Effective Workplace Strategies to Support Employee Wellbeing During a Pandemic

Abstract

While the long-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are yet to be realised, there is no doubt that the wellbeing of many are and will be affected. Workplaces have a major influence on people’s quality of life, and have the ability to impact employee wellbeing. Understanding how organisations can support employees’ wellbeing in a disaster context is essential for organisational and community recovery. In this paper, we make recommendations for organisational leaders based on past research on employee wellbeing in post-disaster context and on preliminary evidence from an ongoing study in the Covid-19 context. In the present study, we investigated what job resources employees found supportive during Aotearoa | New Zealand’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and how these resources related to their hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing at that time. Employees (n = 75) took part in an online survey, which included both open-ended and quantitative measures on job resources and wellbeing. Qualitative findings suggest that providing a sense of job security, effective communications, flexibility and job control, recognition of extra efforts to accommodate changes, individualised support to continue working, and expressing concern for employees’ health and wellbeing were salient job resources. The quantitative results largely supported these findings, although the strength of the relationships varied between the type of resources and the different conceptualisations of wellbeing. We conclude this paper by providing recommendations for how organisations can support their employees during this period of change and uncertainty.