Centrality of psychological well-being of IT employees during COVID-19 and beyond

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 outbreak has distorted employee and manager's attitudes toward work, impacting businesses, industries, and organizations worldwide. Organizations have begun implementing well-managed work-from-home, teleworking, flexible working, or digital working strategies to respond to these trends effectively. The study's main purpose is to investigate the importance of organizational and supervisory support in promoting employee psychological well-being by providing well-proportioned work-from-home experience to IT employees. Using an empirical research approach, the study collected data from 282 IT professionals forced to work from home fully and partially throughout India's first three waves of covid-19. The responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis using SPSS and AMOS. The study's findings revealed that supervisory/managers support demonstrated a significant positive association with psychological well-being compared with organizational support practices. However, employees perceived that well-balanced work-from-home experiences require major support from organizations than managers. The study identified that both organizational and supervisory support plays an important role in establishing positive work-from-home experience and the psychological well-being of IT professionals. In response, organizations and supervisors/ managers collective approach is needed in establishing flexible work settings. Flexible work settings have been researched from the perspective of an information technology professional. However, there is a dearth of research on the influence of forced work from home on the psychological well-being of IT employees. Understanding how organizational and supervisory support plays an important role in establishing resilience between work-from-home practices and psychological well-being during covid and beyond would be helpful.