Workload, Techno Overload, and Behavioral Stress During COVID-19 Emergency: The Role of Job Crafting in Remote Workers

The radical changes deriving from the COVID-19 emergency have heavily upset some of the most familiar routines of daily work life. Abruptly, many workers have been forced to face the difficulties that come with switching to remote working. Basing on the theoretical framework proposed by the Job Demands-Resources model, the purpose of this paper was to explore the effect of work overload (workload and techno overload), on behavioral stress, meant as an outcome linked to the health impairment process. Furthermore, the aim of the study was to explore the mediating role of job crafting, considered as a second-order construct consisting of two dimensions (increasing structural resources and increasing challenging demands) in the abovementioned relation. Participants were 530 workers experiencing remote working or work-from-home during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Italy (March-May 2020). Hypotheses were explored by using three different latent variables, measured reflexively through indicators on a 5-point scale, extracted from validated questionnaires. Data analysis was performed through Structural Equation Modeling; to test the mediation, bootstrap validation was computed (