Fear of COVID-19 as a mediator within the impact of presenteeism on social loafing1.

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused employees to be mentally absent at work and decreased their motivation and effort when they work collaboratively rather than individually due to the fear of transmission. The study aims to test the effect of fear caused by COVID-19 on levels of presenteeism and social loafing from job tasks of employees. Data were collected from 522 white-collar and blue-collar workers in Turkey by the snowball sampling method. Before testing the hypotheses, CFA was performed. Reliability analysis was assessed via Cronbach Alpha (FCV-19S = 0.941; PS = 0.713; SLS = 0.974), AVE (FCV-19S = 0.686; PS = 0.524; SLS = 0.725), and CR (FCV-19S = 0.734; PS = 0.722; SLS = 0.856) values. The mediating effect of fear of COVID-19 within the impact on presenteeism on social loafing was evaluated through Process Macro for SPSS. The coefficients for both direct and indirect effects were calculated in the 95% confidence interval using 5,000 bootstrap replicates. The results show that presenteeism has a significant positive impact on social loafing. Fear of COVID-19 has a statistically significant impact on presenteeism and social loafing. Also, fear of COVID-19 partially mediates within the impact of presenteeism on social loafing in the study. Organizations should consider employees' views to increase the level of well-being and productivity. A high level of inventiveness from organizations is compulsory to explore which organizational roles and workflow are at least remotely operated during this period.