The Effects of Spirituality Training Program in the Workplace on Social Support Levels in the Employees of Selected Sports Federations

Exploring the organization's employees can help identify the organizations' deficits and find the path to the growth and development of the organization. Furthermore, all employees, those with disabilities and healthy ones, can affect this issue. Spirituality in the workplace significantly impacts the organization; organizations can enhance and provide employees with access to their potential by establishing a human environment. Furthermore, improving social support creates a sense of belonging among employees, leading to job satisfaction; consequently, they will be more willing to remain within the organization. Indeed, social support should be dominant as an influential factor in all organizations. This measure could provide the growth of individuals within organizations and the development of the organization's goals. Accordingly, the present study aimed to determine the effects of the spirituality training program in the workplace on social support among the employees of selected sports federations.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest design. The study's statistical population comprised all employees of the selected sports federations in 2019–2020. Of them, 30 qualified employees were chosen as the study sample through the convenience sampling method and were randomly assigned into the experimental and control groups (n=15/group). The inclusion criterion included expressing consent and participating in the training sessions. Furthermore, the exclusion criteria were unwillingness to continue cooperation and absence from >2 training sessions. The Social Support Appraisals Scale (Vaux et al., 1986) was applied at pretest and posttest to collect the required data. Moreover, by studying previous related theoretical and experimental findings, the design of a spirituality training program in the workplace was conducted based on professional commitment and psychological empowerment. Besides, after formulating the program and before implementation, the educational program to check the content validity was approved by 3 supervisors and advisors at the University of Tabriz and the Islamic Azad University of Sanandaj with sufficient expertise in the studied field. The approved program was implemented on a trial basis among the employees of sports federations after the modification, review, and application of experts' opinions. After the experimental implementation, the designed spirituality program in the workplace was presented to the experimental group in 8 ninety–minute sessions. The control group received no intervention. Moreover, descriptive statists (mean & standard deviation) and inferential statistics, including Univariate Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and Independent Samples t–test, were used (to compare the mean scores of age between the two groups) in SPSS at the significance level of 0.05.

The present study results indicated that by modifying the effect of pretest, the effect of the training program of spirituality in the workplace was significant on the subscales of social support, including family domain (p=0.039), friends domain (p=0.040), and other domain (p=0.023) in the staff of sports federations. Furthermore, according to the size of the effect, 18% of the changes in the family domain, 19% of the changes in the domain of friends, and 19% of the changes in the domain of others could be explained through intervention.

According to the obtained data, the training program of spirituality in the workplace was effective in increasing the social support of employees of selected sports federations; thus, it is suggested that this program be implemented as an interventional technique in the organizations and other sport–related places to increase the variables involved in the organization.