Digitalization and Employee Health and Wellbeing during COVID-19

COVID-19 resulted organizations adopt digitalization at a greater scale than before. As a result, employees were required to adopt new working methods within a very short time frame. This has had an impact on employee health and well-being. This paper uses the 2020 data from the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) State of the Service Employee Census (n=108,085) to identify the impact of digitalization of the workplace on employee health and well-being as well as any mediating effects of health management and leadership on these relationships. Using the ordinal as well as multi-nominal GSEM method with a mediator, this study finds that digital meeting (DM) and the digital training (DT) decreased employee’s health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic period, but digital clearance (DC), which is the streamlining of existing work processes, increased employee’s health and wellbeing. Furthermore, health management and leadership showed partial or full mediation role on their relationships. One of policy implications is that an employee-first approach will help leadership to deliver the best possible outcomes for the organization without negatively affecting employee health and wellbeing