The fit of interests of the individual and the work environment (congruence) is the basis of professional counseling. According to Holland’s theory of career choice, congruence should lead to positive professional outcomes such as job satisfaction, job performance and motivation to work. However, previous research on congruence and outcomes has resulted in very low correlations of congruence and job satisfaction. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between employee congruence and work well-being, expanding the range of criteria to several measures of work well-being: work engagement, job affective well-being, job satisfaction and life satisfaction. An additional research problem was to examine the moderator effect of the interest structure in relation to congruence and work well-being. Participants in the study were employed citizens from various Croatian companies who work more than 30 hours each week (N = 526). We calculated the congruence of interests of employees and their work environment through the RIASEC results on the Personal Globe Inventory, and RIASEC assessment of work environments. The results showed that congruence, when operationalized by modern indices, is low positively associated with the vigor and dedication at work as a subscale of work engagement, and with the experience of positive emotions at work. In doing so, the congruence measure based on the Euclidean distance proved to be the best operationalization of the construct. Measures of interest structure generally did not prove to be a significant moderator of the relationship between congruence and work well-being. The exception is the moderator role of interest consistency, which works in such a way that the relationship between congruence and life satisfaction is stronger for individuals who have non-consistent interest profiles.

congruence of interests and work environment, work well-being, differentiation and consistency of vocational interests, profile elevation