Impact of digital stress on negative emotions and physical complaints in the home office

Abstract

Abstract Background Due to the COVID-19 pandemic many employees perform under increasingly digital conditions. Enabling home office became mandatory for companies wherever possible in consideration of the ongoing pandemic. Simultaneously, studies report on digital stress. The current literature lacks investigations of digital stress on psychosomatic outcomes, emotions and disease. Objectives This study aims to answer the research question 'How has digital stress developed over the course of the pandemic? Does digital stress predict longitudinal differences in negative emotions and physical complaints in the home office setting?' Methods An online survey was conducted among 441 employees in 2020 and 398 employees in 2022 from three municipal administrations in Germany, who were working from home at least occasionally. In a first step, a hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis is used to detect the cluster of digitally stressed employees. In addition, multivariate first-difference OLS regressions were performed on digital stress, negative emotions, and physical complaints. Results The analysis revealed an increase from 8.5 to 20.2 percent in digital stress, while negative emotions and physical complaints did not show significant differences. In the multivariate model the change in the proportion of digitally stressed is between 3.8 and 16.8 percent, while the control variables explain around 9 percent. Digital stress might be slightly predictive for negative emotions, but not for physical complaints. Conclusions The study emphasizes rising digital stress, which contradicts an adaption to the digital working conditions within the observed period. Nevertheless, the psychosomatic relations are low or lagged. Further research investigating on digital stress and countermeasures especially for working from home to prevent harmful long-term effects resulting from distress is needed.