What affects mental health in the New Era of Remote Work? The Impact of Self-Leadership and Social Identity on the Relationship between Stressors and Stress

Abstract

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, most organizations have shifted from traditional office-based work to flexible working environments, allowing employees to choose between working from home or at the office. This transition has introduced new challenges in the modern world of work. The present research, based on five quantitative cross-sectional studies (four organizational samples and one German population sample), investigates the influence of self-leadership skills (individual strategies to regulate one’s own behavior and motivation) and social identity (a person’s sense of belonging to a group) on the relationship between modern working environments (including stressors and remote work) and employee strain, specifically stress and burnout. The results show that social identity does not play a significant role in this context but appears more relevant for positive outcomes like job satisfaction and engagement. In contrast, self-leadership skills moderate the relationship between stressors and stress by helping employees cope with high stressors, leading to lower perceived stress. Additionally, productivity and both, adaptive and maladaptive, forms of perfectionism contribute to explaining the moderating effect of self-leadership. These findings highlight the importance of developing employees’ self-leadership skills to improve occupational safety and mental health in organizations