Digital job demands and healthcare workers' workplace well-being: the mediating role of job and personal resources

TL;DR

This study explores how digital job demands affect healthcare workers' well-being and how resources like support and resilience help mitigate these effects.

Contribution

The study extends the job demands-resources model by highlighting mediating resources in digitalized healthcare settings.

Findings

Digital innovation support and resilience positively correlate with thriving at work and job satisfaction.

Digital system overload is indirectly linked to well-being outcomes through mediating resources.

Digital work overload does not directly affect job satisfaction or thriving at work.

Abstract

Digital innovations are constantly reshaping health care, affecting health care workers’ practices and well-being both positively and negatively. To balance this dual impact, it is essential to understand the specific demands introduced by digital innovations and to assess whether existing personal and organizational resources are related to these demands. Subsequently, this study aims to examine the extent to which resources, such as digital innovation support, autonomy, and resilience, mediate the relationships between digital job demands and job satisfaction and thriving at work.

We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 292 healthcare workers in the UK recruited via Prolific using nonprobability purposive sampling based on predefined eligibility criteria. The covariance-based structural equation modeling was performed in R version 4.4.3 to test hypothesized relationships and mediations.

Digital technology support, autonomy, and resilience were each positively associated with well-being outcomes; for example, digital innovation support was positively related to thriving at work (β = 0.169, p = 0.016), and resilience was associated with job satisfaction (β = 0.232, p = 0.003). Digital system overload showed a significant relationship only with thriving at work, while digital work overload showed no direct associations with thriving at work or job satisfaction; corresponding direct-effect hypotheses were therefore not supported at the 5% level. Two mediations were supported: digital innovation support showed a significant indirect effect between digital system overload and job satisfaction, and resilience showed a complementary mediating effect between digital system overload and thriving at work.

In highly digitalized settings, digital job demands did not consistently operate as direct stressors. In healthcare context, resources including autonomy, digital innovation support and resilience were positively related to well-being and, in some cases, operated as mediating mechanisms linking digital system overload to well-being outcomes. This study extends the job demands-resources model by highlighting the importance of mediating role of resources in highly digitalized healthcare work.

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