COVID-19 and employee psychological safety: Exploring the role of signaling theory

Abstract

As a result of COVID-19 and the uncertainty it may force upon individuals physically reporting to work, many organizations have "frontline workers" (i.e., employees physically reporting to work) potentially experiencing a higher variation and prevalence of workplace stressors. Rudolph et al. (2021) discuss several cases in which frontline workers may experience increased strain symptoms. For example, lack of adequate protection and perceived organizational support may have a negative effect on employee well-being and even lead to posttraumatic stress symptoms. Because a pandemic poses an extreme threat to employee perceptions of organizational physical and psychological safety, using theory-based approaches to understand how organizations can reduce employee stress associated with changes spurred by COVID-19 is critical. Signaling theory may provide effective perspectives in strategy development for organizations concerned with employee well-being and, ultimately, their physical and psychological safety. The purpose of this commentary is threefold: We draw connections between health and safety as an outcome of organization and supervisor signaling, explore how signaling theory can be used to examine potential stressors for employee physical and psychological health, and briefly elaborate on research avenues and organizational changes using organizational and supervisor signaling for reducing employee stress.Although it is clear that organizational policy and procedure can have wide-ranging effects on job demands (aspects of the job requiring physical and psychological energy) and resources (job aspects that ease the strain of job demands), instances of signaling between supervisor and subordinates are likely to provide both resources and demands to frontline workers. Signaling theory may provide a promising lens for gathering employee feedback and creating organizational communication. Signaling theory posits that during uncertain times such as the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations can signal to their employees, "We care about you," and, "We are here for you" through their proceeding actions (Xu et al., 2019) and potentially increase the perceived psychological safety among its employees. Psychological safety is the perception that it is safe to take interpersonal risks in the current work environment for the purpose of growing and learning how to communicate and perform more effectively (Frazier et al., 2017). Indeed, there are theories in multiple disciplines including sociology and psychology supporting the claim that one's intentions can be gleaned from their actions; however, using signaling theory allows researchers to explicitly operationalize how an organization's true attributes and values are reflected in the policies and procedures to which they give the most resources such as time, energy, or finances.As international health pandemics are uniquely threatening, they carry an unexpected risk for which even frontline workers such as health care professionals are unprepared (Lateef et al., 2020). Recently,...