How new ways of working during COVID-19 affect employee well-being via technostress, need for recovery, and work engagement☆

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107560Get rights and content
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Highlights

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    Higher levels of New Ways of Working (NWW) are associated with higher levels of Job-related Affective Well-being (JAWS).

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    Higher NWW levels relate to higher positive affective well-being (PAWS) and less negative affective well-being (NAWS).

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    Much of these relations is indirect, through reduced technostress and need for recovery, and increased work engagement.

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    NWW facets management of output, access to colleagues, access to information directly relate to less negative well-being.

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    A larger change (compared to pre-COVID-19) in number of teleworking days per week is associated with higher well-being.

Abstract

COVID-19 led to a surge in employees experiencing New Ways of Working (NWW), as many had to work from home supported by ICT. This paper studies how experiencing NWW during COVID-19 affected job-related affective well-being (JAWS) for a sample of employees of the Dutch working population. Hypotheses are tested using Preacher and Hayes' (Behav Res Methods 40 (3):879–891, 2008) bootstrap method, including technostress, need for recovery and work engagement as serial mediators. The results show that higher levels of NWW relate to higher JAWS, to more feelings of positive well-being (PAWS), and less feelings of negative well-being (NAWS). Much of these relations is indirect, via reduced technostress and need for recovery, and increased work engagement. Distinguishing the separate facets of NWW and their relations to PAWS/NAWS, the results show that NWW facets management of output, access to colleagues and access to information directly relate to less negative well-being. However, as the NWW facet time- and location-independent work negatively relates to feelings of positive well-being, NWW as a bundle of facets is not a set-and-forget strategy. Therefore, this study recommends that NWW be supplemented with regular monitoring of employees’ well-being, technostress, need for recovery and work engagement.

Keywords

New ways of working
Employee well-being
COVID-19
Technostress
Need for recovery
Work engagement

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

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The views expressed in this article are strictly personal and do not represent the views of the European Parliament.

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.