Return to Work during the COVID-19 Outbreak: A Study on the Role of Job Demands, Job Resources, and Personal Resources upon the Administrative Staff of Italian Public Universities.

Gloria Guidetti,Domenico Sanseverino,Chiara Ghislieri,Daniela Converso

doi:10.3390/ijerph19041995

Gloria Guidetti, Domenico Sanseverino + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19041995

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Abstract

Background: Compared to healthcare workers and teleworkers, occupational wellbeing of employees who continued or suddenly returned to work during the COVID-19 pandemic have received less attention thus far. Using the Job Demand–Resource model as a framework, the present study aimed at evaluating the role of job demands and job and personal resources in affecting emotional exhaustion among university administrative staff. Methods: This cross-sectional study analyzed data collected through an online questionnaire completed by 364 administrative employees that continued working in presence (WP) and 1578 that continued working blended (WB), namely, partly remotely and partly in presence. Results: Among job demands, quantitative job demand overloads and perceived risk of being infected were positively associated with higher levels of emotional exhaustion. Among job resources, colleague support was significantly associated with lower emotional exhaustion for both WB and WP, whereas supervisor support and fatigue management were salient only for WB. Among personal resources, personal contribution in managing COVID-19-related risk at work emerged as a protective factor for emotional exhaustion. Conclusion: Insights for the development of targeted preventive measure for a more psychologically safe and productive return to work can be derived from these results.

Highlights

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed the ways by which businesses have had to think about work processes and organization by putting health and safety management at the fore
A total of 533 university administrative employees that continued working in presence (WP) and 2407 that continued working blended (WB), namely, partly remotely and partly in presence, agreed to participate in the survey
The present study was run on a sample of 364 WP and 1578 WB that correctly filled out the questionnaire

Summary

Introduction

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed the ways by which businesses have had to think about work processes and organization by putting health and safety management at the fore. Most of the focus has been placed on those occupational groups for which the degree of exposure to the risk of contagion and COVID-19-related challenges and demands turned the job conditions highly stressful, as is the case of the healthcare sector (e.g., [6,7,8,9]). As it has been pointed out by Rudolph and colleagues [10], focusing on health, safety, and wellbeing issues should be differentiated according to occupational groups.

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