Effects of the Corona Crisis on Psychological Job Demands and Resources and the Role of Telecommuting

Abstract

The Corona crisis and the lockdown in the spring of 2020 had various effects on working life in Europe. In this three-wave study, we assessed the trajectories of job demands and resources of 302 employees 2 weeks before the lockdown, over 1 week after lockdown start, and 6 weeks following the beginning of the lockdown. We applied a pre-post follow-up design with 129 employees who switched to telecommuting and a control group of 173 employees who remained in their on-site workplace. Results from the repeated-measures MANCOVA indicate that, despite various general changes to job characteristics because of the Corona crisis, telecommuting changes contributed to significant changes only in communication opportunities and – before Bonferroni correction – in physical job demands. These results may imply that the most visible massive switch to telecommuting of many employees during the first phase of the Corona crisis is only one explanatory factor for general changes to job characteristics.