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Timeline of data collection and COVID-19 events. Source. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2021). Note. We defined the shock trajectory of job insecurity between Waves 1 and 3. Around Wave 3, the coronavirus stimulus bill was signed in Washington, and we therefore defined Wave 3 as a turning point to the adjustment trajectory. Although Wave 5 is also in the adjustment trajectory, it was measured approximately 2 months after Wave 4, and therefore is a follow-up survey. Dates given for the waves refer to the date on which said survey was launched.
Source publication
Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can trigger concerns about loss of employment and changes in work conditions, and thereby increase job insecurity. However, little is known about how perceived job insecurity subsequently unfolds over time and how individual differences in habitual coping moderate such a trajectory. Using longitudinal data from 899...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... recruited US-based adults on MTurk for a five-wave longitudinal study, beginning on the eve the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic (March 10, 2020; see Fig. 1 for information on interval and timing of the waves). In Wave 1, we recruited 1056 participants over a few days, who were invited to subsequent waves. Given that we were interested in studying changes in job insecurity over time, participants were considered eligible only if they were involved in some form of paid work in at least one ...
Context 2
... for each wave, and we constrained the matching second and third items to be equal across waves. To account for the period before the coronavirus stimulus bill was signed in Washington and the period after, we estimated a piece-wise latent growth trajectory (Flora, 2008). As such, we specified the turning point at the third wave of the study (see Fig. 1). This approach allowed us to estimate and test the relationships between the intercept, which reflects the initial levels of job insecurity at Wave 1 of the study, and two slopes (for each of the shock and adjustment phases of the pandemic, respectively). We accounted for the unequal time interval between slopes by fixing the factor ...
Context 3
... estimate and test the relationships between the intercept, which reflects the initial levels of job insecurity at Wave 1 of the study, and two slopes (for each of the shock and adjustment phases of the pandemic, respectively). We accounted for the unequal time interval between slopes by fixing the factor loadings to the week of measurement (see Fig. 1). For the first slope of the piecewise trajectory, we fixed the loadings for T1, T2, and T3 at 0 and 1.5, and 2.5 respectively. Given that this slope represents the shock phase, T4 and T5 were fixed at the same loading as T3. For the second slope, we fixed the loadings from T1 to T3 to 0, and the loadings of T4 and T5 to 2 and 11.5, ...
Context 4
... capture a pre-pandemic baseline measure of job insecurity, and conclusions about transition from pre-to post-pandemic job insecurity cannot be made ( Bliese et al., 2017). Nevertheless, although layoffs in March 2020 were 2.4 times higher than in March 2019, it was nothing compared to the difference between April 2019 and 2020 (24.42 times; see Fig. 1). Therefore, we expect that people's experience of stress was at its peak between March and April, and we can see this transition in the data as evidenced by the increase in job insecurity. We encourage researchers to use data from large databanks as these may have repeated-measures before, during (and after) COVID-19. A second ...
Similar publications
COVID-19 pandemic crisis has brought extraordinary changes to almost all human activities. This unfamiliar situation has affected, among others, the working conditions, under which employees should keep doing their job while protecting themselves and preventing the coronavirus from spreading. As a result, working from home has been considered as a...
Citations
... Therefore, we predict that conspiracy thinking will change dynamically over time as a function of temporal, within-person changes in perceived socioeconomic threats and paranoia (Hypothesis 3). The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic provided a rare context to test this longitudinal dynamic, given the shifts and uncontrollability of the socioeconomic threats that occurred during this historic period (e.g., El Khawli et al., 2022). Consequently, we expect the hypothesized three-way interaction to explain how people differ from each other in terms of conspiracy thinking, as a between-person effect, and how people change relative to themselves across time, as a longitudinal within-person effect. ...
One way to cope with crises is by attributing their ultimate causes to malevolent conspiracies. As crises are rarely simple, and may involve an interplay between multiple, co-occurring threats, we suggest that conspiracy thinking mainly occurs among individuals who experience conditions of threat complexity – such as socioeconomic vulnerability paired with a sense of helplessness in society, and who are also sufficiently paranoid to infer a conspiracy. In the present study, we focused on financial strain and disempowerment, as two relevant threats which were both dramatically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and hypothesized a three-way interaction between financial strain, disempowerment and paranoia in predicting conspiracy thinking. This hypothesis was supported in both cross-national ( N = 64,130) and longitudinal data ( N = 11,159), collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Implications of the results for understanding the tendency to reduce multiple threats to a single cause are discussed.
... When employment and pay are threatened, individuals' quality of life is impaired (Winefield & Tiggemann, 1990). Further, job insecurity increased at the beginning of the pandemic but later decreased again (El Khawli et al., 2022). Therefore, understandably, our results indicate that when the pandemic broke out, increasing crafting in the job domain was related to advantages regarding self-rated health, whereas less so increasing crafting in the off-job domain. ...
We examined the association between changes in employee job and off-job crafting and their self-rated health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, we investigated how these associations differed across sample subgroups, contrasting differences in work location, living situation, and contractual changes (short-time work). We used four waves of a longitudinal dataset surveying NTotal = 783 German-speaking employees from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria from 2019 to 2021. We applied latent change score modeling and multigroup analyses to investigate our research questions. Results indicated that the mean job and off-job crafting and self-rated health trajectories remained relatively stable. However, we observed significant interindividual variance in job and off-job crafting changes. We found a consistent small positive relationship between crafting changes in both life domains over time, indicating that employees tended to change their crafting efforts similarly across domains. Additionally, job crafting increases between Waves 1 and 2 were linked to higher subsequent self-rated health at Wave 2, and similarly, off-job crafting increases between Waves 3 and 4 were linked to higher self-rated health at Wave 4. We observed only minor differences in this pattern across subgroups. Our results show how adaptive changes in crafting are linked to broader interindividual health differences and help identify groups who are not able to increase crafting during crises and thus could benefit from targeted support. Crafting can be an effective individual strategy for maintaining health, complementing organizational and public health measures. We encourage future research to incorporate temporal and contextual phenomena into crafting research.
... For instance, 114 million people around the world lost their jobs in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic (International Labor Organization, 2021), and nearly, 350 million people were at risk of job loss (International Labor Organization, 2020). Such "career shocks" engendered by pandemic outbreaks make employees more likely to feel threatened by potential job loss (Akkermans et al., 2020;El Khawli et al., 2022). Research has documented the impaired health consequences of employees experiencing job insecurity-the perceived threat to the continuity and stability of one's current employment (Shoss, 2017)-within the emergency context of the COVID-19 pandemic (Antino et al., 2022). ...
Job insecurity is regarded by scholars and practitioners as instigating psychological distress. The present study challenges this perspective by examining how and when the experience of job insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic can be a source of decreased psychological distress at work. By drawing on conservation of resources theory, we propose that state mindfulness is a coping mechanism sparked by COVID-19-triggered job insecurity that can lead to lower psychological distress, but only if employees possess a strong psychological capital (PsyCap). We specifically posited that PsyCap is an individual resource that facilitates mindful coping with COVID-19-triggered job insecurity. Cross-lagged multiple regression analyses conducted on four-wave longitudinal data collected during the 2020 pandemic crisis confirmed that among employees who exhibited higher levels of PsyCap, COVID-19-triggered job insecurity indirectly reduced psychological distress via the mediating role of state mindfulness. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice.
... Job insecurity is a popularly recognized job stressor that is detrimental to employees' psychological and physiological health as well as work-related behaviors, such as job dissatisfaction and reduced engagement (Aguiar-Quintana et al., 2021;De Cuyper et al., 2010;Khawli et al., 2022). During a crisis, employees may experience heightened job insecurity as unstable economic and global conditions signal that their jobs may be jeopardized (Khawli et al., 2022). ...
... Job insecurity is a popularly recognized job stressor that is detrimental to employees' psychological and physiological health as well as work-related behaviors, such as job dissatisfaction and reduced engagement (Aguiar-Quintana et al., 2021;De Cuyper et al., 2010;Khawli et al., 2022). During a crisis, employees may experience heightened job insecurity as unstable economic and global conditions signal that their jobs may be jeopardized (Khawli et al., 2022). Several studies have investigated the consequences of job insecurity among hospitality staffs in the pandemic context. ...
... Applying the JD-R model and the COR theory in the current study, when employees perceive high levels of business uncertainty, they may lack the necessary information for effective decision-making and judgment (Sund, 2013). This condition can lead employees to experience a shock phase characterized by high emotional intensity and unpredictability, leaving employees with limited control over their jobs (Khawli et al., 2022). Consequently, heightened job insecurity may ensue, inducing stress and resource loss in an employee (Darvishmotevali et al., 2017). ...
... Studies often cite macro-level factors, such as market conditions and the rapidly changing nature of work, as reasons for experienced job insecurity. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic involved threats to economic stability that exacerbated existing concerns about the continuity of employment in a variety of industries (e.g., Akkermans et al., 2020;El Khawli et al., 2022). At the same time, many workers experienced threats to their physical and mental health, which may have challenged their ability to maintain employment (Antino et al., 2022;Low et al., 2021). ...
This article reports the results of a 33-wave longitudinal study of relations between job insecurity and physical and mental health based on monthly data collected between April 2020 and December 2022 among n = 1,666 employees in Germany. We integrate dynamic theorizing from the transactional stress model and domain-specific theorizing based on stressor creation and perception to frame hypotheses regarding dynamic and reciprocal relations between job insecurity and health over time. We find that lower physical health predicted subsequent increases in job insecurity and higher physical health predicted subsequent decreases in job insecurity. However, job insecurity did not have a significant influence on physical health. Furthermore, higher job insecurity predicted subsequent decreases in mental health, and higher mental health predicted subsequent decreases in job insecurity. This pattern of findings suggests a dynamic and reciprocal within-person process wherein positive deviations from one’s average trajectory of job insecurity are associated with subsequently lower levels of mental health and vice versa. We additionally find evidence for linear trends in these within-person processes themselves, suggesting that the strength of the within-person influence of job insecurity on mental health becomes more strongly negative over time (i.e., a negative amplifying cycle). This research provides practical insights into job insecurity as a health threat and shows how concerns about job loss following deteriorations in physical and mental health serve to further threaten well-being.
... Studies often cite macro-level factors, such as market conditions and the rapidly changing nature of work, as reasons for experienced job insecurity. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic involved threats to economic stability that exacerbated existing concerns about the continuity of employment in a variety of industries (e.g., Akkermans et al., 2020;El Khawli et al., 2022). At the same time, many workers experienced threats to their physical and mental health, which may have challenged their ability to maintain employment (Antino et al., 2022;Low et al., 2021). ...
This article reports the results of a 33-wave longitudinal study of relations between job insecurity and physical and mental health based on monthly data collected between April 2020 and December 2022 among n = 1,666 employees in Germany. We integrate dynamic theorizing from the transactional stress model and domain-specific theorizing based on stressor creation and perception to frame hypotheses regarding dynamic and reciprocal relations between job insecurity and health over time. We find that lower physical health predicted subsequent increases in job insecurity and higher physical health predicted subsequent decreases in job insecurity. However, job insecurity did not have a significant influence on physical health. Furthermore, higher job insecurity predicted subsequent decreases in mental health, and higher mental health predicted subsequent decreases in job insecurity. This pattern of findings suggests a dynamic and reciprocal within-person process wherein positive deviations from one’s average trajectory of job insecurity are associated with subsequently lower levels of mental health and vice versa. We additionally find evidence for linear trends in these within-person processes themselves, suggesting that the strength of the within-person influence of job insecurity on mental health becomes more strongly negative over time (i.e., a negative amplifying cycle). This research provides practical insights into job insecurity as a health threat and shows how concerns about job loss following deteriorations in physical and mental health serve to further threaten wellbeing.
... The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought many uncertainties, such as rising unemployment, altered working conditions, and heightened job stressors [14], posing a significant threat to employees' job security. In the post-pandemic, employees may encounter even more challenging work environments, necessitating greater time and expertise to adapt to workplace changes, manage work pressure, to maintain a normal pace of life and work. ...
... In the postpandemic era, the severe ramifications of COVID-19 have stimulated organizations to utilize digital technologies and modify work processes and organizational structures, all presents challenges to employees [20]. As a consequence, job insecurity perception is enhanced and poses a threat to people's work-related resources, such as financial security, social embeddedness, social status, and identity [14]. ...
... Secondly, workplace anxiety mediates the relationship between job insecurity and work-life conflicts. Job insecurity stands as a prominent work stressor [14], significantly impacts employees' performance [63], leading to a decline in job satisfaction, grievances towards the organization, and reducing organizational identification [6]. Also, it triggers negative work-related emotional experiences [19], leaving individuals constantly anxious and preoccupied with workrelated worries, further depleting their limited self-control resources. ...
Background
Though the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, and our society gradually returns to normal, Chinese people’s work and lifestyles are still influenced by the “pandemic aftermath”. In the post-pandemic era, employees may feel uncertainty at work due to the changed organizational operations and management and perceive the external environment to be more dynamic. Both these perceptions may increase employees’ negative emotions and contribute to conflicts between work and life. Drawing from the ego depletion theory, this study aimed to examine the impact of job insecurity during the post-pandemic era on employees’ work-life conflicts, and the mediating effect of workplace anxiety in this relationship. Besides, this study also considered the uncertainty of the external macro environment as a boundary condition on the direct and indirect relationship between job insecurity and work-life conflicts.
Methods
A two-wave questionnaire survey was conducted from October to December 2023 to collect data. MBA students and graduates from business school with full-time jobs are invited to report their perception of job insecurity, work anxiety, perceived environment uncertainty, and work-life conflict. This resulted in 253 valid responses. Data analysis was performed using the SPSS, Amos, and PROCESS.
Results
The results showed that: (1) Employees’ job insecurity would directly intensify the work-life conflict (B = 0.275, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.182, 0.367]). (2) Employees’ workplace anxiety mediates the relationship between job insecurity and work-life conflict (B = 0.083, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.047, 0.130]). (3) The mediating effect of workplace anxiety between job insecurity and work-life conflict exists when perceived environmental uncertainty is high (B = 0.049, 95% CI [0.011, 0.114]), while vanishes when perceived environmental uncertainty is low (B = 0.024, 95% CI [−0.005, 0.068]).
Conclusion
Job insecurity combined with perceived environmental uncertainty in the post-pandemic era fuels employees’ workplace anxiety and work-life conflicts. Post-pandemic trauma lingers, necessitating urgent attention and response.
... Despite this, Al managed to reach out to his local community, offering to provide free online exercises for those with long-term health conditions during lockdown. 2 Social commentators suggest that in recent years society has been facing a 'permacrisis' (Turnbull, 2022) with substantial implications for the stability of work, job quality, career development and the navigation of work-home boundaries (Akkermans et al., 2020;El Khawli et al., 2022;Guest et al., 2022;Kossek et al., 2021;Restubog et al., 2020). At such times, workers can be thrust into spirals of resource loss, becoming psychologically distressed and uncertain about what to do to cope with the situation and return to normal functioning. ...
... It therefore now appears to be a timely concern to understand the range of ways in which workers, such as Yas and Al, respond at times of significant uncertainty, when resources are eroded and the sense of self is threatened. Focusing on self-protection 'coping' in a time of crisis, as a distinct phenomenon separate to everyday coping in response to everyday stressors (El Khawli et al., 2022;Restubog et al., 2020;Zacher & Rudolph, 2021), thus warrants exploration and elucidation. In this paper, we utilize COR theory, along with the work of Neo-Freudian Psychoanalyst Karen Horney, to understand how people respond to extreme stressors at work and whether their responses serve a functional purpose (i.e. are adaptive). ...
... Our third contribution extends knowledge around resource-related coping. By focusing on the dynamic adoption of coping strategies in self-protection mode, we address recent calls, made notably in this journal, to apply a more dynamic, longitudinal and intraindividual focus to better understand coping activity (Achnak & Vantilborgh, 2021;El Khawli et al., 2022;Langerak et al., 2022), especially in times of crisis (Restubog et al., 2020). These calls have been made because, despite it being well-known that different coping strategies applied to deal with different stressors will functionally reduce distress (Carver et al., 1989;Cheng, 2001;Folkman et al., 1986;Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004;Sheppes, 2020;Zacher & Rudolph, 2021), studies often fail to examine how people switch between and combine different coping strategies in response to the same stressor (Bonanno & Burton, 2013;El Khawli et al., 2022). ...
... A dispositional perspective on coping emphasizes how individual coping preferences over time are shaped and consolidated into habitual coping responses (Joseph et al., 1992). Thus, different coping strategies may appear beneficial in different phases of adjustment, such as when facing the risk of job insecurity during the pandemic (El Khawli et al., 2022). Coping styles, in terms of relatively stable behavioral preferences, could inform our understanding of how age and experience with previous hardships may explain age related differences in adaptive responses to a quarantine situation. ...
This study explores the psychological reactions to being placed in quarantine during the early stage (March and April 2020) of the COVID-19 lockdown in Norway. We interviewed a sample of nineteen Norwegian citizens aged 21–64 years who were quarantined for 14 days in the early period of the pandemic before testing and vaccination were available to the general population. A semi-structured interview guide was used to conduct in-depth interviews about stress, coping, and adaptation to quarantine. A thematic analysis approach was used. Four main themes emerged in the interviews: (a) Being responsible, in terms of addressing the fear of being infected and infecting others, (b) The stress of the situation, in terms of highlighting worries, loss and loneliness, (c) Ways of coping, in terms of elaborating on cognitive, behavioral, and affective strategies to adapt to the quarantine, and (d) Social support and gratitude, in terms of appreciating interpersonal relations and the social context of the quarantine situation. The study contributes to our understanding of how differences in stress, appraisal, and coping may influence adaptation to a radically changed living condition in the early stage of the pandemic. These findings may inform health service providers and promote public health advise to support coping and resilient response in future health crises.
... Finally, it largely remains unclear what organizations can do to reduce AAJI of and the associated negative impact on health and work outcomes of affected employees. Therefore, we encourage the development and evaluation of interventions (e.g., increasing state CSE) and the role of coping (El Khwali et al., 2022) to help employees with high levels of AAJI in organizational practice in the long run. ...
The rising distribution of smart technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, algorithms, and automation (STARA) in today’s world of work has the potential to revolutionize what, how, where, and when humans work by supplementing and substituting work processes. However, it is largely unclear how these technological changes affect employees. While employees may benefit from the substitution of tedious and dangerous, they may suffer from STARA creating micro-jobs, polarizing required skill levels, and evoking job insecurity. Although these rapid technological changes have crucial implications for employee outcomes, empirical evidence of their effects on employees is surprisingly scarce. Neglecting to investigate these effects could result in poorly designed, demotivating workplaces of the future.
Building on the integration of numerous theoretical models and frameworks, this dissertation examines how the introduction of intelligent assistance systems (IASs) modifies motivational work characteristics in modern assembly. It considers various scenarios, such as the assembly of simple products, the assembly of more complex products, and the assembly with intensified product changes. Applying online experiments with vignette methodology, we experimentally manipulated hypothetical assembly workstations and instructed participants to rate them regarding motivational work characteristics. In the first online experiment (N1 = 203 German and British blue-collar workers) participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (work without vs. work with vs. work with voluntary use of IASs). Results indicated enhanced feedback from job and information processing when working with IASs in the assembly of simple products. Thus, they highlight the purely positive effects of IASs on motivational work characteristics.
Transferring these findings to the assembly of more complex products in the second online experiment (work without vs. work with IASs, N2 = 169 German workers) was limited. Findings illuminated that IASs restrict work scheduling, decision-making, and work methods autonomy besides increasing feedback from job and information processing. Therefore, they indicate the contradictory effects of IASs on motivational work characteristics. In a third online experiment (N3 = 176 German workers) we also manipulated the extent of task rotation (no task rotation vs. task rotation after one hour). We fully replicated the results highlighting the contradictory role of IASs, regardless of the extent of task rotation.
This dissertation further illuminates how employees appraise STARA to threaten their employment by contributing a thorough construct validation of affective automation-related job insecurity, a refinement of the STARA Awareness construct (Brougham & Haar, 2018). Findings from two cross-sectional studies (N4 = 215, N5 = 224 German employees) and one longitudinal study with a total time lag of one year (N6 = 233 German employees) demonstrated a fluctuating fit of the measurement model of STARA Awareness between independent samples. With the exclusion of cognitive elements and the inclusion of the substitution of core tasks within jobs, we reconceptualized the construct, renamed it to affective automation-related job insecurity, and adapted its measurement. While affective automation-related job insecurity is weakly associated with cognitive and affective job insecurity, and negatively with core self-evaluations, it exhibits unique associations with indicators of technological change (positive relations with objective substitution potential and use of STARA). Moreover, we identified rising levels of affective automation-related job insecurity over time for employees with moderate use of STARA, and decreasing levels for employees with low and high use of STARA.
Overall, this dissertation provides vital empirical evidence on the beneficial and detrimental effects of STARA on workplaces and employees in today’s world of work. Its findings represent a firm foundation for fruitful research in digital work design, human-machine interaction, and related fields. Finally, considering these findings contributes to the human-centered development, implementation, and use of STARA to maintain a healthy and motivated workforce.
