The “Screen”ing of You and Me: Effects of COVID-19 on Counterproductive Work Behaviors

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries into a lockdown and organizations into crisis management. Several sudden and restrictive changes in the organizations threaten to induce suspicion and fear amongst the employees; diminishing their levels of trust and social cohesion within the organizations and increasing feelings of isolation. In this article, we discuss some of the prominent changes in organizations triggered by the COVID-19 restrictions, and reflect on the implications of these restrictions for organizations and their employees. We draw upon the social control theory (SCT) to examine how the changes in the work environment influence the social bond between employees, along the four salient dimensions of attachment, involvement, commitment, and belief. We focus on how these changes are increasing the likelihood of employee deviations from organizational norms in ways detrimental to the employees and the organizations. Managing in a post-COVID-19 work environment would require incorporating the manifold effects of social distancing, strict surveillance measures to monitor employee work and the widespread use of technology to support work from home. Organizations would need to adopt several measures to demonstrate care and concern for their employees. Leader's role, more than ever before, has become crucial in supporting employees to cope with the sudden changes, adapt to the new work arrangements, and build team bonds despite the challenges. Timely interventions by leaders to respond proactively to alleviate employee fears, build trust, and improve the physical and mental well-being of their employees could help to keep the counterproductive behaviors in check.

Introduction

THE volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity underpinning the pandemic have made it difficult to predict the duration, severity, and spread of COVID-19. Reactive and preventive measures have been taken at national, organizational, and individual levels. A key consequence of the COVID-19 outbreak has been the widespread adoption of social-distancing measures, driven by the need to contain the spread of the virus. Nations have closed their borders and put on hold much of their economic activity to avoid physical interactions between people. For organizations, this has translated into work from home measures for their employees, and communication between people and teams relying on technology mediated channels. The changes have been sudden and, in several cases, patchy. Unsurprisingly, this has led to anxiety and panic with implications for organizations and individuals.

In this article, we discuss the changes in organizations triggered by COVID-19 restrictions, and reflect on the implications of these restrictions for organizations and their employees. We use the lens of social control theory (SCT) to examine how the changes in the work environment influence the social bond between employees, along the four salient dimensions of attachment, involvement, commitment, and belief. We focus on how these changes are increasing the likelihood of employee deviations from organizational norms in detrimental ways.

First, we reflect on the SCT in relation to the counterproductive behaviors in the workplace. We then capture the COVID-19 context and the accompanying changes at the organizational level. Next, we argue how the suddenness and unpredictability of these changes are leading to high-arousal, often negative emotions, that are dampening trust and attachment between organizations and their employees. If not controlled in time, this may increase the likelihood of deviations from organizational norms in ways harmful to the organization. We conclude by reflecting on the possible interventions to mitigate these effects.

Social Control Theory and Counterproductive Work Behavior

Hirschi's SCT [8] is a sociological theory that has been used extensively in the context of criminal behavior. It states that ties with family, school, and other aspects of the community reduce an individual's propensity to deviate from the societal norms.

According to this theory, these socialization bonds between the individual and the society are based on four essential elements: attachment with family, friends, teachers, and co-workers; commitment to activities to which the individual has devoted his / her valuable time and energy, including achievements and aspirations; involvement in various tasks to strengthen the social bond; and belief or agreement with the wider social values. These elements interact to shield the individual from deviant and criminal behavior. Therefore, when individuals feel disconnected, i.e., when they exhibit weak attachment, involvement, and commitment, their tendency to engage in deviant acts increases. This theory has traditionally been used to explain juvenile delinquency and aggression through the weakening of bonds with parents, peer, and school. Stronger social bonds strengthen one's self control and reduce the inclination to engage in antisocial acts [9].

This theory has been applied across multiple disciplines, including psychology, educational sciences, developmental science, management, and health risk behavior.

Hollinger [10] used elements of Hirschi's SCT to understand the behavior of production deviance (acts to harm the productivity of an organization) and property deviance (acts to damage the property of an organization) at workplaces. Attachment was conceptualized as an employee's attitude and perception toward the organization. Commitment was measured in terms of whether the employee is looking for new jobs. Involvement was viewed in relation to the level of an employee's participation in the organizational activities. The findings reported that property deviance results from lack of commitment, whereas production deviance is an outcome of lack of commitment, attachment, and commitment.

This theory has even been used to explain insider computer abuse [15]. The study explained that negative factors in the environment may trigger insiders to undertake corrective actions to manage their negative emotions through illegitimate computer abuse.

The application of SCT to the management literature helps to convey the importance of socialization and social interactions in shaping the four bonding elements of involvement, attachment, commitment, and belief. Organizations put considerable effort in on-boarding activities and in integrating employees with the explicit aim of aligning their interests and value systems with those of the organization. Formal and informal efforts to develop social bonds and a sense of commitment to the organization through workplace interactions are expected to keep counterproductive work behaviors in check [19]. The sudden and unplanned organizational changes triggered by COVID-19 may not allow organizations to follow the same processes and practices as those adopted in the pre-COVID era. In this article, we examine how the exigencies arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic are impacting the social bonds in organizations along the four dimensions of the SCT.

Organizational Changes Triggered by the Covid-19 Pandemic

The severity and lethality of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments across the world to take severe measures to control the spread of infection. This has led to nearly shutting down of economies and restricting the movement of individuals. These measures have changed the “normal” way of living in ways beyond expectation, by curtailing free movement, restricting large gatherings of people, and requiring wearing of masks in public places, among others.

To comply with the government policies, stay operational and survive the economic jolt, and protect their employees, organizations are taking measures like work from home arrangements, pay cuts, pay and hiring freezes, leaves without pay, and lay-offs. The pandemic has also forced organizations to digitalize their operations rapidly.

The workplace changes, economic duress, and uncertainty of the future brought about by this pandemic are causing anxiety amongst employees who are worried about their job security and work performance. This coupled with the news of rising infection cases and an absence of a reliable cure/vaccine has aggravated the anxiety levels further.

Even as the lockdowns are being eased around the world and the economies are restarting, guidelines for social distancing remain. Organizations, though permitted to bring employees back to physical workplaces are required to adhere to the stringent government guidelines with implications for their use of space and employee rostering. Only those employees whose job necessitates physical presence are required to report to work, while others work from home and communicate using virtual communication tools.

To monitor productivity while employees work remotely, various technological means, e.g., biometrics-based monitoring, recording of internet activity, noting idle times of devices used by employees, keeping note of which files were accessed and when, and accessing the GPS location of a device are being adopted [20]. These practices, although legal, may be quite invasive and pervasive from the employee's perspective [1] and could intensify employee's anxiety and foster feelings of mistrust; further weakening the bond between the organization and the employee.

Although organizational changes have become a norm due to the continuous advancements in the technology, the changes induced by this pandemic situation are sudden, unplanned, and fast-tracked, which have diminished the individual's sense of control over their circumstances and increased their level of uncertainty. The emerging norm of avoiding social interactions, combined with maintaining a balance between private and professional needs and boundaries, is stressful and can result in several psychological effects. The interplay of these psychological factors has the potential to trigger counterproductive work behaviors.

Emotional Response to the Organizational Changes

Distress about one's personal status and future in the company, changing organizational policies and relations with colleagues are associated with negative emotions [11]. Anxiety caused by the pandemic and its after-effects, such as financial insecurity, concern for personal and family well-being, and work productivity, among others, has led to high arousal levels of negative emotions in individuals.

The pandemic is still not contained and employees are panicked about the risk of getting infected. For essential employees, feeling coerced to report to workplaces in these circumstances is likely to cause anxiety and stress. People working from home are likely to experience stress in their attempts to maintain work–life balance, especially when several essential services are not available (e.g., schools, cleaning services, day-care, etc.). Pervasive monitoring decreases employee's perceived control over job and personal life [1]. This combined with increased workload and screen time could aggravate stress levels and fatigue of the individual.

Emotions act as an interface between situational input and behavioral output and, thus, provide flexibility to adjust with environmental differences [16]. When an individual's cognitive load increases, attempts to regulate emotions turn ineffective [16]. Emotions can directly cue specific behaviors, as well as indirectly impact behaviors by their effect on cognitive, physiological and social processes. The response generated from negative emotions is too fast for much cognitive processing to occur [16], consequently, negative emotions can be detrimental for the individual as well as for the organization.

Chronic fear and panic could sap employees’ motivation to strive for excellence and efficiency and reduce employee morale. Disruptive changes in the organization can weaken personal commitment to organizational goals. There is a higher chance for employees to experience job insecurity in these stressful circumstances, further weakening job performance and attachment with the organization [21]. Sustained fear and panic associated with COVID-19 could lead to deepening of mistrust, isolation, and reduced social cohesion, paving the way for deviant acts.

Implications of Negative Emotions

Trust in the organization as well as social cohesion among workers is amongst the critical factors influencing organizational dynamics. Both of which have serious downstream effects due to the unfolding pandemic situation.

Effect on Trust in the Organization

Trust presupposes a psychological state of perceived vulnerability derived from individual's uncertainty about the intentions, motives, and prospective actions of other dependable individuals or organizations [12]. It is shaped by everyday experiences in the organization and gives indications of the expectations that employees may harbor of the organization in future. Trust becomes a requisite component of teamwork as team tasks require extreme synergy and coordination between team members.

The erosion of trust in the COVID-19 scenario would be seen not only in employees who are working at the organization's premises, but also in employees who are working from home and being put on surveillance throughout. As individuals return to work, fear of contagion remains. Despite organizational efforts to sanitize workplaces and adhere to regulatory guidelines, there may be deep employee mistrust in organizations and in colleagues with respect to their personal safety. The threat of constant surveillance and an environment of panic could adversely impact an employee's intrinsic motivation to work and their level of trust in the organization.

Mistrust within the organization would create a disabling environment for employee engagement, diminishing team effectiveness, and dampening commitment of the employees toward their organization [2]. This will further heighten the fear and apprehension among employees and strengthen the vicious cycle of fear and mistrust. It could, in no time, take a toll on internal work environment of organization and stifle individual, team, and overall effectiveness; resulting in chronic morale challenges and productivity problems.

The absence of trust and increased negative emotions may trigger employee withdrawal as individuals tend to protect themselves from negative situations [11]. This withdrawal could be in the form of not reporting to the organization, or not devoting the required amount of time and effort for the job to be completed. This passive withdrawal could threaten to turn into active deviance over a period of time and could prove detrimental for the organization.

Effect on Social Cohesion in the Organization

Baumeister and Leary [3] argue that individuals have a basic need to maintain long-term positive relationships with others. To satisfy this need, individuals require frequent interactions with the same people in a stable environment.

Technology-mediated communication and social distancing measures, which have become the needs of the hour, have drastically reduced face-to face interactions between team members. This threatens to weaken the formation of authentic relationships among employees; increasing chances of miscommunication. Failure to form positive social bonds can prove corrosive for social cohesion in the long run, i.e., the degree of attraction an individual holds for his / her group members as well as aspiration of the group members to remain intact may suffer [22].

Team effectiveness would also suffer as a result of unsuccessful team interaction, collaboration, and coordination between the team members [7]. In low-cohesion groups, a significant amount of energy is spent on maintaining the group and, therefore, efforts directed toward decision making and goal accomplishment are shifted toward conflict management in the group [22]. This could break the collective sense for the organizational members and diminish their attachment with each other.

The organizational changes due to COVID-19 could induce employee isolation. Whether it is working from home or reduced interaction at workplace, the changes will isolate individuals from their colleagues and teammates. The isolation can be either professional, in which individual fears not being included in organizational matters; or social isolation, in which individual misses out on the informal interactions within the organization [13]. Isolation can hamper physiological and psychological well-being of individuals. Employees living alone, with fear and panic in their minds, might resort to harmful health activities like smoking, excess alcohol consumption, or overeating as psychological relief mechanisms. Socially isolated individuals experience more fear and mistrust than others due to a lack of social network and support [4] and exhibit lower levels of productivity than others [5].

Linking the Factors to Social Control Theory

The breakdown of trust, along with the spiraling negative emotions and reduced social cohesion induced due to the sudden and drastic changes in organizations could prove harmful, not only to an individual's well-being but also for the organization.

These factors would negatively impact the fundamental elements of SCT and pave the way for counterproductive work behaviors. The attachment with other employees and organization reduces due to reduced face-to face interactions and growing mistrust in workplaces; commitment levels drop due to the preoccupation with fear and panic; and involvement gradually decreases due to the intensifying uncertainty and reduced attraction between the team members. The belief systems may take longer to change, since they are formed over a long period of time. These conditions invariably intensify the likelihood of an individual to commit acts of deviance against colleagues or the organization. The interplay of individual factors (such as personality traits, emotional regulation, etc.) and contextual factors (such as degree of surveillance, work design / arrangements, etc.) influence the nature and intensity of the deviant act [6].

The manifestation of acts under these circumstances may range from withdrawal (putting in fewer hours at work) to more active ones such as going against team norms, competing nonbeneficially, or blaming co-workers for one's own mistakes, gossiping or creating rumors about other co-workers or engaging in verbal abuse and cyberdeviant malicious activities, placing the organization at threat. The effects of these deviant behaviors may appear initially superficial, but if unchecked, could damage the organization.

Organizational Interventions

To mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic, organizations need to work to alleviate negative emotions through compassionate practices before these emotions trigger deviance toward the organization. Attempts to change the behavioral patterns without changing the underpinning negative emotions would prove unsuccessful.

Compassionate policies would signal care and concern to the employees. For instance, if feasible, offering employees paid sick leave and covering the treatment of COVID-19 under organization's medical policy would alleviate their stress and cultivate a feeling of being cared for. Giving consideration to individual specific challenges (e.g., caring responsibilities at home, reliance on public transport for commute, etc.) when planning meetings, preparing work rosters, and assigning deadlines would showcase values of respect and mutuality. Regular check-ups to assess the psychological and physical health of the employees would also help. Some organizations have brought on board therapists and psychologists to support employees to manage the negative thoughts and anxiety accompanying this crisis situation. These interventions may be particularly helpful for employees living alone to help reduce their feelings of isolation.

Regular webinars for well-being, sessions for mental and physical fitness like yoga and Zumba for employees, and special sessions for the children of employees to diminish the stress related to childcare, are other measures being adopted by the organizations globally [17].

Artificial intelligence and emotion-sensing technologies can go a long way in detecting and measuring negative emotions by decoding facial expressions, analyzing voice patterns, monitoring eye movements [18]. However, to understand the occurrence and to reduce the level of arousal of these emotions, proper psychological consultation needs to be undertaken. Technologies, like these, need to be used with utmost care, with the aim of improving individual's well-being and not intruding on his/her privacy.

Leader's role, more than ever before, has become crucial in supporting employees to cope with these sudden changes, adapt to the new work arrangements and build team bonds despite the challenges. Regular communication about how the organization is managing the crisis with steps (short-term and long-term) planned for future could allay fears. This would build trust through transparency and reduce chances of miscommunication.

Equally, platforms need to be created to gather employee feedback and concerns so as to be able to address them in a timely manner and facilitate greater involvement of the employees.

To improve the cohesion levels, virtual team-building exercises, virtual knowledge sharing sessions, collaborative problem-solving mechanisms, etc., could be introduced. The goal of these exercises should be clear, with positive impacts on the participants and the organizational outcomes [14].

Leaders too, may need training and support on how to communicate during crisis and manage team member's anxiety levels, while dealing with their own anxieties. Wider crisis management teams could support individual leaders in disseminating information about the guidelines, protocols, policies, etc., being adopted by the organization.

Together, these interventions could help to diminish feelings of loneliness among employees, increase their interactions with other organizational members, and enhance their commitment.

Conclusion

The unprecedented effects of the current COVID-19 pandemic will impact organizations in inconceivable ways. Fear and anxiety induced by the pandemic and the resulting measures taken by nations and organizations risk becoming chronic over time, if not managed effectively.

Negative emotions emanating from social isolation, job insecurity and financial worries, concerns for personal and family well-being, among other aspects threaten to weaken workplace bonds, erode trust and trigger counterproductive work behaviors.

In this article, we highlight the dimensions along which organizations could face challenges due to the pandemic and indicate the associated interventions to mitigate its effect.

Organizations need to respond proactively to alleviate fears, build trust, and improve the physical and mental well-being of their employees. Prominent interventions to support employees at this juncture should: a) adopt compassionate policies that convey organizational care and concern for their employees; b) strengthen workplace bonds to help employees feel attached to their work and colleagues; c) help employees break the cycle of negative emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.

When employees have positive emotions, they feel rejuvenated to work, and trust their co-workers and the organizations as a whole. Attempts to modify the negative emotions would break the cyclical nature of the harmful factors that could lead an employee to commit deviant activities. Trust, however, is fragile and easier to destroy than to create. Continuous steps, therefore, need to be undertaken to assess levels of trust and build them on an ongoing basis.

Biographies

Akanksha Malik received the B.A. and M.A. degrees in psychology from Delhi University, New Delhi, India, in 2012 and 2014, respectively. She is currently working toward the doctoral degree in management (HR/OB) with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India. Her research interest includes contemporary deviant behaviors at workplaces, especially with regards to the changing nature of work and workplace due to technological advancements, increased flexibility and mobility of workforce.

Shuchi Sinha received the Ph.D. degree from Royal Holloway, University of London, U.K. She has taught and researched in the U.K. and India. She is currently an Assistant Professor with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India. Her research interests include counterproductive work behaviors, identity work, emotions at work, mindfulness, and future of work. Her research has been published in international journals of repute like the Journal of International Business Studies, Culture and Organization, Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, among several others. Prior to her doctoral research, she has worked as a consultant in the areas of change management, leadership development, and talent assessment.

Sanjay Goel received the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA. He is currently a Professor and the Chair of the Information Technology Management Department, School of Business, Director of the Center for Forensics Analytics Complexity Energy Transportation and Security, University at Albany, Albany, NY, USA. He is also the Director of the Digital Forensics Program at the University. His research interests include information security, cyberwarfare, music piracy, complex systems, security behavior, and cyberphysical systems. He is actively engaged in policy efforts on cybersecurity norms, CBMs, and cybertreaties. He has received grant funding totaling over 10 million dollars from multiple sources. He established the Annual Symposium on Information Assurance and the International Conference on Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime (ICDF2C). He has more than 100 articles in refereed journals and conference publications including top journals.