key: cord-1044295-cwev7c2b
authors: Tokdemir, Gul
title: Software professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey: Factors affecting their mental well-being and work engagement in the home-based work setting
date: 2022-03-01
journal: J Syst Softw
DOI: 10.1016/j.jss.2022.111286
sha: 8431ba31878de4b5371a75475c51b71184795ccb
doc_id: 1044295
cord_uid: cwev7c2b

With the COVID-19 pandemic, strict measures have been taken to slow down the spread of the virus, and consequently, software professionals have been forced to work from home. However, home-based working entails many challenges, as the home environment is shared by the whole family simultaneously under pandemic conditions. The aim of this study is to explore software professionals’ mental well-being and work engagement and the relationships of these variables with job strain and resource-related factors in the forced home-based work setting during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online cross-sectional survey based on primarily well-known, validated scales was conducted with software professionals in Turkey. The analysis of the results was performed through hierarchical multivariate regression. The results suggest that despite the negative effect of job strain, the resource-related protective factors, namely, sleep quality, decision latitude, work-life balance, exercise predict mental well-being. Additionally, work engagement is predicted by job strain, sleep quality, and decision latitude. The results of the study will provide valuable insights to management of the software companies and professionals about the precautions that can be taken to have a better home-based working experience such as allowing greater autonomy and enhancing the quality of sleep and hence mitigating the negative effects of pandemic emergency situations on software professionals’ mental well-being and work engagement.

J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof [49] [50] [51] [52] . Work-related stress could also cause less dedication and less focus on job activities. Accordingly, job strain and work engagement are found to be negatively associated [53] .

One of the most well-known models of job strain was developed by Karasek et al., which considers workload and job demand control for assessing stress at work [54] , and is referred to as job strain.

It is reported that the worst work circumstances happen when there is a high workload and low job demand control with no available social support, which results in high job strain. Hence the social support factor was included in the job strain model [55] [56] .

Particularly, software development requires developers to perform various tasks with different roles hence they are forced to manage their resources in handling activities properly resulting in complications [57] . The nature of activities of software development life cycle necessitates collaboration between software professionals where they continuously communicate with each other, exchange and share data, resources, and ideas which may contribute to higher levels of stress [58] and as a result may affect project success, as well. In the study of software development teams of 180 participants, work stressors were found to be positively associated with burnout measures [59] . In another study that explores stress, empowerment, and performance in agile teams, it is revealed that empowered teams handle stress better [60] .

In many studies, affective states, such as well-being, feelings, and emotions of software professionals were shown to be connected with their work performance [61] [62] [63] . Accordingly, it is shown that stress has adverse effects on both developers and hence on positive work outcomes and is a quite common problem among software professionals [50] [52] [57] that has prolonged negative effects [50] [64] . For example, in the study of 372 software developers, it is found that excess levels of work stress affected the developer's mental health negatively [65] .

Job strain was also listed as a factor affecting individuals in home-based work settings [66] . It is also revealed that remote work during the pandemic could lead to burnouts among software practitioners because of continuous working with insufficient breaks and long tiring virtual meetings [21] [25] . Supportively, it is also mentioned that, working from home exclusively may have adverse effects on both the mental and physical health of software developers which may J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof signal a possible breakdown [67] . Likewise, the benchmark report of software assurance authority, Software Improvement Group (SIG) analysed more than 6000 systems worldwide in SIG Sigrid® software assurance platform and revealed a decrease in average coding effort during the pandemic with respect to the previous year [68] . The report pointed out that build quality performance was also dropped. Additionally, software practitioners reported less attention and concentration to their work during the home-based working period as mentioned to be the underlying factors of this decline [68] which may herald work disengagement from work activities during the pandemic.

Additional to the workload pressures, forced home-based work during the pandemic is also reported to change social interactions among software practitioners as well [25] which is considered as the worst work circumstance according to the job strain model [55] [56] .

Conservation of Resources (COR) theory is extensively used for explaining burnout [69] which states that when the resources an individual possess are reduced or endangered, he or she may try to preserve them to prevent more loss [70] . It provides a model for preventing resource loss, preserving present resources, and gaining resources needed for engaging in proper behaviors.

According to the conservation of resources theory [16] , employees' divergent behavior at work may be linked to loss or thread to one's resources as a consequence of stressors at work such as executive politics, formalities, and role uncertainty [71] [72] . Supportively, a positive association between stressors at work and divergent behavior which was shown through empirical studies [73] [74] [75] are linked to undesirable emotions [76] [77] . Additionally, Conservation of Resources (COR) theory points out that the primary motivation of the individuals that is to construct, defend, and nurture their resources, are crucial mechanisms that define their perceptions of stress and their coping strategies for it in order to safeguard the self and the societal connections that support the self [78] . Such coping mechanisms may result in mental and physical exhaustion [79] [80] and hence may associate with disengagement from work activities [81] .

Especially with the negative influence of pandemic on workers resulting in reduced resources, the effect of software professionals' job strain on mental well-being and work engagement requires further investigation. Hence, based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the following hypotheses are posed for software professionals:

J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof H1. Job strain predicts software professional's current mental well-being negatively.

H2. Job strain predicts software professional's current work engagement negatively.

Sleep quality embraces both quantifiable and objective characteristics of sleep, like length, or latency, and subjective features like depth [82] which is an important factor in modern cultures as deprived sleep quality is a growing problem [83] . The positive effect of high sleep quality on wellbeing is reported as it improves inadequate governing resources and enables self-control mechanisms [84] [85] . Accordingly, low sleep quality is mentioned to be related to discrepancies in self-control mechanisms [86] and hence results in low mental well-being [84] . Similarly, reduced sleep duration causes discrepancies in self-control such as diminished decision-making capability, and attention management [87] . Disrupted sleep is shown to have a negative effect in the workplace such as low productivity as well [88] [89] . Similarly, the adverse effect of one-night sleep deprivation of novice developers on software development tasks is shown which is found to impact software development quality negatively [90] . Low sleep quality disconcerts decision processes and limits one's capacity for emotional regulation and is found to be a valuable reserve for daily work engagement of workers [91] .

Even though home-based working can produce desirable work outcomes, it could have adverse effects on the employees such as higher degree of work pressure and work-life imbalance [92] which can magnify software practitioners' stress at work and home that may resemble itself as insomnia or burnout [8] .

The isolation through lockdowns and forced home-based working that resulted in amplified levels of stress would affect the sleep routines of software professionals which, as a valuable personal resource, could also affect well-being [93] and work performance [94] . Accordingly, an increased level of sleep disorder was mentioned by software practitioners during the pandemic [6] . Likewise, the stress pandemic caused has shown to affect sleep quality and created instability in family life [95] . Hence sleep quality is considered a resource-based factor. Specifically, poor sleep quality could result in the loss of self-regulatory resources and hence exhaustion, which may result in J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof low engagement in work activities and low mental well-being of software professionals. Hence, based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the following hypotheses are proposed:

H3. Sleep quality predicts software professional's current mental well-being positively.

H4. Sleep quality predicts software professional's current work engagement positively.

Decision latitude of job control refers to the capability of a worker's control over the daily tasks performed at work [96] that enables controlling of work events and activities, usage of creativity and competence, and gripping new skills. By enabling authority in task-relevant decisions [97] , it may mitigate the adverse effects of job stress of employees [98] , influences well-being [96] , and allows work engagement [99] . Among other factors, job decision latitude (JDL), through job autonomy and skill utilization and development [54] [96] , is shown to be a strong predictor of work engagement and contrariwise [100] [101] [102] .

Decision latitude is a necessary resource that enables goal setting and supports individuals in managing problematic tasks or high workloads [103] and is reported to attenuate stress in the workplace [104] . Decision latitude, through autonomy to control activities at work, would support the development of coping strategies to handle the negative effect of job stress [105] hence, high levels of autonomy at work is linked to positive employee outcomes [106] and well-being [107] .

Accordingly, low levels of decision latitude and job strain is shown to affect employees' wellbeing [108] . As workers may realize the need for autonomy through decision latitude [37] , it enhances work engagement and motivation as a result [100] [102] [109] [110] .

Even though home-based working would strengthen employee autonomy and hence may serve for employee well-being and engagement, it may cause psychological burden for some workers with unbalanced affective states [111] . Pandemic is reported to deepen or speed up the levels of psychological disorders [112] . Hence, being a resource-related factor, the relation between decision latitude, mental well-being, and work engagement of software professionals during 

Work-life balance is experienced when an individual can allocate personal resources like energy, and time effectually to different life areas [113] . Hence, conflict occurs between these two worlds when limited resources cannot meet the opposing demands [114] . Balancing work and family responsibilities is a growing challenge for most of the employees. Particularly, in the last two decades, the borderline between individual's work and life contexts has become quite unclear because of the changes in the family structures, women's involvement as labor force, and teleworking opportunities [115] .

Even though home-based working is shown to produce desirable work outcomes, it could have adverse effects on the employees such as higher degree of work pressure and work-life imbalance [92] . The lack of work-life balance has been shown to have damaging consequences such as low life and job satisfaction, somatic symptoms [116] , worsened health and well-being [117] , and low performance at work [118] . Particularly, the stress pandemic caused has been shown to create instability in family life [95] . Hence exploring the relationship between work-life balance, mental well-being, and work engagement, in the specific context of the pandemic, would enable our understanding of software practitioners' home-based work experience further.

The conflicts between work and life contexts consume one's limited resources and lead to deteriorated self-control [119] . This may affect an individual's behavior and mental and physical J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof health that is connected to organizational performance as well. In a high work-life imbalance situation, an individual needs to answer to the conflicting demands [120] which may result in exhaustion of personal resources [121] . During forced remote work arrangement, some of the software practitioners faced challenges in balancing work and private life and concentrating their daily work [25] . According to the conservation of resources (COR) theory, individuals try to preserve their resources or reduce them when they are exhausted or they feel their resources are threatened [16] . Consequently, when work-family imbalance may result in exhaustion of resources, individual may withdraw from work responsibilities that results in low work engagement. Previous studies have shown that work engagement and work-life balance constructs are related as well [122] [123] [124] [125] .

Drawing from COR theory, considering work-life balance as a resource-related factor that would affect mental well-being and work engagement of software professionals, the following hypotheses are posed:

H7. Work-life balance predicts software professional's current mental well-being positively.

H8. Work-life balance predicts software professional's current work engagement positively.

Physical exercise is an activity performed to pursue physical fitness and hence overall health. The effect of exercise ranges from positive biological changes [126] [127] to enrichments in cognitive functioning [128] , quality of life [129] and mental well-being [130] [131] [132] [133] .

Earlier research has strong evidence on the positive benefits of exercise both on physical and as a consequence on the psychological health of people at any age [134] [135] [136] . The connection between biological and psychological factors related to exercise is a very well-known finding which improves the well-being of individuals [137] .

Several researches report the effectiveness of exercise in the improvement of mental well-being and several positive effects of exercise on several positive well-being factors, such as mood and anxiety have been specified [138] [139] [140] . Particularly, health and well-being have significant J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof effects on employees, as well as on the organization in which they work [141] as it helps them to recover from the negative psychological effects generated during the day [142] . Exercise can be referred to as an important resource for the well-being of employees which serves for improved performance [143] . In the work setting, the positive effect of regular exercise on employees' wellbeing has been shown [144] and the connection between exercise and mental well-being is mentioned as well [145] .

The connection between exercise and work engagement has been researched in several studies which have found contradicting results. While exercise is shown to be connected to work engagement [146] as its physiological effects result in improved well-being, reduced stress, burnout, sickness absenteeism, and presentism [147] [148] , other studies found no effects of healthpromoting interventions on work engagement [149] . However, Strijk et al. found a significant effect of a yoga program on the vigor sub-component of work engagement [147] .

According to broaden-and-build theory, the positive emotions developed following the exercise may expand one's variety of thoughts and actions and permit personal resources to be constructed [150] . Particularly, positive emotions such as joy, interest, and contentment broaden one's thoughtaction repertoire that would lead to improved problem-solving capability by providing a wider perspective to handle stressors effectively [151] . Moreover, the construction of persistent resource reserves to handle upcoming challenges would be possible [150] . In the scope of pandemic homebased working, people who apply healthy lifestyle interventions such as exercise would develop better coping strategies by building lasting resource reserves that would affect software practitioners' mental well-being and work engagement. Especially, forced isolation, lockdowns, and decreased number of social activities at work may lead to low levels of physical activity as reported by software practitioners [25] that would impact their resources negatively. Hence, based on the conservation of resources (COR) and broaden-and-build theories, the following hypotheses are posed for software professionals:

H9. Exercise predicts software professional's current mental well-being positively.

H10. Exercise predicts software professional's current work engagement positively.

Although the relationships among job strain and resource-related factors and mental well-being and work engagement were researched in various studies and various contexts, this study will provide a new perspective on the relationship among these factors as it addresses challenges introduced by COVID-19 on the home-based working of software professionals.

The current research was conducted as an online survey to explore factors contributing to the mental well-being and work engagement of software professionals during the pandemic that followed the guidelines specified by Kitchenham and Peeger [152] . Survey including questions on sociodemographic characteristics, home-based work-related parameters during COVID-19, validated scales related to the participants' mental well-being, work engagement, sleep quality, work-related psychosocial characteristic of job strain and decision latitude and close-ended questions for work-life balance and physical exercise habits, was administered which were all in Turkish.

The pool of participants consisted of 321 volunteer software professionals who accessed the survey through an e-link that was posted on social media channel groups of software professionals in Turkey between May 18 and June 11, 2020. The purposive sampling method was applied, and the electronic survey tool Google Forms was used. Informed consent was given by each participant. working for a private company followed by 9% who were employed at a public organization. The majority of the participants (64%) worked for companies with lower than 250 employees and the remaining ones worked for companies with 250 and higher numbers of employees. Regarding the position, 16% of the respondents specified their position as engineers, 33% were specialists, 23%

were senior specialists, 18% were managers, 6% were directors, and the remaining 4% chose the 'other' option.

The for the PSQI scale [82] .

For work-related psychosocial components namely job strain and decision latitude, the 17-item Demand-Control-Support Questionnaire (DCSQ) was employed. The DCSQ scale was developed by Karasek and colleagues [154] with three dimensions: work demands (e.g., "Does your job require you to work very hard?"), decision latitude (e.g., "Do you have the opportunity to learn new things in your work?"), and social support at work (e.g., "People at work understand that I may have a "bad" day") on a 4-point Likert scale (1= never, 4= often). The 4 th and the 9 th items were reverse coded. Higher scores indicate higher work demand, decision latitude, and perceived social support at work. In this scale, the interaction of work demand and decision latitude defines the job strain level where job strain is calculated by division of work demand by decision latitude and high strain is considered for >1 values [54] [154] . Turkish version of the scale is proved to be a valid and reliable instrument by Demiral and colleagues [155] and each dimension yielded a J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof sufficient reliability score (Cronbach's α= 68, .78, .77, respectively). Sufficient internal consistency value was gathered in the current study (Cronbach's α = .60, .69, .79, respectively).

One close-ended question was created by the author and asked to assess the ability of separating work and private life as follows: "I can separate the work and private life." (0= no, 1=yes)

Two open-ended questions were created by the author and asked to assess the habits of physical exercise: "Approximately how many times did you do exercise in a week during home-based working?" and "Approximately how many times did you do exercise in a day during home-based working?". A composite score was created for these two items by averaging the numerical responses given. Higher scores indicate higher time allocated to exercise.

Mental well-being was measured by the short version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) scale. GHQ is developed by Goldberg and Williams (1988) and has been widely used as a brief assessment tool to assess mental health [156] [157] . The Turkish version of the scale is proved to be valid and reliable by Kılıç with sufficient internal consistency (Cronbach's α=.78) [158] . Each of the 12 items of GHQ-12 was rated based on a 4-point Likert scale (0= no, not at all, 3=much more than usual) and summed up for the scoring. Higher scores indicate higher psychological distress and worse mental well-being. A sample item was "Have you recently been able to enjoy your normal day-to-day activities?". In this study, a robust internal consistency value was gathered (Cronbach's α = .88). [160] . The scale was used to evaluate the characteristics of work in terms of vigor (e.g., "At my work, I feel bursting with energy", dedication (e.g., "I find the work that I do full of meaning and purpose"), and self-absorption (e.g., "When I am working, I forget everything else around me") dimensions. 17 items were rated based on a 7-point Likert scale (0=never, 6=every day) which constitutes the total work engagement score when summed up. Higher scores indicate higher work engagement. In this study, a robust internal consistency value was gathered (Cronbach's α=.84).

The survey included demographic and non-scale questions related to home-based work setting at the beginning and the questions of the scales of mental well-being and work engagement, job strain, and sleep quality followed. At the beginning of the survey, the research aim was explained and contact details were given. Before each scale, participants were instructed to answer the questions in the context of home-based work setting during the pandemic. The questionnaire was piloted with 31 software professionals to confirm the understandability of the instructions and the questions which were not in the used scales. After several iterations, some questions and instructions were restated to enhance the understandability. The original questions of the scales were applied "as it is" to address validity and reliability concerns. Participants had no timing restrictions but completing the survey lasted approximately 15 minutes. The survey was anonymous and no personal data was collected. After the gathered feedback, improvements were finalized and participants were asked to answer the survey using the link to the Google form. After the collection of data, it was sorted, and invalid responses were removed.

The present research is designed to understand the effects of job strain and resource-related variables as sleep quality, work-life balance, having exercise, and having decision latitude on mental well-being and work engagement of software professionals during pandemic home-based working. As aforementioned before, the former group of variables is conceptualized as replenishers of depleted psychological resources during home-based working in pandemic conditions. J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof

Statistical analyses were conducted with IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0. The missing data analysis was conducted. The missing data were not at random and consistently observed in the sleep quality (PUKI) scale that 5 participants (1.6%) skipped the related items and were pair-wisely excluded from the analysis. To control for artificial effects and gather less noisy data, outlier analyses were performed and the outlier cases were removed. After outlier correction, the number of participants included in the further analyses remained 309. The prerequisite of normal distribution was checked from the skewness and kurtosis values for each continuous variable. Data for job strain and sleep quality showed higher kurtosis values than the acceptable range and were log-transformed to achieve normality. After transformation, data were proved to be normally distributed that all of the variables subjected to the analysis showed acceptable skewness and kurtosis values (range from -2 to +2) [161] . For the mental well-being, as higher scores indicate higher psychological distress and worse mental well-being, the responses were recorded to transform the higher values into lower corresponding values so that the higher mental well-being score corresponds to lower distress levels which is shown in Table 1 . Dummy variables were created for work-life balance and exercise habits.

Pearson product correlations were calculated among the variables of interest. All the psychological resource-related variables namely sleep quality, work-life balance, having exercise and having decision latitude; and job strain (in the reverse direction) significantly associated with well-being, the first dependent variable. Thus, the relations were in the expected direction. Job strain was expected to negatively predict the well-being scores and the resource-related variables were entered into the analysis to observe whether they counteract this negative relationship and act as a buffer. In a similar vein, for the work engagement, as the second dependent variable, only the sleep quality and decision latitude were associated significantly. In the rationale of the hierarchical regression modeling described below, sleep quality was the most powerful resource-related variable for the mental well-being and decision latitude for the work engagement. The relation J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof between work engagement and mental well-being was positively significant. All the significant relations were in the expected direction as seen in Table 1 and Table 2 .

To estimate the effects of several predictors on mental well-being and work engagement scores as dependent variables, two hierarchical multiple regression analysis were conducted. Variables were grouped based on the order of entrance to the analysis within the logic of hierarchical multiple regression to detect gradual improvement of the models. In the first block, only the demographic variables that are significantly associated with outcome variables are included to preserve power [162] . Marital status and job status (position: personnel, expert, senior expert, manager, and administrator) were entered as the significant ones. In the second block, job strain was entered.

The third block was created to test the relative specific contribution of the variables which were conceptualized as replenishers of depleted psychological resources. Sleep quality, work-life balance, having exercise and having decision latitude in one's job were entered with forward command.

In the first model with mental well-being scores as the outcome variable, demographic variables explained 5% of the variance. Positions of being expert, senior expert, and manager in one's job were significant predictors. In the second step, job strain increased the ability to predict well-being up to 12% (ΔR2 = .069, p = .000). Sleep quality explained 17% variance by itself and the total ultimate variance increased up to %35 with work-life balance (ΔR2 = .040, p = .000), exercise (ΔR2 = .014, p = .013) and decision latitude (ΔR2 = .008, p = .047). The third block accounted for 22% of the variance with sleep quality, work-life balance, and exercise. After the third block entered, the variance explained by job strain was no longer significant (β=.10, p = .067) and all the other variables remained significant.

In the second model with work engagement scores as the outcome variable, the same procedure was applied in the same order. Job-status was the only significant variable and accounted for 2% of the variance. Job strain increased the predictive power up to 8% (ΔR2 = .055, p = .000). Decision latitude explained 7% of the variance (ΔR2 = .069, p = .000) by itself and the remained significant J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof predictor was sleep quality with contributing to only 1% change of variance. The total ultimate variance was 15% and the third block explained 8% of the variance on work engagement. After the third block entered, the variance explained by job strain was no longer significant (β=-.04, p = .053) and decision latitude and sleep quality remained significant. Cumulative significant values of the regression models at the time they entered are shown in Table 2 and Table 3 both for mental well-being and work engagement. 

The current study has intended to explore predictors of mental well-being and work engagement The first finding reveals the positive association between software practitioners' mental well-being and work engagement. A similar relationship is reported in the pre-pandemic period [44] . Hence, organizations implementing interventions for supporting mental well-being of their employees would enable their dedication to work tasks that would result in better work outcomes.

Results suggest that all of the personal resource-related variables despite the negative effect of job [166] . Even though the flexible working arrangements were found to have the potential to improve work engagement by providing more autonomy [167] , and hence resulting in better performance [41] , with the strict COVID-19 constraints, the psychosocial environment might have been affected negatively. This may have a consequential effect on work engagement in the home-based work setting.

The results of this study suggest that despite the negative effect of job strain in home-based working, sleep quality is the most significant predictor supporting hypothesis H3. This is in line with prior research that mentions the positive effect of high sleep quality on well-being [84] [85] .

Additionally, parallel to the findings of the current study, sleep quality was found to be connected with the general well-being of software professionals during the COVID-19 period [19] . Russo et al. have used two questions to explore the effect of sleep quality on well-being during the pandemic J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof [19] . The current study has extended the findings of Russo Furthermore, the positive effect of exercise on sleep disorder was proven through various studies [175] [176] [177] . Exercising is considered to affect not only sleep quality but also well-being and mental health [178] [179] [180] . Likewise, the protective effect of exercising on sleep quality and hence on software practitioners' mental well-being and work engagement entails further research.

Furthermore, several studies also mention the relationship between sleep disorders and social media use in bed before sleep as it may cause cognitive stimulation diminishing ability to mentally shut down [181] as blue light produced by electronic devices disturbs falling into sleep [182] .

Further research may be conducted to explore the effect of social media use on software professionals' sleep quality.

Previous research on the effect of sleep on work engagement has found mixed results. Disrupted sleep was found to result in reduced self-control [89] , diminished productivity [88] and positive effect on work engagement [183] . Lanaj et al. found no relationship between sleep duration and work engagement but they found that the relationship between low sleep duration and ego depletion resulted in reduced work engagement [184] . Diestel et al. found that sleep quality affects work engagement positively [183] . One of the results of the current study states that despite the negative effect of job strain in home-based working, sleep quality explained 1% of the variability, found to be connected with general well-being measured by questions as a part of the psychological needs scale [19] . In the context of pandemic, supporting software practitioners managing their work flexibly may help to satisfy their expectations for autonomy [19] . Decision latitude is a factor describing control on the job, explicitly, enables authority in task-relevant decisions [97] .

Resources in the job environments were shown to predict work engagement and well-being through increased autonomy and job satisfaction [185] . Particularly software work requires autonomy, and longing for constant learning compared to traditional occupations [8] [186] [187] ,

supportively the results suggest that decision latitude is a predictive factor for both mental wellbeing and work engagement during the pandemic period.

Another finding of this study shows that work-life balance predicts mental well-being positively hence hypothesis H7 is confirmed. Accordingly, several studies have explored work and family life conflicts [188] and mentioned the adverse effects of workplace and family changes on workfamily life balance [189] . Moreover, some workers may have difficulty in adapting to home-based working as it encompasses less social interaction and managing private and work life effectively [11] . Supportively, the participants' easiness in getting used to the new home-based working routine and ability to separate work-private life are related to mental well-being [190] [191] .

Consequently, as work-family conflict results in exhaustion of limited resources and leads to deteriorated self-control [119] , it would affect mental well-being and work engagement.

However, another result of the regression analysis states that there is no association between worklife balance and work engagement. Hence, hypothesis H8 is rejected. It was expected that as workfamily imbalance results in exhaustion of resources, individuals may withdraw from work responsibilities that results in low work engagement based on COR theory. It was surprising to observe that the current analysis has shown that there is no association between work-life balance and work engagement. This outcome is not consistent with earlier research that showed remarkable J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof relationships between those variables. The prior studies have shown that work engagement and work-life balance constructs are related [122] [123] and linked [125] . One possible explanation that illuminated the contradiction between the present and earlier findings might be the types or level of work-family conflict that exist in the home-based work setting. In other words, it was not the existence but the nature of the work-family conflict that explained its relationship with work engagement that deserves further investigation. Moreover, people practice diverse roles through life stages, and as a result, the degree of work-life balance changes continuously throughout their lives [113] . Hence, their resource allocation strategies in coping with difficulties such as balancing work and life demands may change as well which may explain the finding of the current study that deserves further exploration.

Furthermore, the analysis revealed that exercise predicts mental well-being positively which confirms hypothesis H9. This result is consistent with earlier findings, mentioning the positive benefits of exercise both on physical and as a consequence on the psychological health of people at any age [134] - [136] [192] . The connection between biological and psychological mechanisms related to exercise is a well-known fact which was shown to improve the well-being of individuals [137] . Prior research has evidence on the motivating characteristics of including game elements in physical exercising [193] [194] . Hence, future studies may explore the effects of exergaming on software professional's mental well-being during home-based working individually or in a group.

In the literature, there are contradicting findings for the relationship between exercise and work engagement. While some studies suggested a positive association between exercise and work engagement, no effect was found between health-promoting interventions and work engagement as well [149] . The regression model resulted in no predictive power of exercise on work engagement hence hypothesis H10 is rejected. This outcome could be originated from the measurement method used for exercise as it is measured only by two questions. Further research could investigate this association with validated scales more deeply by considering software professionals.

J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof

Pandemic has forced software companies to shift to remote work arrangement suddenly with no prior preparation. As software companies and individuals were caught unprepared for the remote work, they had difficulties in managing the new work arrangement which has caused challenges such as increased number of exhaustive meetings, fewer breaks, and working more hours than usual [25] [195] .

As known, managing employees in a remote work setting has several challenges [196] which have been more problematic as family members needed to coexist during the workday in pandemic [6] .

In the specific context of the COVID-19 crisis, software professionals and companies could explore ways to adapt to the new home-based working and living arrangements by constant monitoring, communication, and assistance for enhancements in job strain, sleep quality, decision latitude, work-life balance, and exercising. Software professionals' mental well-being and work engagement contribute to project performance and should be closely observed by managers periodically during crisis situations.

One of the results has shown the predictive power of decision latitude on mental well-being and work engagement. Accordingly, management could provide flexibility for remote workers in organizing their activities [197] to promote their need for autonomy and offer necessary opportunities for skill development for better work outcomes [198] [199] which is also mentioned in the study conducted with software professionals during pandemic [6] . Consequently, supervisors in software companies would give engineers enough space and opportunities where they can perform their tasks self-directedly which would promote personal development to enhance software practitioners' engagement to work by considering individual dissimilarities. This is in parallel with the results of the study of Russo et al. [19] where autonomy was found to affect well-being where individual differences in need for autonomy were highlighted. Accordingly, management would provide various degrees of autonomy to engineers by considering their personal need or preference. professional's mental well-being is revealed in the findings as well. During forced remote work, imbalance in work and private life is mentioned as one of the challenges [6] . Because of insufficient guidance, software professionals may be drawn to working more than usual periods that may result in increased work pressure, stress, and eventually psychological diseases, such as burnouts in home-based work. Accordingly, during pandemic home-based work setting, software practitioners were reported to work more hours daily than their usual work periods [25] .

Consequently, companies could support their employees on time management for work-life balance through practical training and suggest work-private life separation strategies [200] that would enable software professionals to put healthy boundaries between their private and professional lives. Policies such as constraints on work-related usage of communication channels, such as emails, mobile phones, can be agreed upon and supported by managers [200] . This could give the sense of being cared for by the companies and hence promote mental well-being. Future research could explore the effect of such policies for building healthy boundaries for work-private life for promoting the mental well-being of software workers.

This study found that sleep quality is a factor predicting mental well-being and work engagement which is important from a managerial perspective. Software professionals usually work uneven hours [201] with a high level of focus and attention for their tasks which may diminish their resources resulting in refraining from work activities. Accordingly, management of companies could raise awareness of software workers' sleep quality by suggesting periodic checks. In addition, they could provide support to software practitioners who are experiencing sleep quality problems and may recommend coping mechanisms for the solution such as mindfulness practices.

Based on the finding that points out the negative effect of job strain on the dependent variables, the influence of factors such as hobbies, or virtual socialization events outside work that may replenish personal resources for software workers could be investigated further to mitigate the negative effect of job strain during pandemic home-based work. Managers or supervisors could be suggested by [202] as well.

There This study has adopted a non-random sampling which is one of the common cases in empirical studies in software engineering [205] . Even this sampling method ceases the possibility to generalize the results to all software developers, we believe that having employed a sound research method and conducted comprehensive analyses, the findings of this study are valuable to the community as it provides substantial insights on mental well-being and work engagement of software practitioners during a pandemic.

The scales used in the study were applied "as it is" to confirm the validity and reliability. If the original scales used here are to be adapted to the software engineering field, validity and reliability studies could be performed as future research. Future research may also explore the impact of factors related to software development processes on the mental well-being and work engagement constructs by including survey questions related to software processes.

In the survey, single questions were used to collect data for work-life balance and exercise variables and this may entail further exploration to have in-depth analysis regarding these specific variables. Additionally, the results are based on the respondents' self-reports which limits the study's validity.

J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f

The findings of the study conducted in Turkey cannot be generalizable to software professionals all around the world. Hence, this study can be replicated in other countries. Additionally, testing

the results of the current study concerning the specific occupational groups within the software domain such as managers or junior workers may be valuable. Research in the future may also look into the individual differences (e.g. personality) and also country-based variances in terms of pandemic measures and work culture in crisis conditions. This would lead to better identifying the factors associated with software professionals' mental well-being and work engagement.

As strict measures were taken to slow down the spread of the virus during the COVID-19

pandemic, software professionals have been forced to work from home which has introduced many challenges in home-based work setting on mental well-being and work engagement.

Consequently, this study has an intention to explore the relationship between job strain, resourcerelated factors (sleep quality, work-life balance, exercise, and decision latitude), and mental wellbeing and work engagement of software professionals during home-based working arrangement in the COVID-19 pandemic by leveraging the Conservation of Resources (COR) and Broadenand-build theories as the primary theoretical base.

The findings suggest that sleep quality, exercise, decision latitude, and work-life balance, and job strain predict mental well-being. Similarly, sleep quality, decision latitude, and job strain predict work engagement. Hence, constant monitoring and providing enhancements for these factors under crisis conditions may provide substantial benefits in terms of mental well-being and work engagement of software practitioners.

As new waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and similar pandemic periods are foreseen in the future, and since the home-based work arrangement has the potential to become an alternative work setting in many organizations, it becomes critical to act proactively in order to handle the negative consequences of home-based work setting on software developers and companies. Specifically, the findings of this study suggest that job strain and resource-related factors deserve considerable J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof attention to mitigate the undesirable effects on the software practitioners' mental well-being and work engagement during home-based work arrangement.

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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