Job-related uncertainty and its pernicious effects on employees’ well-being: The mediating role of employee job anxiety
Santiago Gutiérrez-Broncano, Pablo Ruiz-Palomino, Pedro Jiménez-Estévez, Benito Yáñez-Araque
Keywords:
job-related uncertainty; affective well-being, anxiety
Abstract:
Employees’ affective well-being may be negatively affected by situations in which there is a lack of information on their job future. Yet, further knowledge is needed regarding the mechanisms that underlie this relationship, as it could help managers to counteract the pernicious effects of the emergence of uncertainty situations in firms. One potential underlying mechanism could be the level of anxiety experienced by employees in uncertainty situations, especially when these situations are perceived as threats to their immediate job future. Structural equation modelling, specifically through partial least squares -Smart PLS 4.0-, was used to test this point, and responses from a sample of 205 hotel employees in Spain after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic were statistically analysed for such a purpose. The findings revealed that, as expected, job-related uncertainty perceptions reduce the affective well-being of employees not directly but rather indirectly by increasing their level of anxiety, which reveals that the predicted full mediating effect of employee anxiety was, therefore confirmed. This study thus demonstrates that job anxiety is increased by job-related uncertainty perceptions, and that job anxiety reduces the affective well-being of the employees, which could be dangerous for the competitiveness of firms. Managers should therefore activate policies and systems that reduce the level of anxiety of employees, so that the well-being of employees will not be reduced when uncertainty arises.
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 Job-related uncertainty and its pernicious effects on employees’ well-being: The mediating role of employee job anxiety [PDF file] [Filesize: 375.81 KB]
 10.7441/joc.2024.01.8
Gutiérrez-Broncano, S., Ruiz-Palomino, P., Jiménez-Estévez, P. & Yáňez-Araque, B. (2024). Job-related uncertainty and its pernicious effects on employees’ well-being: The mediating role of employee job anxiety. Journal of Competitiveness, 16(1), 131-145. https://doi.org/10.7441/joc.2024.01.8
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