some of the informants had also experienced the opposite: poor organisational culture hindering their learning, limiting their access to sup- port as well as the need to deal with the sink or swim approach that should be avoided with FTMs as Plakhotnik (2017) states. Among my informants, there was also one example of senior managers not adapting their expecta- tions appropriately for an FTM (Plakhotnik, 2017).
Finally, as already previously has been discussed, the informants of my study were participants of an FTM training program. Therefore, obviously the pro- portion of informants who had received either very little or no organisational support was notable and might not represent the average experience of Finn- ish FTMs. However, this provided me with rich data about the different sources of support.
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leadership is especially helpful in supporting subordinate proactivity such as job crafting, which is beneficial for well-being. First-time managers are nat- urally affected by the organisational context as well as by their superiors, pos- sibly leaders, who often act also as role models.
5.4.1 Job demands–resources theory and FTMs
It seems that the Job demands–resources theory (JD–R) (Demerouti et al., 2001) has not been applied to FTMs in the literature before this study. Ac- cording to my findings, the demands will likely be high and unfortunately for some, the resources low. The demands and resources of FTMs might be to some extent universal but also quite unique depending on e.g., the organisa- tional context. This was definitely visible with the common challenges my in- formants faced such as high workload, which on the other hand would result from uniquely diverse causes. Moreover, the demands and resources change over time (Bakker and de Vries, 2021) and according to recent propositions by Demerouti and Bakker (2022) they actually interact between different do- mains of life. As an example of this, one of my informants stated that finalis- ing previous projects at work and in private life as well as having a bit of time off before becoming a manager would have been beneficial for his well-being.
However, the most important area of the JD–R theory to discuss in the light of my findings about FTM well-being are the flexible “self-regulation strate- gies” (Bakker and de Vries, 2021, p. 5) that my informants utilised. These include job crafting and stress recovery and will be discussed next. Clearly, if well-being is largely about fulfilling basic psychological needs (Deci et al., 2017) as well as living a fulfilling and meaningful life (Ryff, 2013), having a work-life balance, limiting one’s workload with agenda management and be- ing able to recover from work stresses helps a person to be well.
Job crafting
All of my informants described actions that count as job crafting; they con- sciously changed the demands and resources of their jobs (or lives) to keep up good well-being or improve it. Examples are aiming for a better work-life balance with managing one’s agenda at work as well as separating work and private life and setting limits as well as accepting adequate quality of output at work. Interestingly, no informant described crafting their jobs with adding challenge demands (Van den Broeck et al., 2010), which likely points to the direction, that FTMs find their jobs already challenging enough. Further- more, some informants seemed to objectively do more job crafting than oth- ers, craft different job characteristics and craft them to different extents. Nat- urally, the effectiveness of the crafting was related to the demands and re- sources each had in their jobs e.g., if workload was a key demand for an in- formant, it was or would have been beneficial to do e.g., agenda management and thus try to decrease the workload.
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The variance in taking own actions in crafting the demands and resources an informant had, can be explained in many ways. First, no one used the term job crafting, which might point to the direction, that they were not consider- ing the big picture of their job characteristics consciously. This might be caused by lacking organisational support such as not having a mentor or in general it being hard for an FTM to consider their job characteristics from a meta-level: the mind of an FTM is likely already occupied with all kinds of things. Second, some informants were young, and most informants inexpe- rienced in managerial roles. Therefore, it might be hard to realise one can craft their job, know what to craft, how to do it and if it would be okay to do so. Also, as Bergin (2009) as well as Park and Faerman (2019) have found, FTMs tend to try to prove themselves (at least in the beginning) by doing a lot. This tendency was visible with some of my informants too.
Third, around half of the informants had become managers in organisations new to them and this unfamiliarity with the context might further hinder the abilities or willingness to e.g., leave something undone or delegate it. Fourth, it might be that the organisations the informants were working for, did not support employee autonomy, which is a predictor of job crafting (Tims and Bakker, 2010). Finally, linked to autonomy are the personal resources e.g., self-efficacy and proactive personality. If an organisation does not support autonomy, it can negatively affect a person’s perception of their self-efficacy and if that person also does not have an especially proactive personality, it might hinder job crafting.
Stress recovery
In the informants’ statements about stress recovery, the most visible were the concrete activities or factors that were bringing balance to their lives. Exam- ples of these were family, hobbies, physical exercise, friends and sleeping.
However, underlying these were features that Sonnentag and Fritz (2007) have argued being the keys to recovering from work stresses. According to them, the most important is disconnecting from work mentally. Especially striking was the role of family for this disconnection and especially women mentioned this. Hobbies and physical exercise as well as meeting friends also often seemed to help to achieve disconnection. Also, this ability to disconnect is related to job crafting and work-life balance. Naturally, limiting one’s working hours, workload as well as availability on email or phone helps an individual to spare time and energy for their free time and be off from work.
This might also serve another feature of stress recovery, namely having con- trol over free time. Furthermore, one informant also brought up the third feature of stress recovery i.e., learning something new in her hobbies (Son- nentag and Fritz, 2007). Finally, sleeping is one indicator of relaxing, the fourth stress-recovery feature.
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As Bakker and de Vries (2021) write, it is paradoxical that stressed individu- als find it hard to take part in activities helping them to recover from their stresses. Partly, this was visible with a few of my informants who either men- tioned none or very few of the activities described earlier. One of them had suffered from a burnout as an FTM but luckily seemed to be on a better track now. The way he elaborated his process seemed to highlight also the lengthy nature of getting healthy after a burnout: gradually, he has changed his be- haviours and has also tried to introduce meaningful activities to his free time.
Another informant who had experienced a burnout earlier in her life de- scribed similarly the lengthy recovery process. Furthermore, some other in- formants also recalled, that life experience had taught them the importance of taking care of their well-being. I believe that these experiences point to the direction, that a person must partly by trial and error find the optimal bal- ance between demands and resources of life (Finnish Institute of Occupa- tional Health, n.d. a). They also need to find the right activities that bring meaningful content to their life and help them in stress recovery.
5.4.2 The Covid-19 pandemic and the well-being of FTMs
The literature discusses increase of job demands (Demerouti and Bakker, 2022) and addition of new tasks to managerial roles (Graf-Vlachy et al., 2020; Andersone et al., 2023) due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Without a con- trol group, it is of course impossible to compare my informants’ experiences with FTMs in ‘normal’ circumstances. However, instead of new Covid-19-re- lated tasks negatively affecting the informants’ well-being, it became clear, that remote work was central. It had influenced negatively e.g., the work-life balance of my informants and seemed to lead to work extensification (Has- sard and Morris, 2021; Andersone et al., 2023).
Another topic that was visible with some of my informants were the uncer- tainties the pandemic caused which have been discussed by e.g., Andersone et al. (2023). Similarly, as Andersone et al. (2023) found, social support was important for my informants in dealing with these additional challenges.
Furthermore, also in my study, it seemed that in many organisations the long-term support for dealing with the effects of the pandemic was lacking.
Finally, as Graf-Vlachy et al. (2020) and Wojtczuk-Turek et al. (2022) have found, the pandemic treated managers unevenly. This was also visible with the well-being of my informants, though one explaining factor might be the varying timing of my informants’ FTM processes in relation to the pandemic.
However, this does not explain all and in the equation, life experiences as well as the organisational context played a role. Furthermore, as several au- thors (e.g., Demerouti and Bakker, 2022; Wojtczuk-Turek et al., 2022) have stated, proactivity and job crafting were keys in dealing effectively with the pandemic and staying well. Therefore, those informants who were able to
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e.g., fight remote work extending into their private lives by creating bounda- ries and in other ways separating their work and private lives, seemed to have fared better. But as discussed earlier, job crafting can be especially hard for young and inexperienced FTMs, and the organisational context can either support or hinder them.