Teachers' Work-Related Well-Being in Times of COVID-19: The Effects of Technostress and Online Teaching

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the first measures implemented in Italy was the transition from frontal teaching to online teaching. The sudden need to use technologies to perform their job has added a source of stress to teachers' work: so-called technostress. The difficulties experienced in this transition may also have affected the perception of work-related well-being, although other variables, such as the perception of the meaningfulness of work, could alleviate this sense of uneasiness. The study aims to examine the relationships between technostress, online teaching, pleasure in working, and meaningful work perceptions among 219 teachers from different school grades through a moderated mediation model. The results confirm negative associations between technostress and pleasure in working, although this relationship varies according to the levels of perceived meaningfulness. Analyzing the factors related to teachers' perceptions of their work, both in general and during the pandemic situation, is useful for tracing new coping strategies and planning interventions to implement new teaching methods. Further implications concerning the protective role of meaningful work are discussed.

Meaningful work, pleasure in working, and the moderating effects of deep acting and COVID-19 on nurses' work.

AIMS: This study aims to verify the association between nurses' perception of the meaningfulness of their work and their pleasure in working, and whether this relationship may change based on the level of deep acting performed to cope with emotional regulation demands and the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the healthcare work. METHODS: Nurses from both private and public Italian institutions (N = 239) completed an online questionnaire between June 2021 and January 2022. A moderated moderation model was tested through SPSS Process macro. The design is cross-sectional. RESULTS: The results show that the perception of meaningfulness of work is positively associated with pleasure in working, especially in conditions of high deep acting. This relationship is further moderated by the COVID-19 influence so that the association between meaningful work and pleasure in working is stronger in conditions of high COVID-19 influence and at higher levels of deep acting performed. CONCLUSION: Perceiving one's work as meaningful can be a job resource that protects nurses from the negative effects of emotional regulation demands and even from the stress of dealing with COVID-19. IMPACT: The study addresses the problem of nurses' emotional regulation demands at work and evaluates the protective role of meaningful work. The findings could be useful for planning prevention interventions (through training in adaptive emotional regulation strategies) or protection interventions (through the promotion of effective coping strategies and the stimulation of one's work engagement).

A New Academic Quality at Work Tool (AQ@workT) to Assess the Quality of Life at Work in the Italian Academic Context.

The present study provides evidence for a valid and reliable tool, the Academic Quality at Work Tool (AQ@workT), to investigate the quality of life at work in academics within the Italian university sector. The AQ@workT was developed by the QoL@Work research team, namely a group of expert academics in the field of work and organizational psychology affiliated with the Italian Association of Psychologists. The tool is grounded in the job demands-resources model and its psychometric properties were assessed in three studies comprising a wide sample of lecturers, researchers, and professors: a pilot study (N = 120), a calibration study (N = 1084), and a validation study (N = 1481). Reliability and content, construct, and nomological validity were supported, as well as measurement invariance across work role (researchers, associate professors, and full professors) and gender. Evidence from the present study shows that the AQ@workT represents a useful and reliable tool to assist university management to enhance quality of life, to manage work-related stress, and to mitigate the potential for harm to academics, particularly during a pandemic. Future studies, such as longitudinal tests of the AQ@workT, should test predictive validity among the variables in the tool.