COVID-19 fear and performance of workers: A moderated mediation role of organizational support and mental wellbeing

Erasmus Keli Swanzy

doi:10.5267/j.msl.2021.10.005

Abstract

The paper aimed to examine the influence of employees’ COVID-19 fear on their performance through intervening mechanisms such as mental wellbeing and organizational support. A total of 446 workers from the bank completed a self-report survey. Findings from regression analysis conducted with SPSS PROCESS MACRO (Model 7) revealed that employees’ COVID-19 fear did not have any direct negative influence on their performance but instead had an indirect effect on their performance via mental wellbeing (anxiety and depression). The findings also revealed that organizational support was instrumental in buffering the adverse impact of employees’ COVID-19 fear via mental wellbeing (anxiety and depression). Therefore, organizations should increase employee-supportive measures throughout this era of the COVID-19 to help reduce the adverse impact of employees’ COVID-19 fear.

Highlights

As the world gradually heals from the disastrous effect of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, organizations are looking forward to recovering from their losses due to the lockdown and other COVID-19 measures
As the study findings indicated, the positive impact of employees’ COVID-19 fear on their anxiety and depression was mitigated by organizational support, which in turn helped reduce the negative impact on their performance
This study investigated whether employees’ fear of COVID-19 affected their task performance as mediated by mental wellbeing and moderated by organizational support

Summary

Introduction

As the world gradually heals from the disastrous effect of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, organizations are looking forward to recovering from their losses due to the lockdown and other COVID-19 measures. Since we are not out of the woods yet and more importantly, the COVID-19 vaccines produced does not assure us 100% protection against the COVID-19 infection (Kaplan & Milstein, 2021), employees going to work each day may still be terrified of COVID-19 due to its high transmission and mortality rate Are they afraid of the COVID-19, but employees may be scared of getting infected and unwittingly transmitting it to their families and close friends (Labrague & de Los Santos, 2020; Mo et al, 2020). Further studies must research whether employees’ COVID-19 fear significantly and negatively affects their performance, and more importantly, how it can be managed (Gunaydin, 2021; Sasaki et al, 2020). Among the few studies that have investigated this topic, Erer (2020) and Gunaydin (2021) observed that employees’ performance was negatively influenced by their COVID-19 fear. Further investigations are needed to examine the underlying moderating and mediating mechanisms through which employees’ COVID-19 fear affects their performance at the workplace.

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Discussion

Conclusion