Working Life During the Pandemic: Experienced Changes and their Implications for Occupational Well-being among Employees in Switzerland

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented changes to numerous aspects of work such as working conditions, workload, income, nature of duties, or work-home balance that may eventually pose significant risks to employee well-being and career development. Using a person-centred approach, we examined how these changes cluster together, defining the experiences of different employee sub-groups. We then compared these groups regarding their background characteristics and selected aspects of occupational well-being (i.e., job satisfaction, job insecurity, turnover intention, work engagement, and exhaustion). A sample of professionally active adults (N = 600; 55% women) completed a baseline cross-sectional survey, while a subsample (n = 426) further responded to brief daily questionnaires, reporting their job satisfaction, engagement, and exhaustion over a course of five workdays. Results suggested three different patterns (i.e., latent classes) of pandemic-related changes at work. They characterized workers who experienced a strong decline in their workload and income (‘precarious’), those who experienced an increase in workload and a change in the quality of working conditions (‘challenged’), and those whose work situation was mostly unaffected (‘status quo’). These worker groups differed regarding their personal and professional background as well as occupational well-being outcomes. Those more strongly affected by the pandemic (the challenged or precarious pattern) were more likely to show initial background vulnerabilities, while those in the status quo group were more likely to benefit from working from home and reported the least detrimental outcomes. We discuss the implications of these findings within the conservation of resources and career sustainability frameworks.