The role of employee assistance programs under COVID-19-induced work-family conflict: Effects on service employees' work engagement and burnout.

The COVID-19 pandemic places substantial stress on service employees' work and home lives. Little research has explored the negative effects of perceived stress from COVID-19 on work and home domains in terms of employees' attitudes toward work. We adopt a job demands-resources perspective to examine how perceived stress from COVID-19 affects employees' work (i.e., work engagement and burnout) and home life (i.e., work-family conflict and family-work conflict). In particular, we address whether organizational employee assistance programs can buffer these negative effects. We sampled service employees (n = 248), and results show that perceived stress from COVID-19 increases work engagement and burnout through work-family conflict and family-work conflict. Furthermore, employee assistance programs mean that employees are less likely to experience work-family conflict and family-work conflict when faced with perceived stress from COVID-19. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and propose directions for future research.

The role of job insecurity in emotional exhaustion and work engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic: The moderating effect of organizational reward and care policies

This study developed and tested a moderation model to investigate the effects of job insecurity due to the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19). We hypothesized that reward and care policies can moderate the relationship between job insecurity due to COVID-19 and employee outcomes (i.e., emotional exhaustion and work engagement). Two-wave data were collected from 344 worker-manager pairs in China, demonstrating that job insecurity negatively affects work engagement. Conversely, job insecurity had a significant positive effect on emotional exhaustion. Another finding was that the reward policy was less negatively related to job insecurity due to COVID-19 than employees' work engagement. Moreover, care policy was related less positively to job insecurity due to COVID-19 than to employees' emotional exhaustion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Spanish) Este estudio desarrollo y comprobo un modelo de moderacion para investigar los efectos de la inseguridad laboral debida a la enfermedad del coronavirus de 2019 (COVID-19). Nuestra hipotesis es que las politicas de recompensa y de cuidado pueden moderar la relacion existente entre la inseguridad laboral debida a la COVID-19 y sus consecuencias en los trabajadores (a saber, agotamiento emocional y compromiso laboral). Se recogieron los datos de un grupo de 344 pares trabajador-jefe en China en dos oleadas (two-wave data), demostrando que la inseguridad laboral afecta negativamente al compromiso laboral. Y a la inversa, la inseguridad laboral tuvo un efecto positivo significativo sobre el agotamiento emocional. Tambien encontramos que la politica de recompensa se relaciono menos negativamente con la inseguridad laboral derivada de la COVID-19 que con el compromiso laboral de los trabajadores. Ademas, la politica de cuidado se relaciono menos positivamente con la inseguridad laboral debida a la COVID-19 que con el agotamiento emocional. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)