Moderating influence of social support on the relationship of workplace loneliness and well-being of employees with special needs in Pakistan

Abstract

Workplace Loneliness is a process, which begins with the psychological requirement of belongingness, and exposes on the reality of social relations within the organizations. This research finds out the impact of workplace loneliness of employees with special needs on their psychological well-being with moderating impact of perceived social support from co-workers and managers. For this purpose, 120 employees with special needs working on managerial role, belonging from public (37%), private (32%), and non-governmental (32%) sectors participated as respondents of the questionnaire-based survey, which was developed on a website according to international accessibility standards. The data was collected by circulating it through multiple social media platforms. The analysis of collected data was performed in MS Excel and IBM SPSS Statistics. Results are clearly showing that social support is an important factor in reducing workplace loneliness and in increasing the well-being of employees with special needs. Therefore, these special employees must be treated as differently abled bodies instead of disabled ones. Hindrances including Covid-19 and software inaccessibility were also faced during the whole process. On the basis of this study, future researchers can research further about type of social support that should be provided on workplace to employees with special needs.