Mediating effect of work stress in the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and nurses' organizational and professional turnover intentions.

Nursing is one of the most stressful and high-risk professions. It is important to identify the psychological problems experienced by nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic and examine the relationship between these problems to devise measures that can properly address them. This study examined mediating effect of work stress in the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and nurses' organizational and professional turnover intentions. Using a cross-sectional research design, this study was conducted on 486 nurses working in seven hospitals in Turkey. The mean age of the participants was 35.24 ± 6.81 and 59.9 % of them were women. The Fear of COVID-19 Scale, the General Work Stress Scale, and the Turnover Intention Scale were used to collect data. A mediation model showed that fear of COVID-19 was positively associated with work stress and organizational and professional turnover intentions. The model also revealed that work stress was positively associated with organizational and professional turnover intentions. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that fear of COVID-19 did not only have a direct effect on organizational and professional turnover intentions but also had an indirect effect on it via increased work stress. Findings improve our understanding of the role of work stress in the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and organizational and professional turnover intentions. The findings are fruitful for tailoring and implementing intervention programs to reduce the adverse psychological impacts of COVID-19 on nurses.

Restaurant frontline employees' turnover intentions: three-way interactions between job stress, fear of COVID-19, and resilience

Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic intensifies the high turnover rate in the restaurant industry. Applying the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to examine the factors influencing US restaurant frontline employees' organizational and occupational turnover intention with an emphasis on the three-way interactions between job stress, fear of COVID-19 (FC) and resilience. Design/methodology/approach A sample of 243 US restaurant frontline employees participated in this study. PROCESS macro was used for hypothesis testing. Findings Organizational turnover intention fully mediated the relationship between job stress and restaurant employees' occupational turnover intention. FC intensified the positive relationship between job stress and organizational turnover intentions. Job stress, FC and resilience interacted to affect restaurant frontline employees' organizational turnover intention such that when resilience is high, FC strengthened the positive relationship between job stress and organizational turnover intention, and the indirect effect of job stress on occupational turnover intention via organizational turnover intention. Practical implications Restaurants should take measures to reduce frontline employees' fear and continue implementing practices to alleviate job stress during a crisis to reduce employees' turnover intentions. Training on building employee resilience could also be provided by restaurant operators. Originality/value This study added to the limited knowledge of factors that are associated with restaurant employees' organizational and occupational turnover intentions in the context of a global crisis and expanded the current knowledge of how fear and resilience may impact restaurant employees' behavioral intentions.