The Emotional Toll of the COVID-19 Crisis on Local Government Workers

Abstract

Despite the emotional intensity that accompanies crises, rarely is emotional labor explicitly discussed as a required aspect of crisis response work. We explore the emotional toll of COVID-19 crisis on local government employees. We introduce a dynamic mixed-methods approach to the study of emotional labor during times of crisis and highlight the utility of diary research designs in public human resource management scholarship. By combining waves of survey data, semi-structured interviews, and daily diary prompts, we provide evidence of how changes in workload, exogenously imposed fears, and emotional spillover blur the work-home boundaries of local government officials during the pandemic. We also show how isolation from peers and the public can lead to conflict and search for social support from both external and internal sources. We highlight how the application of the job demands-resources (JD-R) theory gives insight to the burnout and disengagement faced by local government employees during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order.