I'd rather know what to expect … Work unpredictability as contemporary work stressor with detrimental implications for employees’ daily wellbeing

Abstract

ABSTRACT Particularly in knowledge-intensive jobs, employees are increasingly challenged by complex and dynamically changing work tasks. These developments make it difficult for employees to anticipate a day's upcoming work tasks and associated activities including methods, time requirements, and potential problems arising in the work process. We present three arguments why this work unpredictability represents a contemporary occupational stressor causing that affects employees until beyond working hours and is thus associated with lower daily wellbeing in the evening: Work unpredictability can be perceived as a lack of control at work, as a lack of mastery expectancies, and it might add high-effort planning and self-regulation demands to employees’ daily psychological workload. In a diary study with 105 employees, we collected 666 observations at three daily measurement occasions over two weeks. The results supported our hypotheses and demonstrated that work unpredictability relates negatively to evening serenity via employees’ elevated strain levels after work. These relationships were also found when controlling for time pressure as a representative of an established daily work stressor. We conclude that work unpredictability is a so far neglected work stressor that should receive more research attention in the future.