Coworker Support and Its Relationship to Allostasis During a Workday: A Diary Study on Trajectories of Heart Rate Variability During Work

In this study, we investigate autonomic nervous system regulation during a regular workday and how coworker support relates to this allostatic system. We first examined the trajectory of the heart rate variability (HRV) as an indicator of autonomic nervous system activation throughout the workday. Furthermore, we proposed that coworker support is directly related to the typical autonomic regulation of the workday and facilitates a stable high parasympathetic and low sympathetic activation level during the workday. We conducted a 5-day daily diary study with 115 employees, measuring their coworker support at the end of the day and their HRV during work. We examined the effect of stable between-coworker support on the latent growth curve of HRV during work and found evidence for the stabilizing effect of general coworker support on HRV trajectory. Employees with higher coworker support, on average, had a high, stable parasympathetic and low, stable sympathetic level during work. Employees with low support showed an inverted, U-shape trajectory of the parasympathetic activation throughout the workday, with low parasympathetic activation at the beginning and end of the workday and a maximum in the middle of the workday during lunch break time. Thus, we offer initial evidence for a regulating effect of coworker support on allostasis in terms of a trajectory in actual working conditions.