COVID-19 Fear, Health Behaviors, and Subjective Health Status of Call Center Workers

Abstract

Background: Fear may be critical in explaining individual and social behaviors. This study investigates the association between COVID-19 fear and health behavior and subjective health status changes of call center workers in the COVID-19 era. Methods: This cross-sectional study uses an online survey with 339 call center workers. We measured COVID-19 fear, health behaviors, and subjective health, and analyzed with the Macnemar or paired t-test, ANOVA or χ2 test, Scheffe’s test, and multiple linear regression. Results: COVID-19 fear was associated with poor stress management, shorter sleep hours, and binge eating. Moreover, COVID-19 fear and time pressure at work were negatively associated with subjective health status. Conclusion: Strengthening the support system for call center workers to manage the COVID-19 fear might be essential. Moreover, there is a need to improve dense environments and reduce time pressure by ensuring adequate rest time and increasing physical activity.

Resilience as a moderator of the relationship between organizational spirituality and burnout

“…Such is the case of the professional activity of a call center operator, whose expansion became very popular and had a relevant role, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic (Santiago, Bil, Curam, Torrero & Tus, 2021). The call center is characterized by exceptional work demands that, not rarely, are associated with the clients' hostility, high levels of staff turnover, low payment, meager career opportunities and extensive vigilance over the employees (Souza, Ramos & Dias, 2018), which make them more susceptible to health issues (Kim & Yang, 2022;Cho, Kim, Lee, Lim & Jeong, 2019). As companies in this sector serve thousands of customers and need to guarantee their market share, they feel the need to be continuously connected, which makes it one of the areas that are most subject to psychological problems on the part of their employees (Khalid et al, 2013).…”

Multi-Dimensional Dynamics of Psychological Health Disparities under the COVID-19 in Japan: Fairness/Justice in Socio-Economic and Ethico-Political Factors

“…In doing so, we would like to focus on the COVID-19 issue. While most studies, including several articles in this journal [ 13 , 14 , 15 ] and on positive psychology [ 7 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ], have already examined this urgent worldwide problem from a psychological perspective, it is highly likely that social factors, including local anti-corona measures, are also significant factors in psychological change. In the discussion of health regarding the social dimension, the study of the health gap is essential, and the gap has been proved to be caused by social factors as well as biological factors.…”