Job Insecurity, Job Instability, and Job Satisfaction in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new challenges regarding employee adaptation to change as well as job security, with levels of wellbeing and satisfaction being greatly affected. Based on the literature as well as on Adaptation-level Theory, Stress and Coping Theory, and Motivationhygiene Theory, this paper approaches the link between job insecurity and job instability during the COVID-19 pandemic along with employee job satisfaction in an emerging market. The proposed conceptual model analyses the influence of job instability and job insecurity on individual job satisfaction, including supervisor support and promotion opportunities. The survey-based empirical study was implemented with the aid of a questionnaire taken by 568 employees in Romania. The results determined with the help of a correlation analysis highlight a strong, direct, and positive link between job instability and employee insecurity in increasing employee competitiveness. The impact of job insecurity and instability on the components considered in terms of job satisfaction vary. Job insecurity was shown to manifest a negative correlation only with regard to satisfaction concerning supervisor support and promotion opportunities. Perceived job instability showed a significant negative impact on individual work satisfaction, satisfaction with supervisor support and promotion opportunities. This paper also enhances the human resources literature by demonstrating how organisational competitiveness might be enhanced during a global pandemic by focusing on employees.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on job satisfaction: A mediated moderation model using job stress and organizational resilience in the hotel industry of Taiwan

“…COVID-19 has triggered various psychological phenomena such as moral harm, extreme anxiety, fear of disease, depression and acute stress ( Gibson and Janikova, 2021 ; Phillips and Kucera, 2021 ; Lewis and Zauskova, 2021 ), and the epidemic affects the work of corporate personnel insecurity, job instability and job satisfaction ( Nemțeanu and Dabija, 2021 ; Nemțeanu et al., 2021 ). Therefore, this study will help to make up for the gap in the above research.…”

The Mixed Effect of Role Overload on Extra-Role Performance: The Mediation Role of Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System Responses

“…Job stressors have long been an important topic in organizational and industrial psychology ( Cooper et al, 2003 ). Increasingly business competition and the recent sanitary crisis (the COVID-19 pandemic) have led to an increase in stressors such as workload, job insecurity, and job instability ( Bliese et al, 2017 ; Nemteanu and Dabija, 2021 ; Nemteanu et al, 2021 ). In addition, technological advances have led employees to be exposed to workplace stressors more frequently ( Monni et al, 2020 ).…”

Challenges and Opportunities for Telecommuting in the School System: Building a Sustainable Online Education in the Context of the SARS-Cov-2 Pandemic

“…The study was conducted in Romania, a country severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, where a large part of the economic activity was performed through teleworking [49]. The COVID-19 pandemic led to stress among employees, so they need to adapt to teleworking resulted in job instability and insecurity challenges [50], a fact that affected especially the field of education; the activity within educational institutions was done by teleworking, so professors and students had to adapt to online teaching.…”

“…Of them, 59.2% were women and 40.8% were men. The items used in the questionnaire were proposed by the authors of this research based on patterns proposed by previous social sciences research [50]; thus, the single items were formulated and evaluated with a Likert Scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is very unlikely and 5 is very likely (as indicated in Table 2). The analysis of the data and the testing of the hypotheses were performed by means of the Correlation Analysis method in conjunction with the Spearman coefficient, through the use of SPSS21 (Table 3).…”