Tackling technology and social ties: the stressful implications of organizational videoconferencing on employees during COVID-19

Abstract

The outbreak of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) across the world in the first quarter of 2020 impelled organizations to drastically move their workforce to a remote working or a Work from Home (WFH) setup, where physical interaction was ceased indefinitely. Videoconferencing soon became the predominant mode of organizational communication. However, extensive use of videoconferencing led to repercussions among remote working employees such as technostress, both in terms of the stress experienced from the technology of videoconferencing as well as from the employees’ estranged relationships such as family, roommates, friends, and colleagues and managers. There has been a gap in the research on stress, strain, and coping from videoconferencing in an organizational context, especially among employees of different hierarchies, and its repercussions from a socio-relational perspective. With technostress as the theoretical framework, this study explored the techno and socio-relational stressors of videoconferencing, the strains incurred, and the coping measures adapted by employees to counter the stress from videoconferencing in Singapore. Through interviews with 30 fulltime WFH employees in Singapore across various industries, and 7 diary studies from the interviewees, and by using qualitative data analysis, the study examined how employees experience socio-relational stress more than technostress as they switched to videoconferencing during the pandemic and what coping strategies they employ to manage the strains they experienced. This study suggested a relook at the existing concepts of videoconferencing and technostress which are applicable to the incumbent working scenario and provided a perspective into employees’ changing relationship dynamics from remote videoconferencing, especially employees across different hierarchies.