#0006 Workplace Responses and Employee Mental Health and Performance in the Time of COVID-19
The Covid-19 pandemic has strained the physical and mental health of people the world over. Many governments have declared heath emergencies and enforced preventive measures such as physical distancing and stay-at-home orders to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. Organizations, too, have taken steps like reducing business travel and allowing work from home to safeguard their employees. But what effect have these measures had on the mental health and performance of employees?
We tried to find the answer by surveying a cross-sectional group of full-time employees between the ages of 20 and 59 in Japan. 1,448 people voluntarily responded to a self-reported questionnaire online with seven categories of questions on workplace measures and other questions designed to gauge their levels of anxiety, psychological distress, and self-perception of performance.
To our surprise, we found that a higher number of workplace measures resulted in a greater fear of Covid-19 among employees. This could either be because employees who were subjected to more measures were also more aware of the risks of the pandemic. Or, it could be that greater fear drove greater precautionary measures. The causality is difficult to ascertain.
Our findings also suggest that the number of measures is negatively correlated with levels of psychological distress among employees, while being positively associated with their performance. Perhaps, employees of organizations that took more measures in response to the pandemic experienced less stress while maintaining or improving their performance.
In closing, this study was conducted in March 2020 and is suggestive of the effects of the chaos of the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreak. It is possible that findings from the middle and later stages of the pandemic may vary from the ones we have reported. Nonetheless, our findings point to the significant effect that workplace measures can have on maintaining and promoting not only the mental health of employees but also their performance.
Link to the original journal article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1348-9585.12134
Title of this article:
Workplace responses to COVID-19 associated with mental health and work performance of employees in Japan
Authors:
Natsu Sasaki, Reiko Kuroda, Kanami Tsuno, Norito Kawakami
