Fear of Embrace? Employees’ Diverging Appraisals of Automation, and Consequences for Job Attitudes

Abstract

In the coming decades, technological advancements will continue to increase automation in the workplace. The impact of automation on individual workers will be varied; in some cases, automation may harm (e.g., job loss), and in other cases benefit (e.g., enhanced performance) employees. We argue that employees’ anticipation of automation will shape their current work-related attitudes, such as their job engagement and turnover intentions, and thus their likelihood of manifesting these outcomes. We present two complementary studies, a survey (Study 1) and an experiment (Study 2), showing that employees have varying appraisals of the impact of automation on their well-being, both fearful (automation-related job insecurity), and optimistic (automation-related performance optimism). Across both studies, we found that automation-related job insecurity is detrimental to job attitudes, but that this effect is mitigated for people who feel a great deal of control at work. We also found that automation-related performance optimism is positively related to job engagement, and that this effect is stronger for people who feel a great deal of control at work – however we did not replicate these findings in the Study 2. The theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed.