How can online remote workers’ retention be predicted?: Understanding the moderating role of personal resilience

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the mediating effect of life satisfaction in the relationship between perceived social isolation and job embeddedness and whether personal resilience moderates this mediation pathway among online remote workers. Data was collected at two time points from 418 employees who have been working remotely away from the office. The hypotheses were analyzed by means of a confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, hierarchical regression, and a bootstrapping procedure. The results indicate that the relationship between perceived social isolation and job embeddedness is partially mediated by life satisfaction and that resilience moderates the association between perceived social isolation and life satisfaction. In support of a moderated mediation model, personal resilience moderates the conditional indirect effect of perceived social isolation on job embeddedness via the mediator. The effect of social isolation at work has a greater impact on the low-resilience subgroup than it does on the high-resilience subgroup, which may lead to a decline in life satisfaction and a desire to quit. Resilience training programs should be provided to help workers acquire the skills necessary to cope with the new normal. This research advances resilience theory and supports the application of Conservation of Resources (COR) in times of crisis.