key: cord-0890642-igaswuda
authors: Prochazka, Jakub; Scheel, Tabea; Pirozek, Petr; Kratochvil, Tomas; Civilotti, Cristina; Bollo, Martina; Maran, Daniela Acquadro
title: Data on work-related consequences of COVID-19 pandemic for employees across Europe
date: 2020-08-18
journal: Data Brief
DOI: 10.1016/j.dib.2020.106174
sha: 190e4c1f1e2811d9538f0c101a46e46416987f05
doc_id: 890642
cord_uid: igaswuda

The COVID-19 pandemic influenced the work of employees across all continents. This article presents raw data that may be used to describe how the pandemic affected the work of employees in four European countries and how it influenced their job attitudes, feelings and work performance. In total, 726 respondents from Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Italy filled out an extensive online survey and provided information about changes in their workload, work difficulty, income, social contact, work from home, task performance and organizational commitment during the pandemic, and about the risk of being infected by COVID-19 during their workday. The employees also reported their actual work performance, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, intention to leave and irritation in the time of the pandemic. To reveal factors that might help employees cope with pandemic, the respondents filled out established questionnaires measuring servant leadership of their supervisor, perceived organizational support, social support provided by colleagues, their own occupational self-efficacy, resilience, job crafting and readiness for change. The data is unique as it was collected in a specific situation during the pandemic, when the work of employees was affected by security measures and lockdown introduced by governments in countries where they worked.

https://www.vlada.cz/cz/epidemie-koronaviru/dulezite-informace/mimoradna-opatreni-_-co-aktualneplati-180234/). In Slovakia, the government declared a state of emergency on March 11 th and lifted it on June 14 th . During the first weeks of the state of emergency, the government introduced several restrictions. Starting on April 22 nd , the first phase of the gradual release of security measures has begun. The eighth phase of release started on July 1 st and even after this date some restrictions still applied (Government office of the Slovak Republic, https://korona.gov.sk). In Germany, some federal states and their cities started to declare the state of disaster on March 16 th . On March 22 nd , the government and the federal states introduced restriction of contact and activities. On April 20 th , the government presented a 10-point-plan for the national health system and a week later, on April 27 th , the obligations to wear a mask or other safety devices begun. Between April 30 th and May 6 th , the gradual easing of the restriction for public activities had begun. Due to new infections in some areas between the end of May and the beginning of June, the responsible federal states decided to reinstate restrictions on public activities (German Federal Ministry of Health, https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/coronavirus/chronik-coronavirus.html). In Italy, the government declared the state of emergency on January 31 st . The first public-activity restrictions (phase 1) were instated on February 23 rd and since February 25 th the government had been introducing new restrictions. On May 16 th , the government launched the so-called phase 2 (May 18 th -June 14 th ), restoring some commercial and public activities with the obligation of the use of safety devices. On June 11 th , the government announced phase 3 (June 15 th -July 14 th ) which still loosens -but does not remove -containment measures (Government office of the Italy, http://www.salute.gov.it/). The lockdown and various security measures may have had serious consequences for employees. Some could not work or had to work from home and lose social (work) contact. Some employees lost part of their income due to the employer's problems or because their employer had no work for them. For other employees, the work has become more demanding and difficult due to the need to comply with safety measures or due to an increase in the workload (e.g. paramedics). Some employees took a risk of being infected with COVID-19 during their workday (e.g. cashiers, bus drivers). However, the means to counter the worst effects differed considerably across nations (e.g. short-time work, financial support). Our data describe the consequences of the pandemic and the security measures on the work conditions of employees in different European countries and the attitudes, perceived performance and resources of employees in the time of a pandemic. We also examined personal and organizational factors that could mitigate the potential negative impact of a pandemic situation. The data were obtained in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Italy during May 2020 and at the beginning of June 2020, when most security measures were still in place and employees had at least one month of experience with working under security measures. In total, 1.372 respondents started our survey. We excluded some of them from the sample according to the pre-set conditions. 552 respondents did not answer 30% or more questions related to the research variables. Another 22 respondents were employed in their organization for less than 5 months and therefore could not assess the changes associated with the pandemic. 72 respondents did not work in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Italy. Therefore, the presented dataset consists of responses of 726 people who were employed in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Italy during the COVID- Table 1 and Table 2 . Table 3 describes how the pandemic and lockdown affected the work of employees in each of the 4 countries. Table 4 describes the attitudes, feelings and perceived performance of employees in the time of the pandemic and also the perceived change in their performance and organizational commitment in comparison to the time before pandemic. Table 5 describes organization-related (servant leadership of the supervisor, perceived organizational support, social support from colleagues) and personal (resilience, occupational self-efficacy, job crafting, readiness for change) characteristics that might help employees cope with the pandemic situation and lockdown. The variables that were measured by scales with several items (see Table 7 ) were computed as a mean of all valid answers provided by each respondent. The McDonald's omegas which indicate the internal consistency of the scales are presented in Table 7 . Code book and all variables are available in the associated dataset (http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/77dcsp2vcw.2) in raw form. The dataset enables describing and analysing the work-relates consequences of COVID-19 pandemic in various countries and examining the moderation effect of organizational and personal factors. 

We obtained the data via an online survey. The survey was promoted at social networks, in articles in online newspapers, by direct emails and in a university newsletter. We formulated new items to measure the impact of pandemic and lockdown on the work of employees and to measure job satisfaction and intention to leave (see Table 6 ). To measure organizational commitment, work 

Informed consent was obtained from all respondents before they started the survey. They were informed that the survey was anonymous and that they could stop at any time.

We modified the instructions and response scale (see Appendix) of Individual Work Performance Questionnaire and Klein's unidimensional scale of commitment to be able to measure the change in task performance and organizational commitment during the pandemic. We also modified the instructions of Irritation scale and Work intensification scale to measure irritation and work intensification in time of the pandemic and lockdown (see Appendix). The survey was available in English, German, Czech (for Czech and Slovak respondents) and Italian. We used official and published translations of each questionnaire if it was available. If there was no official translation, we did two to three independent translations from English and then a backtranslation to English to ensure the quality of the new language adaptation. In the German survey, we used the original German scales (see Table 7) for measuring irritation, occupational self-efficacy, social support and work intensification. We also used official translations of Job Crafting Scale [1], Klein's Unidimensional Scale of Commitment

we used published translation of Klein's Unidimensional Scale of Commitment [2] and Servant Leadership Questionnaire [3], official unpublished translation of Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (translated by Dostalova et al., www.connordavidsonresiliencescale.com) and existing unpublished translations of Individual Work Performance Questionnaire (psychometric characteristics available in [4]) and Survey of Perceived Organizational Support

The conceptualization and measurement of job crafting: Validation of a German version of the Job Crafting Scale, Zeitschrift für Arbeits-und Organisationspsychologie

The Czech adaptation of Klein et al's. Unidimensional Target-neutral Scale of Commitment. E a M: Ekonomie a Management

Translation and adaptation of servant leadership questionnaire into Czech language

Dotazník designu pracovní pozice (WDQ): Validační studie českého překladu

Seeking challenges, individual adaptability and career growth in the relationship between workload and contextual performance: A two-wave study

The Work-related Basic Need Satisfaction Scale: An Italian validation

Concerning the structural equivalency of nine language adaptations of the Irritation Scale

Supporto organizzativo: validazione della versione italiana della survey of perceived organizational support (versione a 8 item) [Organizational support: validation of the Italian version of the survey of perceived organizational support (8-item version)

The Italian version of the job crafting scale (JCS)

Development and validation of an instrument for assessing job demands arising from accelerated change: The Intensification of Job Demands Scale (IDS)

Van der Beek, Construct validity of the Individual Work Performance Questionnaire

The assessment of commitment: Advantages of a unidimensional, target-free approach

Servant leadership: Validation of a short form of the SL-28

Perceived supervisor support: contributions to perceived organizational support and employee retention

Development of a new resilience scale: The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC)

Transformationale Führung und Veränderungsbereitschaft. Stressoren und Ressourcen als relevante Kontextbedingungen [Transformational leadership and willingness to change. Stressors and resources as relevant contextual conditions

A short version of the Occupational Self-efficacy Scale: Structural and construct validity across five countries

The impact of job crafting on job demands, job resources, and wellbeing

Organizational Change Questionnaire -Climate of change, processes, and readiness: Development of a new instrument

There are two pre-registered studies that are connected to the dataset (osf.io/9q6vt, osf.io/9r6fw). We want to thank the students from a Master course at the Europa-Universität Flensburg (Vivian Kra, Yulia Kuroedova, Amelie Meiners, Micha Remer, Annabel Richter, René Steffes, Idris Yousofi, Chen Zhiyang) for their help in translating several questionnaires to German and the German data collection. The research was supported by Masaryk University and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport.

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships which have, or could be perceived to have, influenced the work reported in this article.

Modified instructions for Individual Work Performance Questionnaire for measuring change in task performance and for Klein's unidimensional scale of commitment for measuring change in organizational commitment Now use the same items to compare your performance and attitudes in the past month during the pandemic and lockdown to your performance and attitudes in 3 months before the pandemic situation and lockdown occurred.The answer "significantly less often" / "much less" means that your performance/attitude is lower/weaker now than it was before the pandemic. Now, in the time of pandemic and lockdown (in comparison to the situation before the pandemic and lockdown)...

1 = significantly less often, 2 = slightly less often, 3 = similarly often, 4 = slightly more often, 5 = significantly more often Modified response scale for Klein's unidimensional scale of commitment for measuring change in organizational commitment 1 = much less, 2 = slightly less, 3 = similarly, 4 = slightly more, 5 = much more

Please indicate how much you agree with the following statements.In the past month, during the pandemic situation:

In the past month, during the pandemic and lockdown…