The COVID-19 pandemic has caused tremendous loss of lives and led to a psychiatric epidemic brought by sudden and widespread changes, such as lockdowns, quarantine, and social distancing. Epidemic prevention measures are considered effective ways to protect lives, but the dramatically changing society under those policies may potentially impact mental health, especially occupational stress (Godderis & Luyten, 2020). General populations affected by COVID-19 may have a high burden of mental health problems. However, the pandemic's mental health impacts change across various factors, such as age, gender, education, income, occupation, pre-existing mental health conditions, etc. (Hossain et al., 2020; Qian & Yahara, 2020; Weill et al., 2020). Similarly, occupational stress has also been affected in various ways, as flexible work arrangements (FWA) have been widely adopted during the pandemic, such as remote working and flexible working hours. Most studies suggest that FWA could benefit occupational mental health, including reduced work-family conflict, better psychological health, and increased role satisfaction (Shifrin & Michel, 2022). However, there is also individual heterogeneity in the impact of the pandemic on occupational stress. For example, working parents have been particularly vulnerable as they have had to balance the daily changes in demands of their jobs with the responsibilities of caring for their children (Calderwood et al., 2022). Wu (2022) noted gendered disparities in working hour change of remote workers during COVID-19, indicating the individual difference facing work-life balance challenges.
Another critical factor thought to be changing the pandemic's impacts on stress levels is the industry. Plenty of studies examined the occupational stress in the sectors that are directly affected by the pandemic, such as healthcare, hospitality, restaurant, police, etc. (Bufquin et al., 2021; Hall, 2020; Stogner et al., 2020; Tu et al., 2021; Uehara et al., 2021; van Elk et al., 2023; Villani et al., 2021; Wong et al., 2021). Among the prior studies, occupational stress of workers in the healthcare sector has been the most focused issue (Hall, 2020; Hendrickson et al., 2022; Latsou et al., 2022; Magnavita et al., 2020; Said & El-Shafei, 2021; Sim, 2020; Sriharan et al., 2021). During the pandemic, hospital workers reported increased psychological stress, lower self-rated health status, and worse physical health (Coelho et al., 2023). Meanwhile, studies also noted that the COVID-19 pandemic had caused psychological distress in healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers without statistically significant differences, given the combined effect of anxiety, depression, PTSD, and occupational stress (Sheraton et al., 2020). For other industries, prior studies also discussed the impact of COVID-19 on hotel employees (Yu et al., 2021), restaurant employees (Bufquin et al., 2021), teachers (Minihan et al., 2022), and police officers (Stogner et al., 2020). Furthermore, a cross-industrial comparison has also been conducted to show the industrial heterogeneity in the impacts on occupational stress.
However, prior studies at industry or firm levels may fail to capture individual disparities and ignore the chance to offer person-centered coping suggestions. From the job demands-resources model perspective, employees' stressors directly come from the workplace, categorized into job demands and resources (Bakker et al., 2004; Bakker & Demerouti, 2007, 2017). On the job demand side, physical or emotional demands at work cause exhaustion, job-related anxieties, etc., which detriments job performance. In the worst case, overloaded job demands are related to high stress and burnout (Bakker et al., 2004; Demerouti et al., 2001). On the resource side, physical or psychological supports at the workplace play a vital role in enhancing engagement and mitigating the adverse effects due to the lack of job demands (Brough et al., 2018). Individual workplace-level analyses of the pandemic impact could reveal a more specific map about which kinds of workplaces are more resilient during the uncertainty of work (Kniffin et al., 2021). Thus, this study proposes the following hypothesis that the impacts of the pandemic on occupational stress vary across individual workplace factors, and this individual-level heterogeneity exists in both high-stress and general employees.
Hypothesis 1: Individual heterogeneity exists in the impacts of the pandemic on high stress and occupational stress, which depends on personal workplace factors.
As discussed above, prior studies usually focus on the pandemic impact on occupational stress in the early period of the pandemic. Specifically, Knight et al. (2022) suggest that job demands are the more significant stressor in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic rather than resources. However, the consequent impacts of COVID-19 in the following years are seldom studied. Switching to remote work mostly happened in the early phase of the pandemic (Brynjolfsson et al., 2020), but the shift to FWA may not ensure appropriate workplace supports for workers. In the following years, even though not coercive, epidemiological prevention measures continue impacting mental health (Yamamoto et al., 2020). Additionally, employee expectations of future working conditions and job design are changing in the post-COVID-19 era (Diab-Bahman & Al-Enzi, 2020). The different stages of the pandemic may lead to different challenges in workplace management but also an opportunity for redesigning working settings that supports employee well-being and productivity (Caponecchia & Mayland, 2020). Following this view, this study compares the impact on occupational stress during and after the outbreak of the pandemic, proposing that time heterogeneity exists in the pandemic impact on occupational stress.
Hypothesis 2: Time heterogeneity exists in the pandemic impacts on high stress and occupational stress.