Abstract
While the long-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are yet to be realised, there is no doubt that the wellbeing of many are and will be affected. Workplaces have a major influence on people’s quality of life, and have the ability to impact employee wellbeing. Understanding how organisations can support employees’ wellbeing in a disaster context is essential for organisational and community recovery. In this paper, we make recommendations for organisational leaders based on past research on employee wellbeing in post-disaster context and on preliminary evidence from an ongoing study in the Covid-19 context. In the present study, we investigated what job resources employees found supportive during Aotearoa | New Zealand’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and how these resources related to their hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing at that time. Employees (n = 75) took part in an online survey, which included both open-ended and quantitative measures on job resources and wellbeing. Qualitative findings suggest that providing a sense of job security, effective communications, flexibility and job control, recognition of extra efforts to accommodate changes, individualised support to continue working, and expressing concern for employees’ health and wellbeing were salient job resources. The quantitative results largely supported these findings, although the strength of the relationships varied between the type of resources and the different conceptualisations of wellbeing. We conclude this paper by providing recommendations for how organisations can support their employees during this period of change and uncertainty.
Highlights
The global Covid-19 pandemic impacts and challenges are yet to be fully realised, but there is no question that there is, and will be, negative effects to people’s wellbeing
How do the job resources identified in Research Question 1 (RQ1) relate to employee hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing?
Results and Discussion of Research Question 2: How do the job resources identified in RQ1 relate to employee hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing?
Summary
The global Covid-19 pandemic impacts and challenges are yet to be fully realised, but there is no question that there is, and will be, negative effects to people’s wellbeing. The role of the workplace may be further amplified as workplaces can provide a stabilising force in people’s lives when life outside of work is in turmoil (Hobfoll et al, 2007; Malinen et al, forthcoming; Mooney, 2011) This was the experience of many following the Canterbury, Aotearoa | New Zealand (NZ), 2010-2011 earthquakes: Workplaces that supported their employees effectively had higher adaptive capacity, which facilitated organisational recovery (Nilakant et al, 2016; Walker et al, 2020), and had employees who were more willing to go the extra mile in their work-related efforts (Malinen et al, 2019; Näswall et al, 2017). We acknowledge that there are various, and more specific, definitions of disasters (see e.g., Mileti, 1999; Perry, 2007) and that there are vast differences in how the current pandemic is impacting individuals, communities and organisations around the world
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