How do employees think the COVID-19 crisis will affect their careers?

Lessons learned from behaviors of the employees in Iranian banks during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis: A phenomenological study

The aim of this research is to analyze the experiences of employees during the Covid-19 pandemic cri-sis and conceptualize the lessons learned to deal with similar crises in the future. To achieve this, a qualitative approach with a phenomenological strategy was conducted through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 16 front-line employees of Bank Melli, the largest state bank in Iran. The study found that employee behavior plays a critical role in crisis management, with functional behaviors such as preventive measures, stress management, and sharing valid information being essential. Dysfunctional behaviors such as resistance to change and inconsistent behaviors were also identified. The prevention of infection and stress management were identified as key behaviors to cope with the crisis, while media literacy and acceptance of change were crucial for correct information analysis and crisis management. Overall, the study highlights the challenges faced by employees during the Covid-19 crisis and provides valuable lessons from a behavioral perspective for managers in the banking industry to manage disruptions caused by current and future pandemics. The study emphasizes the importance of learning from the lessons of the Covid-19 crisis to reduce negative effects on physical and mental health.

EXPERIENCES OF TURKISH NURSES WITH COVID-19 INFECTION IN PANDEMIC AND POST-PANDEMIC: A QUALITATIVE STUDY

In the most difficult times of epidemics, the importance of the role of nurses is greater than ever. In our study we aimed to determine the experiences of Turkish nurses with COVID-19 infection about the process ın pandemıc and post-pandemıc. The study was conducted in a qualitative research format with a semi-structured interview form including nurses who had COVID-19 infection and then returned to work. The post-pandemic interview was held approximately 2 years after the first interview. The first interview sample consisted of 21 nurses who recovered from COVID-19 infection and The data were collected between September and December 2020. In the second interview, 11 nurses were reached in January 2023. The first interview themes obtained at the end of the interview were (1) fear and anxiety, (2) worthlessness, (3) questioning and regret, and (4) power. The second interview themes obtained at the end of the interview were (1) health perception, (2) profession perception. The pandemic and post pandemic is a process that challenges nurses mentally and physically. Nurses have taken important roles in the pandemic period since the first stage. In order for nurses to fulfill their duties from now on, the difficulties experienced by the nurse staff should be aware of and arrangements should be made regarding the working area. Nurses and other health practitioners need support in challenging situations. Policies should be developed to support healthcare professionals who are fighting at the forefront in crisis situations such as pandemics.

Mental health of working parents during the COVID-19 pandemic: can resilience buffer the impact of psychosocial work stress on depressive symptoms?

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has confronted working parents with an accumulation of stressors regarding changes in work, family, and social life, putting their mental health at risk. Stressors include altered working conditions such as working from home or changes in working hours as well as the difficulty to reconcile work and childcare due to the closure of childcare facilities. The present study examined the relationship of psychosocial work stress (i.e., work-privacy conflict and effort-reward imbalance at work) and depressive symptoms in working parents and whether this association was moderated by individual resilience.

METHODS

Data of the present study (n = 452) were collected in Germany between May and June 2020 as part of the DREAM_CORONA study. A subsample of working mothers (n = 191) and fathers (n = 261) completed the subscale for work-privacy conflict (WPC) of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire, the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) Questionnaire, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). Multiple linear regression analyses including moderation were performed, controlling for gender, working hours per week, and a lifetime history of depression as potential confounders.

RESULTS

Both WPC (β = 0.336, p < .001) and ERI (β = 0.254, p < .001) were significantly associated with depressive symptoms. Resilience moderated the relationship between ERI and depressive symptoms (β = - 0.101, p = .018), indicating that higher resilience weakened the relationship. However, this effect was not found regarding the relationship between WPC and depressive symptoms (β = 0.055, p = .167).

CONCLUSIONS

The results highlight the need for measures to reduce psychosocial work stressors such as WPC and ERI during the COVID-19 pandemic on the one hand and to promote resilience on the other hand. The findings partially support the potential protective role of resilience buffering the association between psychosocial stress and mental health in working parents. Longitudinal studies are needed to confirm this effect.

Job insecurity and mental health related outcomes among the humanitarian workers during COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study

Background

The COVID-19 remains a public health burden that has caused global economic crises, jeopardizing health, jobs, and livelihoods of millions of people around the globe. Several efforts have been made by several countries by implementing several health strategies to attenuate the spread of the pandemic. Although several studies indicated effects of COVID-19 on mental health and its associated factors, very little is known about the underlying mechanism of job insecurity, depression, anxiety, and stress in Bangladesh. Therefore, this study determined the prevalence of job insecurity and depression, anxiety, stress as well as the association between job insecurity, mental health outcomes also contributing determinants amongst humanitarian workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh.

Methods

We conducted a web-based cross-sectional study among 445 humanitarian workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in six sub-districts of Cox’s bazar district of Bangladesh between April and May 2021. The questionnaire was composed of socio-demographic, lifestyle and work related factors. Psychometric instruments like job insecurity scale and depression, anxiety also stress scale (DASS-21) were employed to assess the level of job insecurity and mental health outcomes (depression, anxiety and stress). STATA software version 14 was employed to perform statistical analyses.

Results

The prevalence of job insecurity was 42%. The odds of job insecurity was higher in Kutubdia and Pekua (AOR = 3.1, 95% CI 1.36, 7.22) Teknaf (AOR = 2.9, 95% CI 1.33, 6.41), the impact of dissatisfaction on salary (AOR = 2.3, 95% CI 1.49, 3.58) was evident with job insecurity. The prevalence of moderate to severe depression, anxiety and stress among humanitarian worker were (26%, 7%), (25%, 10%) and (15%, 7%) respectively. Further, the region of work, being female, marital status, work environment, and salary dissatisfaction were contributing factors for poor mental health outcomes. Those with job insecurity were almost 3 times more likely to experience depression (AOR = 2.7, 95% CI 1.85, 4.04), anxiety (AOR = 2.6, 95% CI 1.76, 3.71) and stress (AOR: 2.8; 95% CI 1.89, 4.26), respectively.

Conclusion

Our findings highlight that job security remains essential to help tackle the severity of depression, anxiety and stress in humanitarian workers. The results reflected the critical importance of local and international NGOs addressing poor mental health conditions of their employees to prevent mental health outbreaks.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40359-022-00974-7.

Does COVID-19 pandemic trigger career anxiety in tourism students? Exploring the role of psychological resilience

This study aims to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic affects career anxiety of tourism students, who are the potential future employees of tourism and hospitality industry. Data was collected using an online survey with 1097 undergraduate students in the field of tourism in Turkey. The results of the study revealed that perceived risk of infection and fear of COVID-19 significantly impact students' career anxiety, and fear of COVID-19 mediate the relationship between perceived infection risk and career anxiety. In addition, the results indicated that psychological resilience, which is an individual resource against difficulties, represents a factor that reduces career anxieties of students in the face of pandemic-related negative impacts. The findings contribute to the understanding of how pandemic diseases affect career anxiety in students, who are the future workforce of the tourism sector, and to determine the role of individual resources such as psychological resilience in this process.

The COVID-19 crisis and telework: a research survey on experiences, expectations and hopes

While a considerable number of employees across the globe are being forced to work from home due to the COVID-19 crisis, it is a guessing game as to how they are experiencing this current surge in telework. Therefore, we examined employee perceptions of telework on various life and career aspects, distinguishing between typical and extended telework during the COVID-19 crisis. To this end, we conducted a state-of-the-art web survey among Flemish employees. Notwithstanding this exceptional time of sudden, obligatory and high-intensity telework, our respondents mainly attribute positive characteristics to telework, such as increased efficiency and a lower risk of burnout. The results also suggest that the overwhelming majority of the surveyed employees believe that telework (85%) and digital conferencing (81%) are here to stay. In contrast, some fear that telework diminishes their promotion opportunities and weakens ties with their colleagues and employer.

The COVID-19 crisis and telework: a research survey on experiences, expectations and hopes

While a considerable number of employees across the globe are being forced to work from home due to the COVID-19 crisis, it is a guessing game as to how they are experiencing this current surge in telework. Therefore, we examined employee perceptions of telework on various life and career aspects, distinguishing between typical and extended telework during the COVID-19 crisis. To this end, we conducted a state-of-the-art web survey among Flemish employees. Notwithstanding this exceptional time of sudden, obligatory and high-intensity telework, our respondents mainly attribute positive characteristics to telework, such as increased efficiency and a lower risk of burnout. The results also suggest that the overwhelming majority of the surveyed employees believe that telework (85%) and digital conferencing (81%) are here to stay. In contrast, some fear that telework diminishes their promotion opportunities and weakens ties with their colleagues and employer.

Examining the Associations between COVID-19-Related Psychological Distress, Social Media Addiction, COVID-19-Related Burnout, and Depression among School Principals and Teachers through Structural Equation Modeling

This study aims to investigate the relationships between COVID-19-related psychological distress, social media addiction, COVID-19-related burnout, and depression. The research, which was designed according to the relational survey model, was conducted with the participation of 332 school principals and teachers who received graduate education in the field of educational administration. Research data were collected through online surveys and then structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test and analyze the proposed hypotheses. The study’s findings revealed that COVID-19-related psychological distress strongly predicted COVID-19-related burnout. In this context, as the psychological distress associated with COVID-19 increased, the sense of burnout associated with COVID-19 also increased. However, it was found that burnout associated with COVID-19 significantly and positively predicted depression. SEM results revealed that COVID-19-related psychological distress directly affected COVID-19-related burnout, depression, and social media addiction. In addition, it was determined that an indirect effect of COVID-19-related burnout and social media addiction exists in the relationship between COVID-19-related psychological distress and depression.

Firing discrimination: Selective labor market responses of firms during the COVID-19 economic crisis

The speed of the economic downturn in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has been exceptional, causing mass layoffs-in Germany up to 30% of the workforce in some industries. Economic rationale suggests that the decision on which workers are fired should depend on productivity-related individual factors. However, from hiring situations we know that discrimination-i.e., decisions driven by characteristics unrelated to productivity-is widespread in Western labor markets. Drawing on representative survey data on forced layoffs and short-time work collected in Germany between April and December 2020, this study highlights that discrimination against immigrants is also present in firing situations. The analysis shows that employees with a migration background are significantly more likely to lose their job than native workers when otherwise healthy firms are unexpectedly forced to let go of part of their workforce, while firms make more efforts to substitute firing with short-time working schemes for their native workers. Adjusting for detailed job-related characteristics shows that the findings are unlikely to be driven by systematic differences in productivity between migrants and natives. Moreover, using industry-specific variation in the extent of the economic downturn, I demonstrate that layoff probabilities hardly differ across the less affected industries, but that the gap between migrants and natives increases with the magnitude of the shock. In the hardest-hit industries, job loss probability among migrants is three times higher than among natives. This confirms the hypothesis that firing discrimination puts additional pressure on the immigrant workforce in times of crisis.

Post-Pandemic Office Work: Perceived Challenges and Opportunities for a Sustainable Work Environment

The widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work due to COVID-19 calls for studies that explore the ramifications of these scenarios for office workers from an occupational health and wellbeing perspective. This paper aims to identify the needs and challenges in remote and hybrid work and the potential for a sustainable future work environment. Data collection involved two qualitative studies with a total of 53 participants, who represented employees, staff managers, and service/facility providers at three Swedish public service organisations (primarily healthcare and infrastructure administration). The results describe opportunities and challenges with the adoption of remote and hybrid work from individual, group, and leadership perspectives. The main benefits of remote work were increased flexibility, autonomy, work-life balance and individual performance, while major challenges were social aspects such as lost comradery and isolation. Hybrid work was perceived to provide the best of both worlds of remote and office work, given that employees and managers develop new skills and competencies to adjust to new ways of working. To achieve the expected individual and organisational benefits of hybrid work, employers are expected to provide support and flexibility and re-design the physical and digital workplaces to fit the new and diverse needs of employees.

The effect of technostress on the teachers’ willingness to use online teaching modes and the moderating role of job insecurity during COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of technostress on the teachers’ willingness to use online Teaching Modes, with the moderating role of job insecurity in Pakistan.

Design/methodology/approach

Holistically, this study collected 242 samples using the convenient sampling technique for data collection. The response rate was 69.1%. The respondents of the study are academic staff working in private colleges and universities. The data are essentially collected by using the scales of technostress, job insecurity and willingness to utilize online teaching modes.

Findings

The results reveal a significant and negative relationship between technostress and the teachers’ willingness to use online modalities. Interestingly, job insecurity moderates the relationship between technostress and the teachers’ willingness to use online modalities.

Research limitations/implications

Only academic staff of colleges and universities is considered in this study. In later studies, researchers may consider the school teachers as their potential respondents.

Originality/value

The results of the study provide important insight for the higher management of the academic institutes to motivate their employees to use online resources by using effective leadership and management skills during unforeseen events in the future.

As if it weren't hard enough already: Breaking down hiring discrimination following burnout

Hiring discrimination towards (former) burnout patients has been extensively documented in the literature. To tackle this problem, it is important to understand the underlying mechanisms of such unequal hiring opportunities. Therefore, we conducted a vignette experiment with 425 genuine recruiters and jointly tested the potential stigma against job candidates with a history of burnout that were mentioned earlier in the literature. We found candidates revealing a history of burnout elicit perceptions of requiring work adaptations, likely having more unpleasant collaborations with others as well as diminished health, autonomy, ability to work under pressure, leadership capacity, manageability, and learning ability, when compared to candidates with a comparable gap in working history due to physical injury. Led by perceptions of a reduced ability to work under pressure, the tested perceptions jointly explained over 90 % of the effect of revealing burnout on the probability of being invited to a job interview. In addition, the negative effect on interview probability of revealing burnout was stronger when the job vacancy required higher stress tolerance. In contrast, the negative impact of revealing burnout on interview probability appeared weaker when recruiters were women and when recruiters had previously had personal encounters with burnout.

Divided When Crisis Comes: How Perceived Self-Partner Disagreements over COVID-19 Prevention Measures Relate to Employee Work Outcomes at Home

As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, our societies went into a lockdown model and many organizations required or permitted their employees to work from home. As a result, employees need to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic while they work from home, providing an opportunity to examine how COVID-19 prevention experiences influence those who are working from home. Based on the interpersonal self-regulation perspective, we propose that employees who perceive having more disagreements with their partners over COVID-19 prevention measures are more likely to experience a reduction in their identification with the partner which is subsequently associated with their negative work outcomes through emotional exhaustion. Results from a two-wave survey study with a sample of 282 employees who worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic supported our predictions: perceived self-partner disagreements over COVID-19 prevention measures related to a reduction in identification with the partner, which was subsequently associated with exhausted regulatory resources and undermined work outcomes. Furthermore, these negative effects were particularly salient for individuals who were not married. Theoretical and practical implications for family-to-work interference and working from home in times of crisis are discussed.

Building on Vietnam’s Recent COVID-19 Success: A Job-Focused Analysis of Individual Assessments on Their Finance and the Economy

Despite the harmful effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on income and employment loss around the globe, hardly any formal study exists on household finance and future economic expectations in poorer countries. We offer an early study that aims to fill this gap from the labor market angle. We implemented and analyzed a new web-based rapid assessment survey immediately after the removal of lockdown measures in Vietnam, a low-middle income country that has received widespread recognition for its successful fight against the pandemic. We find that having a job is strongly and positively associated with better finance and more income and savings, as well as more optimism about the resilience of the economy. Further disaggregating employment along the security dimension into different types of jobs such as self-employment and jobs with permanent and short-term contracts, we find those with permanent job contracts to have fewer job worries and better assessments for the economy. Individuals with good health tend to have more positive evaluations for their current and future finance, but there is mixed evidence for those with higher educational levels. These findings are relevant for the ongoing fight against the pandemic and post-outbreak labor policies, especially in a developing country context.

Are Spaniards Happier When the Bars Are Open? Using Life Satisfaction to Evaluate COVID-19 Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs)

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged governments worldwide with the design of appropriate policies that maximize health outcomes while minimizing economic and mental health consequences. This paper explores sources of individuals' life satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic, paying special attention to the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). We studied the specific case of Spanish regions and focused on bar and restaurant closures using data from a continuous voluntary web survey that we merged with information about region-specific policies that identified when and where bars and restaurants were closed. We estimated an endogenous binary-treatment-regression model and found that closing bars and restaurants had a significant negative impact on happiness. The results were statistically significant after controlling for the pandemic context, health, income, work, and other personal characteristics and circumstances. We interpreted the results in terms of the positive effect of socialization, individuals' feelings of freedom, and the comparative nature of life satisfaction.

The distributional consequences of social distancing on poverty and labour income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean

This paper estimates the potential distributional consequences of the first phase of the COVID-19 lockdowns on poverty and labour income inequality in 20 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. We estimate the share of individuals that are potentially able to remain active under the lockdown by taking into account individuals' teleworking capacity but also whether their occupation is affected by legal workplace closures or mobility restrictions. Furthermore, we compare the shares under the formal (de jure) lockdown policies assuming perfect compliance with the shares under de facto lockdowns where there is some degree of non-compliance. We then estimate individuals' potential labour income losses and examine changes in poverty and labour income inequality. We find an increase in poverty and labour income inequality in most of the LAC countries due to social distancing; however, the observed changes are lower under de facto lockdowns, revealing the potential role of non-compliance as a coping strategy during the lockdowns. Social distancing measures have led to an increase in inequality both between and within countries. Lastly, we show that most of the dispersion in the labour income loss across countries is explained by the sectoral/occupational employment structure of the economies.

Working from home and income inequality: risks of a 'new normal' with COVID-19

In the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home (WFH) became of great importance for a large share of employees since it represents the only option to both continue working and minimise the risk of virus exposure. Uncertainty about the duration of the pandemic and future contagion waves even led companies to view WFH as a 'new normal' way of working. Based on influence function regression methods, this paper explores the potential consequences in the labour income distribution related to a long-lasting increase in WFH feasibility among Italian employees. Results show that a positive shift in WFH feasibility would be associated with an increase in average labour income, but this potential benefit would not be equally distributed among employees. Specifically, an increase in the opportunity to WFH would favour male, older, high-educated, and high-paid employees. However, this 'forced innovation' would benefit more employees living in provinces have been more affected by the novel coronavirus. WFH thus risks exacerbating pre-existing inequalities in the labour market, especially if it will not be adequately regulated. As a consequence, this study suggests that policies aimed at alleviating inequality, like income support measures (in the short run) and human capital interventions (in the long run), should play a more important compensating role in the future.