Zum Hauptinhalt

Employee psychological well‐being during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Germany: A longitudinal study of demands, resources, and exhaustion

Technische Universität Chemnitz

Many governments react to the current coronavirus/COVID‐19 pandemic by restricting daily (work) life. On the basis of theories from occupational health, the scientists among Prof. Bertolt Meyer propose that the duration of the pandemic, its demands (e.g., having to work from home, closing of childcare facilities, job insecurity, work‐privacy conflicts, privacy‐work conflicts) and personal‐ and job‐related resources (co‐worker social support, job autonomy, partner support and corona self‐efficacy) interact in their effect on employee exhaustion.

  • Disziplin: Gesundheit, Psychologie
  • Forschungsmethode: Quantitativ
  • Forschungsdesign: Primärerhebung, Offene Befragung (selbstselektiert)
  • Erhebungsstatus: Erhebung abgeschlossen, Ergebnisse veröffentlicht

Ziele der Studie

To find evidence in the data of how the corona pandemic and the measures by the government to stop the spread of the virus affected the “emotional exhaustion” of employee, the scientists aimed to test six hypotheses:

  • Hypothesis 1: The duration of the COVID-19 pandemic affects Exhaustion in an inverse-u-shaped nonlinear way.
  • Hypothesis 2: Pandemic-related restrictions affect exhaustion such that introducing restrictions increase exhaustion and such that loosening restrictions decrease exhaustion.
  • Hypothesis 3: Social support, both at work and at home, moderate the curvilinear relationship between pandemic duration and exhaustion such that more support attenuates the relationship and less support strengthens it.
  • Hypothesis 4: Job insecurity moderates the curvilinear relationship between pandemic duration and exhaustion such that more job insecurity exacerbates the relationship and less insecurity attenuates it.
  • Hypothesis 5: Conflicts between work and privacy moderate the curvilinear relationship between pandemic duration and exhaustion such that more conflict strengthens the relationship and less conflict attenuates it.
  • Hypothesis 6: The constructive resources job autonomy and pandemic-specific self-efficacy moderate the curvilinear relationship between pandemic duration and exhaustion such that more resources attenuate the relationship and less support strengthen it.

Studiendesign/Umsetzung

The data used for the analysis were collected in three waves over a period of 3 months from voluntary participants from the general population in a non-representative way. The data were collected between April 2020 and June 2020 (first lockdown in Germany). The original dataset consisted of 3862 individuals at the first wave. This analysis is based on the subset of German participants who work.

Weiterführende Links

Veröffentlichung
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ijop.12743

Pressemitteilung
https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/tu/pressestelle/aktuell/10589