The stress and resources of higher status hypotheses in light of COVID-19: Effects on work-life conflict and self-rated health

Abstract

This paper explores the heterogeneous effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on employees’ well-being regarding their work–life conflicts and self-rated health. Following the stress of higher status and resources of higher status hypotheses, we compared employees with and without supervisory responsibility. We used the third wave of a longitudinal linked employer–employee dataset (LEEP-B3) conducted in 2018/19 and a COVID-19 follow-up survey conducted in late 2020, providing information on 733 employees in establishments having more than 500 employees. Thus, we provide a longitudinal perspective covering the situation before the pandemic and possible pandemic-induced changes. We found that supervisory responsibility offered a comparative advantage for decreasing work–life conflict during the pandemic, but no such difference was detected among non-supervisors. However, there was no significant difference between employees with and without supervisory responsibility for self-rated health. Self-rated health status decreased during the pandemic in both groups to a similar degree. Our results indicate that having supervisory responsibility during the COVID-19 pandemic can be a double-edged sword, acting as both a resource and a stressor when it comes to employees’ work-life conflict and self-rated health.