Within- and between-person changes in work practice and experiences due to COVID-19: Lessons learned from employees working from home, hybrid working, and working at the office.

Introduction: In response to the requirement of keeping social distance during the COVID-19 outbreak a lot of employees needed to change from a regular office to a home-office at short notice. The aim of the present study is to explore these employees' experiences and evaluate changes in their work situation during the pandemic. Method: A mixed-method design was used with panel data collected twice in an insurance company in Norway. The first dataset was collected in December 2020 (Time 1; N = 558), with a follow up in March 2021 (Time 2; N = 601). Results: Our study indicated that employees' main reasons for working from home were to keep social distance, avoid contagion and protect their loved ones. Flexibility, timesaving and more time with family and friends were also motivators. Most employees reported that they had the necessary technical equipment to work from home and wanted more opportunity to use their home office in the future. General Linear Models (GLM) indicated that work-family balance and workload were the same across age, gender, and worksites. Women and employees working from home reported more fear of being infected by COVID-19 at work. Younger employees reported experiencing less social contact with colleagues than normal during the pandemic, compared to the older employees. Overall, employees working at home were more positive toward digital solutions and digital meetings than those at the office. Repeated measures MANOVA showed that the work motivation and digital competence decreased over time for all worksites. Productivity increased for home-office employees but decreased for the hybrid and work-office employees. Discussion: This paper contributes to knowledge of employees' experiences with different worksite solutions, which will be useful for anticipating employees experience in the future with more hybrid work.

Antecedents and Consequences of Perceived Inclusion in Academia.

A diversified workforce is a current trend in organizations today. The present paper illuminates the antecedents, consequences, and potential gender differences of a rather new concept salient to contemporary work life, namely, perceived inclusion. The hypothesized relationships were tested in a sample of academics and faculty staff at different higher education institutions in Norway (n = 12,170). Structural equation modeling analyses supported hypotheses that empowering leadership and social support from the leader (but not the fairness) are positively related to perceived inclusion. Further, perceived inclusion is positively related to organizational commitment, work engagement, and work-home facilitation and negatively related to work-home conflict. By utilizing multigroup analyses, we found support for the hypothesis that compared to women, men perceive their organization as more inclusive. However, in contrast to what was hypothesized, the proposed relationships in the model were stronger for men than women, suggesting that not only do men perceive their work environment as more inclusive, but their perception of inclusion is also more strongly related to beneficial outcomes for the organization. These results provide insight into the antecedents of and strategies for fostering an inclusive work environment, as a response to leveraging and integrating diversity in everyday work life.

Affective organizational commitment among nursing home employees: A longitudinal study on the influence of a health-promoting work environment.

AIM: To investigate whether affective organizational commitment (AOC) among nursing home employees is enhanced by a health-promoting work environment, conceptualized as high levels of job resources, work-related sense of coherence (work-SOC) and low levels of job demands. DESIGN: This study used a longitudinal design. Survey data were collected with a 1-year interval between 2015/2016-2016/2017 among nursing home employees in Norway. METHODS: Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the longitudinal data (N = 166) and cross-sectional data from the first time point (N = 558). RESULTS: The results supported that work-SOC was strongly and positively related to AOC. Job resources and job demands were positively and negatively related, respectively, to work-SOC but were not related to future AOC. The indirect effects of autonomy and supervisor support on AOC, via work-SOC, were significant. The indirect effects regarding social community at work, emotional demands and role conflict were unclear.

Validation of the Norwegian version of the work-related sense of coherence scale.

AIM: The aim of this study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Norwegian version of the work-related sense of coherence scale, which measures the perceived comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness of an individual's current work situation. METHODS: Factorial validity, convergent and discriminant validity of the factors, as well as scale reliability were tested with confirmatory factor analyses among two samples of employees in higher education institutions ( N = 6951) and nursing homes ( N = 558). Factorial invariance across occupational groups was also investigated. RESULTS: A modified three-factor structure was shown to be valid and reliable in both samples and invariant across occupational groups. However, problems were detected regarding the discriminant validity between the factors comprehensibility and manageability. CONCLUSIONS: The Norwegian version of the work-related sense of coherence scale seems to have good properties. Further development is needed to better distinguish between the comprehensibility and manageability dimensions.