EMPLOYEES’ PERFORMANCE, WORK ORGANIZATION CONDITIONS AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN THE ERA OF CRISIS: THE ROLE OF EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION
Job performance during a period of crisis as intense as COVID-19 can be challenging for employees. Besides the risk that this pandemic represented for their physical health and their life, they were also at high risk of emotional exhaustion, which can jeopardize their performance. We examine the direct and indirect effects of work organization conditions and human resource management practices on emotional exhaustion and job performance during COVID-19. We also analyze the moderating and the moderated mediation effects of organizational communication. Data were collected during COVID-19 in Canada within 13 companies from a sample of 146 employees. The results revealed that workload was associated with a higher level of emotional exhaustion. Organizational communication was associated with a lower level of emotional exhaustion. Organizational support was associated with a higher level of job performance. Organizational communication moderated the relationship between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion.
INTRODUCTION
COVID-19 destabilized the whole of humanity, plunging it into waves of fear, isolation, and uncertainty. It took worldwide organizations by surprise, urging them to find ingenious solutions to sustain their business while protecting their employees. Most of them have redesigned their business and widely adopted teleworking as a consequence of this pandemic, and they have implemented nonpharmaceutical measures to prevent its spread, such as lockdowns, quarantines, and physical distancing (Hamouche, 2021a). Hence, new working and interaction conditions have emerged. In addition, many employees have lost their jobs, leading to a significant increase in the unemployment rate (Hamouche & Chabani, 2021).
Generally, organizations are constantly looking for better performance (Turner, 2022), and they rely on the performance of their employees to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. The need for such performance can be even more pronounced in times of crisis such as COVID-19 in order to survive and sustain companies' business. This situation pushed organizations to review their work organization conditions and their human resource management (HRM) practices in order to cope with the challenges posed by this pandemic, which can threaten employees' job performance.
However, job performance during a period of crisis as intense as COVID-19 can be challenging for employees, because in addition to the risk that this pandemic represented for their physical health and even life, they were also at high risk of developing mental health problems due to the multiple stressors that emerged as a result of this pandemic, including the risk of contagion, teleworking, blurred boundaries between private and professional life, workplace isolation, lack of clear communication coupled with excessive information, job insecurity, and an upsurge in layoffs (Hamouche, 2020).
Emotional exhaustion is one of the symptoms of burnout, a work-related mental health issue. It is the result of excessive job demands and incessant strains leading to a feeling of overload and a chronic state of physical and emotional fatigue (Maslach, 2006). It can have a significant impact on employees' performance (Kalra etal., 2020). However, to the best of our knowledge, very few studies have examined the effects of emotional exhaustion on employees' performance in a period of crisis such as COVID-19. Furthermore, little is known about its mediating effect on the relationship between work organization conditions and job performance, as well as between HRM practices and job performance during COVID-19. The present study aims to broaden the scope of research on HRM practices and mental health in the workplace by shedding light on the pathways leading to an increase in levels of employees' emotional exhaustion and the resulting effects on job performance in the era of COVID-19. In this context, we applied the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R; Demerouti etal., 2001) model of burnout to examine the contribution of work organization conditions and HRM practices from the perspective of “job demands” and “job resources” by exploring their direct and indirect effects on employees' emotional exhaustion and job performance; examining the moderating effect of organizational communication on the relationship among work organizations' conditions, HRM practices, and emotional exhaustion; and testing whether this moderating effect has repercussions on job performance, which corresponds to a mediated moderation effect.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESIS
This research investigated the direct and indirect effects of work organization conditions and HRM practices on employees' emotional exhaustion as well as job performance during COVID-19 in order to identify the pathways leading to an increase in levels of employees' emotional exhaustion and the resulting effects on job performance in times of crisis. Furthermore, we examined the moderation and the moderated mediation effects that organizational communication has on the relationship between work organization conditions, HRM practices, and emotional exhaustion. For this purpose, first, we performed a general literature review (Grant & Booth, 2009) by searching for studies published in Scopus, Google Scholar, and Web of Science using a combination of terms related to the examined topic, for example, COVID-19 OR pandemic; COVID-19 AND emotional exhaustion; Job performance AND emotional exhaustion; HRM practices AND emotional exhaustion; HRM practices and job performance OR in-role performance; work organization conditions AND emotional exhaustion OR job performance. We included only empirical studies (quantitative and qualitative) written in English. All the reviewed articles are listed in the references. Second, we developed a theoretical framework drawn from the JD-R model (Demerouti etal., 2001). This theoretical framework is based on the general idea that work organization conditions and HRM practices can be perceived as job demands or job resources and have a direct effect on emotional exhaustion as well as an indirect effect on job performance via emotional exhaustion. While organizational communication, as a job resource, may have a moderating effect on the relationship between work organization conditions, HRM practices, and emotional exhaustion, this communication, in turn, is likely to influence employees' performance.
The Theory of Job Demands-Resources (JD-R Model)
The JD-R (Demerouti etal., 2001) is a predominant theoretical model, widely used to study employees' burnout. It is based on the premise that every job position has its own risk and mitigating factors related to job stress, classified into two broad categories, namely, job demands and job resources (Demerouti etal., 2001). Job demands refers to physical, social, or organizational facets of the job that need continual physical or mental efforts that may drain the individual's physiological and psychological energy (Demerouti etal., 2001). Job resources refers to the physical, physiological, social, and organizational facets of the job that may support the achievement of work goals, reduce the impact of job demands on physiological and psychological health, and support the growth and development of the individual (Demerouti etal., 2001).
The JD-R model predicts outcomes through two processes (Rai & Chawla, 2021): first, the health impairment process, where job demands predict job strains, then organizational outcomes (e.g., lower job performance); and second, the motivational process, where resources predict employee engagement, which subsequently predicts organizational outcomes (e.g., higher job performance) (Demerouti etal., 2001). Hence, during a crisis, an unhealthy working environment characterized by high job demands and a lack of resources can be prejudicial to an employee's mental health as well as job performance. In this study, we examined four main job demands related to work organization conditions and HRM practices: teleworking, workload, number of working hours, and job insecurity. As for the resources, we examined three main HRM practices: organizational communication, health and safety practices, and organizational support. In terms of outcomes, we focused specifically on emotional exhaustion and job performance. According to the recent literature review by Hamouche (2020) about the impact of COVID-19 on employees' mental health, workload, teleworking, and job insecurity were identified as stressors that might undermine employees' mental health, whereas organizational communication, organizational support, and health and safety practices were presented as organizational interventions that can help to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on employees' mental health.
Job Performance and Emotional Exhaustion
Job performance refers to “all the behaviors employees engage in while at work” (Fogaça etal., 2018, p. 231). It is possible to make a distinction between in-role and extra-role job performance (Williams & Anderson, 1991). In-role job performance refers to the accomplishment of formal tasks related to jobs within the organization as well as the adoption of prescribed behaviors specified by the job description and expected from holders of these jobs (O'Reilly & Chatman, 1986). Extra-role job performance, on the other hand, refers to discretionary individual behaviors that are not specified in the requirements of a job position and not recognized by the formal organizational reward system (Organ, 1988), such as helping colleagues. This article focuses mainly on in-role job performance for two main reasons. First, during a health crisis such as COVID-19, when nonpharmaceutical measures were adopted (including lockdowns, quarantines, and confinement, as well as physical distancing), it is more reasonable to expect that employees will perform only the tasks required in their job positions rather than nonrequired tasks (Parent-Lamarche & Boulet, 2021b). Second, it can be difficult for employees to do more than what is required in their job position, such as helping others, when they are facing challenging situations that compel them to be physically distant from each other. Job performance can also be influenced by several organizational factors, such as work conditions (Fogaça etal., 2018) and HRM practices.
Emotional exhaustion is one of the burnout dimensions that represents a work-related phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stressors that have not been properly managed (World Health Organization, 2019). Besides emotional exhaustion, burnout encompasses symptoms of cynicism and professional inefficacy (Maslach & Leiter, 2016). Burnout is the result of excessive job demands and continuous strains that translate into a feeling of overload and a chronic state of physical and emotional fatigue (Maslach & Leiter, 2006). The individual feels emotionally overextended and exhausted at work (Parent-Lamarche & Fernet, 2020). Cynicism, also known as depersonalization, refers to negative feelings and attitudes toward clients generating detachment and withdrawal. Professional inefficacy refers to low morale, inability to cope, and reduced productivity (Maslach & Leiter, 2016). In this research, the focus is on emotional exhaustion because it represents the core dimension of burnout (Baeriswyl etal., 2021). On a burnout continuum, it precedes cynicism and professional inefficacy (Maslach & Leiter, 2006).
During COVID-19, most of the research on emotional exhaustion focused on health-care workers (Yıldırım & Solmaz, 2022), considering their essential role in fighting this pandemic, as well as the intensity and complexity of the health crisis (Parent-Lamarche & Laforce, 2022; Simard & Parent-Lamarche, 2021), the workforce shortage, and the lack of resources. However, emotional exhaustion was not limited to health-care workers; it also affected other employees in other sectors (Charoensukmongkol & Phungsoonthorn, 2020). But very few studies addressed this issue among these employees. This lack of studies represents a knowledge gap from a scientific perspective.
Emotionally exhausted employees can have low in-role performance (Kalra etal., 2020). The study by H. Chen and Eyoun (2021) conducted during COVID-19 showed that emotional exhaustion is negatively related to job performance. Therefore, it is essential to identify factors that contributed to employees' emotional exhaustion during this challenging health crisis. Some authors called for paying more attention to the effects of emotional exhaustion on work outcomes (Dishop etal., 2019; Opoku etal., 2021). Moreover, according to Charoensukmongkol and Phungsoonthorn (2020), despite the complexity of this pandemic and its significant impact on worldwide organizations, it seems that there is a lack of research on organizational factors that affect employees' psychological well-being. Considering the observation raised by these authors, we explored the contribution of organizational factors on employees' emotional exhaustion and job performance. In this context, two main organizational factors have been examined: work organization conditions and HRM practices.
Effects of Work Organization Conditions and HRM Practices on Emotional Exhaustion and Job Performance in the Era of COVID-19
This study examined the effects of work organization conditions and HRM practices on employees' emotional exhaustion and job performance during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Work Organization Conditions
In the context of this research, work organization conditions encompass teleworking, workload, and number of working hours.
Teleworking, also known as remote work, telecommuting, or virtual work, can be defined as working remotely away from the traditional workplace (Matli, 2020). In the context of COVID-19, teleworking represents a situation where employees had to work from their homes (Parent-Lamarche & Boulet, 2021a). This pandemic pushed many organizations to adopt teleworking to sustain their business while conforming to physical distancing measures implemented all over the world (Hamouche & Parent-Lamarche, 2023). Teleworking is associated with an increase in performance of both the firm (Sánchez etal., 2007) and individual employees (Groen etal., 2018). The study by Parent-Lamarche and Boulet (2021b), conducted during the first lockdown in Quebec, Canada, showed that teleworking was associated with higher job performance due to its negative association with stress. However, other studies, such as that by Zito etal. (2021), showed that teleworking generated a high level of stress during COVID-19, with a negative impact on employees' mental health due to the social isolation that it generated, coupled with technostress (Shamout etal., 2022), lack of preparation and training (Zito etal., 2021), blurred boundaries between work and private life (Hamouche, 2021b), increased possibility of family breakdown, and multiple roles that employees could assume while working from home (Prajogo etal., 2020). The study by Abdel Hadi etal. (2021) revealed that daily job demands and daily home demands during teleworking were positively related to emotional exhaustion.
Workload refers to the quantity or difficulty of tasks, professional activities, and responsibilities. Number of working hours refers to the length of time that employees spend completing their job tasks. Employees in some sectors, such as the health-care sector, reported an increase in their working hours and workload during COVID-19 due to the workforce shortage (Cortés-Álvarez & Vuelvas-Olmos, 2020; Sahin etal., 2020), as well as working from home, probably due to the blurring of the boundaries between work and private life, because they could be available at any time and any place (Hamouche, 2021b).
The study by Parent-Lamarche and Boulet (2021b) revealed that workload during COVID-19 was associated with a higher level of job performance, while Cortés-Álvarez and Vuelvas-Olmos (2020) showed that the increase in working hours per week due to the pandemic was significantly associated with greater emotional exhaustion. Moreover, according to Baeriswyl etal. (2021), workload was associated with a higher level of emotional exhaustion, and prolonging hours partially mediated the effect of workload on emotional exhaustion.
Human Resource Management Practices
In this research, HRM practices include job insecurity, organizational communication, health and safety practices, and organizational support.
Job insecurity refers to the individuals' perception of the instability and precariousness of their job. It is distinct from the immediate loss of a job; instead, it can be described as an omnipresent experience of prolonged uncertainty and the feeling of threat about the future in the organization and the continuity of the actual job (Sverke etal., 2002), as well as the perception of threat related to the loss of valuable job characteristics, such as compensation, status, and promotion (Kerse etal., 2018). Employees expect to have employment stability and career perspectives in the organization as a counterpart of their efforts, performance, and skills that they put at the service of the organization. However, promising job security to employees can be challenging for the organization in times of crisis, especially in the case of COVID-19, because no one knows when it will end (Hamouche, 2021b).
According to Sverke etal. (2002), individuals' perceptions of job insecurity can have significant negative consequences on their mental health as well as their job performance. Hence, it can negatively affect job performance (Kalia & Bhardwaj, 2019). Moreover, some authors have shown that a high level of job insecurity is associated with a high level of emotional exhaustion (e.g., Kerse etal., 2018). The COVID-19 outbreak was marked by many waves of layoffs and the closure of companies, which were likely to make employees increasingly insecure about the continuity of their job and the future of their career in the organization (Hamouche, 2021b).
Organizational communication refers to the process by which organizations transmit information to their employees related to their workplace as well as their job (Price, 1997). It is a valuable resource that can help employees receive relevant, important, and timely information (Jiang & Probst, 2014). During COVID-19, employees were receiving ambiguous information; consequently, most of them turned to their organizations for accurate information, looking for effective communication of critical organizational decisions (Sanders etal., 2020). According to Kalogiannidis (2020), effective communication in any organization has a great influence on employee performance. The study by Zito etal. (2021), conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighted the potential protective role of organizational communication, which can buffer the effects of job stressors caused by the pandemic, such as technostress, which increased with the adoption of teleworking.
Health and safety practices refers to the measures developed by organizations to protect employees by eliminating behaviors and working conditions that can be hazardous to employees' health and safety at work (Iftikhar etal., 2017). COVID-19 generated a new workplace hazard that threatened employees' physical as well as psychological health (Hecker, 2020) and jeopardized job performance (Narayanamurthy & Tortorella, 2021). Employers have the obligation to protect their employees, providing them with safe working conditions and a hazard-free workplace that does not pose risks to their physical and psychological health or jeopardize their lives (Hamouche, 2020). With the COVID-19 outbreak, this responsibility became more challenging considering that organizations also had to prevent the spread of the virus among employees. Besides the legal consideration, the development and investment in health and safety practices should help to decrease the level of stress among employees and prevent their emotional exhaustion. They can feel valued by their organization, as well as confident and secure from any hazard that can threaten their health and their life (Iftikhar etal., 2017). This suggests that the presence or the development of these practices during a period as complex as COVID-19 should be perceived by the employees as resources that can help to reduce the risks of their emotional exhaustion and help them to maintain their job performance. The study by Putri etal. (2018) showed that occupational health and safety are significant for optimal employee performance.
Organizational support refers to employees' global beliefs about the extent to which their organization cares about their well-being and values their contributions in the workplace, assigning to it humanlike characteristics (Eisenberger etal., 1986). Organizational support can be considered a social resource because it conveys the signal that help is available when needed in the organization (C. Marchand & Vandenberghe, 2016), which is consistent with occupational stress literature that presents social support in the workplace as a factor that can mitigate the effects of stressors on employees mental health (Kim etal., 2017), because it involves the organization's provisions, such as organizational rewards, favorable working conditions (e.g., compensation, promotions, job enrichment) (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). In the same vein, according to Parent-Lamarche and Marchand (2018), social support from supervisors is negatively associated with emotional exhaustion. Besides the documented buffering effects of organizational support on mental health (Maslach & Leiter, 2016), it can also have a positive impact on job performance, mainly because it is based on the principle of reciprocity, which suggests that when employees perceive a positive voluntary treatment provided by their organization, they can feel obliged to return the favorable treatment (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). This felt obligation can generate positive attitudes in regard to the organization and performance (C. Marchand & Vandenberghe, 2016), providing employees with a higher incentive to work hard and to increase their performance (T. Chen etal., 2020; Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). This favorable reciprocal exchange can encourage employees to exhibit desirable outcomes and continue concentrating on their work roles (Talebzadeh & Karatepe, 2019).
Buffering Effects of Organizational Communication in the Era of COVID-19
The COVID-19 outbreak was marked by extreme overload in terms of information surrounding the number of cases, coupled with business closures, an upsurge in layoffs, and an increase in the unemployment rate (Hamouche, 2020). Individuals were overwhelmed by the intensity of the media coverage of this pandemic (Shigemura etal., 2020) and the sudden implementation of teleworking, which compelled them to be far from their physical workplace and their colleagues (Parent-Lamarche & Boulet, 2021a) without prior preparation, training (Zito etal., 2021), or information about repercussions on the job requirements or objectives as well as performance of tasks, mainly because this unexpected health crisis took worldwide organizations by surprise. COVID-19 generated a high level of uncertainty about its end as well as the future of the workplace. This uncertainty should now more than ever highlight organizational communication as a key factor for reducing the level of stress among employees, protect their mental health, and maintain their job performance. In fact, besides managing the flow of information, it can help to motivate and support employees in other times of crisis (Zito etal., 2021). Organizational communication played a crucial role in buffering the impact of the challenging demands generated by the current health crisis as well as the resulting changes in workplaces (Zito etal., 2021). Indeed, providing clear and transparent information about the future of the organization may reduce employees' fear of the unknown (Hamouche, 2020), mitigate the effects of job stressors, and accentuate the benefits of job resources, which should have an impact on job performance.
Research Hypothesis
Job performance can be significantly challenged in times of crisis. It can be affected by many factors. Emotional exhaustion can be one of these factors. It represents the consequence of long or continuous exposure to a high level of job-related demands that drain the individual's energy and emotions. Low levels of in-role performance may represent a tentative escape from job-related stressors (Tu etal., 2021). These stressors can exhaust employees emotionally, which might lower the level of in-role performance (Kalra etal., 2020).
In the light of the JD-R model (Demerouti etal., 2001), organizational factors such as work organization conditions and HRM practices can be experienced either as demands or as resources. Job demands represent a source of a high level of stress that exhausts the individual emotionally and can lead to lower job performance. On the other hand, resources are, in this context, supposed to lead to a positive impact on employees' health, considering that they can buffer the negative effects of job demands on individuals, which might lead to an increase in the level of job performance. In the context of any crisis, and particularly COVID-19 because of its complexity and long-lasting uncertainty, organizational communication should play the role of moderator, which can mitigate the effects of job demands and accentuate the effects of job resources. On the basis of these arguments, five hypotheses can be formulated. They are illustrated in Figure 1, which presents the theoretical framework proposed in this study:
Citation: Performance Improvement Quarterly 36, 3; 10.56811/PIQ-22-0017
Work organization conditions and HRM practices are associated directly with emotional exhaustion during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Work organization conditions and HRM practices are associated directly with job performance during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The association between work organization conditions as well as HRM practices and job performance is mediated by emotional exhaustion (mediation effect).
Organizational communication moderates the association between work organization conditions as well as HRM practices and emotional exhaustion (moderation effect).
Organizational communication moderates the association between work organization conditions as well as HRM practices, emotional exhaustion, and job performance (moderated mediation effect).
METHOD
This research is cross-sectional based on data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic between June and December 2020 in Quebec, Canada, within 13 companies, 92.3% of them from the tertiary sector, while 7.7% were from the secondary sector. We used a nonprobability sampling method that involved a nonrandom selection of organizations and participants based on convenience (i.e., volunteers). The public affairs department of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières helped us to contact these 13 organizations. Among them, a total of 146 employees agreed to participate in this research. They were between 22 and 72 years of age (M = 41.9; SD = 12.23), and 67% of them were women. Hard (paper) and soft (online) versions of the questionnaire were provided to the respondents. The questionnaire covered topics related to health and well-being as well as HRM practices. The response rate was 69.82%. The research protocol was approved by the ethics committee of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (Certificate of ethics CER-20-270-08-02.37).
Measures
Emotional exhaustion was measured based on the Maslach Burnout Inventory–General Survey (Schaufeli & Leiter, 1996). Respondents were asked to evaluate their situation on a 6-point Likert scale (0 = never, 6 = daily), for example: “Working all day is really a strain for me” (α = 0.80).
Job performance was measured with a 4-item scale adapted from Williams and Anderson (1991), scored on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (do not agree at all) to 7 (very strongly agree). The focus was on in-role job performance. Respondents were asked questions related to their role-job performance, for example: “I meet the formal performance requirements of my job” (α = 0.90).
Work organizational conditions encompassed teleworking, workload, and the number of working hours. Teleworking was measured with a single item, “During the COVID-19 crisis, did you do telework (working from home)?”, scored on a 4-point scale, ranging from 1 (never) to 4 (all the time). Workload was measured by the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ; (Karasek, 1985) with five items, on a 4-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree). for example: “I have many interruptions and disturbances while performing my job” (α = 0.83). For the number of working hours, respondents had to indicate the number of hours worked per week.
Human resource management practices included organizational communication, organizational support, health and safety practices, and job security. Organizational communication was measured with seven items, scored on a 7-point scale, ranging from 1 (do not agree at all) to 7 (very strongly agree). An example of these items is “Information about how well my organization is doing financially is shared with me?” (α = 0.79). Organizational support was measured with two items scored on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (do not agree at all) to 7 (very strongly agree). An example of these items is “I have the opportunity to discuss work-related problems with my immediate manager?” (α = 0.86). Health and safety practices were measured using five items, scored on 7 point-scale ranging from 1 (do not agree at all) to 7 (very strongly agree). An example of these items is “This organization spends enough money on health and safety-related matters?” (α = 0.81).
Job insecurity was measured with the Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire (Siegrist, 1996) with two items on a 4-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly agree). An example is “My employment security is poor” (α = 0.77).
Control variables were sociodemographic factors (gender, age, marital and parental status) as well as household income. The sociodemographic information represents individual factors that can help to understand the variation between individuals, while household income can help to understand the variation among families based on income. The effects of both sociodemographic factors and household income on mental health are widely documented (A. Marchand etal., 2015). Furthermore, some authors have argued that sociodemographic factors (such as age, gender, marital status, work experience, and educational level) can significantly influence job performance (Kalia & Bhardwaj, 2019; Rawashdeh etal., 2022).
Data Analysis
Moderated path analyses were performed using Mplus software (Muthén & Muthén, 2017). We examined moderated mediation effects, which refer to the analysis of conditional indirect effects, suggesting that an indirect effect (mediation) may be conditioned by the values of one moderator. Note that a moderator attenuates or accentuates the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable, whereas the mediator conveys or transmits the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable. Therefore, a moderated mediation effect refers to the transmission of a moderation effect on an outcome via the mediator. This method for modeling the conditional indirect effect process is derived from Preacher and Hayes (2004). First, we evaluated a model that encompasses HRM practices, work organization conditions, and covariates to estimate their effects on emotional exhaustion and in-role job performance. Second, we examined whether HRM practices and work organization conditions that were significantly associated with emotional exhaustion in the basic model have an indirect significant effect on in-role job performance via emotional exhaustion. Finally, we investigated the moderating effect of organizational communication on the relationship between HRM practices, work organization conditions, and emotional exhaustion. To determine the significance levels of the combined variables and individual regression coefficient, we relied on a two-tailed probability for rejection of the null hypothesis (p ≤ .05). Maximum likelihood estimation using robust standard errors (MLR estimation) was adopted to test all models. The Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) were used to assess the goodness-of-fit. In this case, values above .95 for the CFI and TLI represent an excellent fit (Hoyle, 1995).
RESULTS
Descriptive Statistics and Correlational Analysis
Table 1 reports descriptive statistics for the sample as well as correlational analyses. It presents means, percentages, and standard deviations for the study variables, as well as Pearson's correlations, which offer preliminary support for the association between variables.
Hypotheses Testing
Hypotheses 1 and 2
Table 2 presents the effects of HRM practices and work organization conditions on emotional exhaustion and job performance. First, it shows that two variables are significantly associated with emotional exhaustion, namely, organizational communication and workload. Organizational communication is negatively associated with emotional exhaustion (γ = −0.20, p ≤ 0.05), whereas workload is positively associated with emotional exhaustion (γ = −0.48, p ≤ 0.01). These results suggest that a high level of organizational communication is associated with a low level of emotional exhaustion. Conversely, workload is associated with a high level of emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, Table 2 exhibits a significant and positive association between organizational support and job performance (γ = 0.27, p ≤ .05), suggesting that a high level of organizational support is associated with a high level of job performance.
Hypothesis 3
The mediation effects of emotional exhaustion in the relationship between work organization conditions, RM practices, and job performance are not supported by the results.
Hypothesis 4
As for the moderation effects of organizational communication on the relationship between work organization conditions, HRM practices, and emotional exhaustion, the results (Figure 2) showed that organizational communication moderates only the relationship between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion. (b = 0.100, p = .028). However, this interaction did not show a moderated mediation effect (b = 0.001, p = .611). As presented in Figure 2, the interplay between organizational communication and job insecurity significantly influences emotional exhaustion. When job insecurity is low, high organizational communication is associated with a lower level of emotional exhaustion, and a low level of organizational communication is associated with a higher level of emotional exhaustion. However, this effect does not seem to be present when job insecurity is high.
Citation: Performance Improvement Quarterly 36, 3; 10.56811/PIQ-22-0017
Hypothesis 5
The moderated mediation effects of organizational communication on the relationship between work organization conditions, HRM practices, emotional exhaustion, and job performance are not supported by the results.
DISCUSSION
Two main purposes have motivated and guided this research: (a) to investigate and test the direct and indirect associations between work organization conditions, HRM practices, and job performance via the mediating effects of emotional exhaustion in the era of COVID-19; and (b) to examine the moderating and the moderated mediation effects of organizational communication on the relationship between work organization conditions, HRM practices, emotional exhaustion, and job performance. Therefore, a theoretical model was developed putting forward five hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 anticipated a direct association between work organization conditions, HRM practices, and emotional exhaustion. Hypothesis 2 also anticipated a direct association between work organization conditions, HRM practices, and job performance. Hypothesis 3 anticipated the mediating effects of emotional exhaustion on the relationship between work organization conditions, HRM practices, and job performance. Finally, Hypotheses 4 and 5 anticipated, respectively, moderating and moderated mediation effects of organizational communication in the relationship between work organization conditions, HRM practices, emotional exhaustion, and job performance.
Hypothesis 1 was partially supported. Only workload and organizational communication were significantly associated with emotional exhaustion. A high level of workload was found to be associated with a high level of emotional exhaustion, while a high level of organizational communication was associated with a lower level of emotional exhaustion. These results are consistent with the literature on workload (Parent-Lamarche & Boulet, 2021b) and organizational communication (Zito etal., 2021).
Similarly, Hypothesis 2 was partially supported. Only organizational support was significantly associated with job performance, suggesting that a high level of organizational support was associated with a high level of job performance. These results are consistent with the literature (C. Marchand & Vandenberghe, 2016). Perceived organizational support is based on the norm of reciprocity (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002); that is, when employees perceive a high level of support from their employer, they may feel grateful toward the organization, leading them to work hard and increase the level of their performance, despite the challenges posed by COVID-19.
Hypothesis 3 was not supported. Hence, the association between work organization conditions as well as HRM practices and job performance was not mediated by emotional exhaustion. Considering that the only variable that was found to be significantly associated with job performance was organizational support, these results can suggest that in times of crisis, the effects of this variable are strong enough to affect job performance without going through another variable. This can probably be explained by the fact that employees may feel grateful toward the organization and be motivated to perform their job tasks in return for the favorable treatment that they have received from their employer.
Hypothesis 4 was partially supported. In this case, organizational communication was found to moderate the relationship between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion. However, this interaction did not show a moderated mediation effect, which invalidated Hypothesis 5. These results suggest that the interplay between organizational communication and job insecurity significantly influences emotional exhaustion. Hence, organizational communication accentuates the effects of low job insecurity (the interaction of two organizational resources) on emotional exhaustion. Therefore, this HRM practice accentuates the resource of low job insecurity but does not alleviate the stress generated by high job insecurity. Organizational communication can help to ease employees' concerns regarding a crisis (Deng etal., 2019). In the context of low job insecurity perceived by employees, this communication can help to confirm this perception. Therefore, they might feel less stressed, which should protect their mental health. However, in the case of the COVID-19 era, the worldwide uncertainty generated by this pandemic might not help organizational communication to alleviate the effect of a high level of job insecurity.
Theoretical Implications
In the complex era of COVID-19, most research has focused on the emotional exhaustion of health-care workers (Yıldırım & Solmaz, 2022), whereas very few studies have examined this issue among employees in other sectors and the potential impact of COVID-19 on their job performance at a time when their mental health was the most challenged, and when organizations needed this performance the most to sustain their business as it was threatened by the pandemic. Some authors called for paying more attention to the effects of emotional exhaustion on work outcomes (Dishop etal., 2019; Opoku etal., 2021). Furthermore, according to Charoensukmongkol and Phungsoonthorn (2020), despite the complexity of this pandemic and its significant impact on worldwide organizations, it seems that there is a lack of research on organizational factors that affect employees' psychological well-being.
Considering the observation made by these authors, we aimed at broadening the scope of research on HRM and mental health in the workplace by investigating the direct and indirect effects of work organization conditions and HRM practices on employees' emotional exhaustion as well as job performance during a complex health crisis. We also examined the moderating and moderated mediation effects of organizational communication on the relationship between work organization conditions, HRM practices, emotional exhaustion, and job performance. Drawing on the JD-R model (Demerouti etal., 2001), we distinguished between job demands and job resources that can influence employees' emotional exhaustion and job performance. Our results highlight the significant direct effects of workload and organizational communication on emotional exhaustion, as well as organizational support on job performance. Our research has also put forward the fact that besides its direct effect on emotional exhaustion, organizational communication accentuates the effects of low job insecurity on emotional exhaustion during COVID-19. Since, to our knowledge, studies that have examined these effects during COVID-19 are sparse, our results represent a significant contribution to addressing the effects of COVID-19.
Practical Implications
At the time of writing this article, COVID-19 was still challenging for organizations. This study showed that in times of crisis, a high level of workload is associated with a higher level of emotional exhaustion. This can negatively impact both individual and organizational performance. Inthis context, organizations should review job positions in terms of workload and adapt them to the requirements of the new situation generated by this pandemic to prevent the emotional exhaustion of employees. Moreover, this article highlights the importance of organizational support and organizational communication, which seem to represent valuable resources for employees. To enhance employees' job performance and protect their mental health during times of crisis, organizations should develop formal and informal mechanisms of support, including employee assistance programs, formal and informal meetings with their peers and managers, and access to the resources of the organization in terms of coaching, mentoring, and career development. Such initiatives should be voluntary to ensure that they will be highly valued by employees. Considering the crucial role that managers play in supporting their employees, training is necessary to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the support provided for these employees. As for organizational communication, this study revealed that a lack of this resource not only directly affects emotional exhaustion, but also accentuates the effects of low job insecurity on emotional exhaustion. Hence, organizations should develop a communication plan to ensure a continuous flow of information related to the crisis and the organization's response to it. Optimizing communication during and after a crisis and providing clear and transparent information about the main actions that will be taken to resume organizational operations, as well as the potential impact of these actions on employees' job tasks and employment, are greatly needed to reduce their concerns, fear, and feelings of job insecurity, which might also help to ensure their support toward the achievement of organizational performance goals during crises and beyond (Hamouche, 2020).
LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
This research has certain limitations. First, the use of a cross-sectional design did not allow the analysis of causal relationships. This study was conducted at the beginning of a period of crisis where respondents, as well as their organizations, were facing an unexpected complex situation with unknown outcomes. It could be relevant and helpful to conduct a longitudinal study in future research to examine these causal relationships. Second, the results were obtained within the Canadian context and specifically within the private and tertiary sectors. Therefore, the results are not generalizable to other countries and employment sectors. Future studies should replicate the theoretical model proposed in this study in other countries, as well as in the public sector and in primary and secondary sectors in Canada, to investigate the direct and indirect effects of emotional exhaustion on job performance.
A third limitation of this study is the use of some measurement scales (i.e., HRM practices), which were taken from the HRM literature but have not been validated using factorial analyses. Although an extensive review of the literature on scales that used a high-performance work system to assess HRM practices and the calculated Cronbach's alphas allowed us to attest to the internal consistency of the measurement and its reliability, future research could go a step further by formulating a specific hypothesis to verify whether HRM practice measures are consistently based on theory and/or previous analytical research. Accordingly, future studies should fully focus on validating those measurement scales with confirmatory factor analyses (See Appendix for a complete list of items).
Fourth and finally, we did not have a large enough and diversified database to allow us to include a variable corresponding to the industrial sector of the organizations in which the employees worked. Future studies should include such a variable to verify if the same results can be found among different industrial sectors. Furthermore, future studies can use other theories, such as the job characteristics model (Hackman & Oldham, 1976).
Research Theoretical Framework Developed by the Authors
Effects of the Interaction of Job Insecurity and Organizational Communication on Emotional Exhaustion
Contributor Notes
SALIMA HAMOUCHE holds a PhD from the University of Montreal and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. She is a Human Resources Management Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP). She is also an assistant professor of human resource management at the college of Business Administration, Department of Management, University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. She has a strong academic background and practical experience in human resources management for many years as an HR consultant, HR manager, and director. She served several years on boards of directors as administrator and vice president. She is also a researcher affiliated with the Observatory for Research on Health and Well-Being at Work (OSMET). Her research interests are centered on human resource management, organizational behavior, employees' well-being, and new technologies at work. She has published in the Journal of Management and Organization, Industrial and Commercial Training, Gender in Management, Career Development International, and International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, among others. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7637-4680. Email: shamouche@sharjah.ac.ae
ANNICK PARENT-LAMARCHE holds a PhD in industrial relations from the Université de Montréal obtained in 2016, as well as a postdoctoral fellowship from the Research Chair on Motivation and Occupational Health at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR). She is an associate professor in the human resources management department at UQTR, where she teaches total compensation management. She is a Chartered Professional in Human Resources (CPHR). She holds the UQTR Research Chair on Human Resources Management Practices, Well-Being and Performance at Work. She is also a researcher affiliated with the Observatory for Research on Health and Well-Being at Work (OSMET), the Interdisciplinary Laboratory on Motivational Processes (LIPROM), and the Centre interordres de recherche et de transfert en manufacturier intelligent (CIRT-MI). She is interested in the effect of human resources management practices, work organization conditions, and individual resources on well-being and performance at work. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0908-4522. Email: Annick.Parent-Lamarche@uqtr.ca
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Certificate of ethics CER-20-270-08-02.37. The research protocol was approved by the ethics committee of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières.
This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (grant number 430-2020-0674) and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (grant number 267581).
The authors thank all the organizations and employees who participated in this study.
