Abstract

ObjectiveAs the digitization of the working world progresses, the demands on employees change. Not least, this is true for the setting of public administrations in Germany, which is currently affected by the transformation to E-Government. This study aims to identify and describe a risk cluster of digitally stressed employees in public administrations.MethodsAn online sample of 710 employees from three public administrations in North Rhine-Westphalia were surveyed about digital stress (7 items) and several potential risk factors (19 items) derived from the current research. In the first step, a hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis is used to detect the risk cluster. This is followed by a comparison to the group of the remaining employees regarding their risk profiles.ResultsThe analysis states that the digitally stressed cluster accounts for approximately ten percent of the public administration’s employees of the total sample. Employees in the risk cluster are less satisfied with on-site work overall, experience less collegial support on-site, experience less collegial support in the home office, resign more often, are more likely to feel overwhelmed, are less educated, are older in age and more often have relatives in need of care.ConclusionThis work was able to identify and describe a group of digitally stressed rather than left-behind employees in public administrations to bring awareness to potentially destructive factors in the digital transformation process but eventually to social inequalities. The findings offer the basis for interventions to arise and evoke potential for further research.

Highlights

  • The digitization of the working world has profound effects on the mental health of employees [1]

  • Digital stress occurring for individuals dealing with digital technologies is described as the "inability of an individual to deal with new technology in a healthy way, leading to stressful experiences" [2]

  • Digitization is described by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education as a process that converts and stores information in machine-readable data and includes operations of data processing, transmission, and combination [3]

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Summary

Methods

An online sample of 710 employees from three public administrations in North Rhine-Westphalia were surveyed about digital stress (7 items) and several potential risk factors (19 items) derived from the current research. A hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis is used to detect the risk cluster. This is followed by a comparison to the group of the remaining employees regarding their risk profiles

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