RAPID: Systemic Differences in Employee Outcomes from COVID-19 and the Effectiveness of Organizational Response

新冠肺炎在美国的传播迫使人们的工作结构、地位和生活发生了根本性的变化。三个极端包括：a)数百万员工现在远程工作(远程办公)，b)数百万人被迫休假、下岗或突然失业，以及c)第三类继续在公共场合工作的“必要员工”，他们的健康将面临巨大风险。个人工作条件结构的快速变化给这三个群体带来了独特的挑战和压力。此外，将员工划分到上述每个群体可能会加剧科学和实践中已经注意到的社会劣势，包括社会经济地位(SES)和种族，因为这些差异体现在允许(或要求)通过联邦和州政府制定的社会距离要求继续工作的工作类型。因此，本项目将研究工作结构和地位的这种快速变化如何在不同级别的工作结构、SES和种族中对员工产生不同的影响。研究人员将考察(1)这些变化如何影响员工绩效(包括工作态度、健康和福祉以及工作绩效)，以及(2)组织对新冠肺炎的反应如何帮助缓解(或加剧)这些结果。这项研究试图通过揭示职业结构和组织反应的持续变化如何随着时间的推移相互作用来影响员工，从而推动组织科学领域的发展。此外，该项目将提供信息，用于潜在地为组织和政府的政策制定建议，以便在未来处理这种重大的社会层面的危机时采取最佳做法。该项目的主要目标是(1)实证检验新冠肺炎导致的工作条件的快速变化如何对不同级别的工作结构、社会保障和种族的员工产生不同的影响，以及(2)检验组织对新冠肺炎的反应如何影响此类工作变化与员工幸福感之间的关系。通过收集员工(和失业者)历时四个月的调查和公开回应数据，我们旨在研究工作结构的变化如何影响与工作相关的态度、行为和幸福感。此外，我们试图确定可能影响这些变量的因素(例如，经济安全、儿童保育方面的变化)。最后，我们计划纳入管理调查，以检查组织政策、沟通和其他应对方法如何阻碍或促进成功应对调查的员工层面的结果。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The spread of COVID-19 within the United States has forced radical changes in people’s work structure, status, and lives. Three extremes include a) millions of employees now working remotely (telecommuting), b) millions more furloughed, laid off, or suddenly unemployed, and c) a third group of “essential employees” continuing to work in public at great risk to their own health. Such rapid changes in the structure of individual work conditions have led to unique challenges and pressures for these three groups. Further, the divisions of employees into each of the aforementioned groups may exacerbate societal disadvantages already noted in science and practice, including socioeconomic status (SES) and race because these divisions are seen in the types of jobs that allow for (or mandate) continued work through social distancing requirements instituted by federal and state governments. Thus, the current project will examine how such rapid changes in work structure and status have differentially affected employees across various levels of job structure, SES, and race. The researchers will examine (1) how these changes affect employee outcomes (including job attitudes, health and wellbeing, and job performance), and (2) the ways in which organizational responses to COVID-19 helped to mitigate (or exacerbate) these outcomes. This study seeks to advance the field of organizational science by uncovering the ways in which continued changes in occupational structure and organizational responses interact to influence employees over time. Further, this project will provide information used to potentially develop recommendations for organizational and government policy regarding best practices in handling societal-level crises of this magnitude in the future. The primary objectives of this project are to (1) empirically examine how rapid changes in work conditions due to COVID-19 have differentially affected workers across various levels of job structure, SES, and race, and (2) examine how organizational responses to COVID-19 have affected the relationship between such job changes and employee well-being. By collecting survey and open-response data from employees (and those unemployed) across four months, we aim to examine how job structure changes affect job-related attitudes and behavior and well-being. Further, we seek to identify factors that may affect these variables (e.g., financial security, changes in childcare). Finally, we plan to incorporate managerial surveys to examine how organizational policies, communication, and other response methods hinder or foster successful coping with the surveyed employee-level outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.