摘要：A sense of meaningfulness is one of the most sought‐after work characteristics to be associated with employees’ well-being. This study explored whether meaningful work enhances self-rated health in a challenging work context, under distractions,unnecessary tasks and unreasonable tasks using a holistic stress model (Nelson & Simmons, 2003;Simmons & Nelson,2007) as a theoretical background. Data was collected from Finnish teachers (N = 1,658) and structural equation modelling was employed with the latent interaction terms. The results showed that meaningful work was associated with better self-rated health and that distractions,unnecessary tasks and unreasonable tasks were associated with poorer self-rated health. The protective potential of meaningful work against work stressors was also discovered as meaningful work mitigated the deleterious effect of unreasonable tasks on self-rated health. These findings indicate that meaningful work supports employees’ self-rated health and helps them to cope better with stressful work conditions,thereby enhancing well-being. The protective quality of meaningful work means that even a challenging work context may be less harmful to employees’ well-being if they have a strong sense of the meaning of their work. The practical implications of the findings for teachers and organizations are discussed.
