Wood Stephen James, Michaelides George, Inceoglu Ilke, Hurren Elizabeth T, Daniels Kevin, Niven Karen
University of Leicester Business School, Leicester LE2 1RQ, UK.
Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jul 16;18(14):7575. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18147575.
As a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments encouraged or mandated homeworking wherever possible. This study examines the impact of this public health initiative on homeworkers' well-being. It explores if the general factors such as job autonomy, demands, social support and work-nonwork conflict, which under normal circumstances are crucial for employees' well-being, are outweighed by factors specific to homeworking and the pandemic as predictors of well-being. Using data from four-week diary studies conducted at two time periods in 2020 involving university employees in the UK, we assessed five factors that may be associated with their well-being: job characteristics, the work-home interface, home location, the enforced nature of the homeworking, and the pandemic context. Multi-level analysis confirms the relationship between four of the five factors and variability in within-person well-being, the exception being variables connected to the enforced homeworking. The results are very similar in both waves. A smaller set of variables explained between-person variability: psychological detachment, loneliness and job insecurity in both periods. Well-being was lower in the second than the first wave, as loneliness increased and the ability to detach from work declined. The findings highlight downsides of homeworking, will be relevant for employees' and employers' decisions about working arrangements post-pandemic, and contribute to the debate about the limits of employee well-being models centred on job characteristics.
作为对新冠疫情的应对措施，许多政府鼓励或强制尽可能居家办公。本研究考察了这一公共卫生举措对居家办公者幸福感的影响。它探讨了在正常情况下对员工幸福感至关重要的工作自主性、工作要求、社会支持和工作与非工作冲突等一般因素，是否会被居家办公和疫情特有的因素所压倒，而这些因素可作为幸福感的预测指标。利用2020年两个时间段对英国大学员工进行的为期四周的日记研究数据，我们评估了可能与他们的幸福感相关的五个因素：工作特征、工作与家庭的界面、家庭所在地、居家办公的强制性质以及疫情背景。多层次分析证实了五个因素中的四个与个体内部幸福感的变异性之间的关系，唯一的例外是与强制居家办公相关的变量。两波研究结果非常相似。一组较少的变量解释了个体间的变异性：两个时期的心理脱离、孤独感和工作不安全感。由于孤独感增加且从工作中脱离的能力下降，第二波的幸福感低于第一波。研究结果突出了居家办公的负面影响，将与员工和雇主在疫情后工作安排的决策相关，并有助于围绕以工作特征为中心的员工幸福感模型的局限性展开的辩论。
