21447: How Stress Appraisals Shape the Performance of Essential and Nonessential Employees During Crises (session 25823)

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The COVID-19 pandemic as a global crisis has been shown to negatively affect employee effectiveness and organizational functioning. However, there are also anecdotes of frontline employees who kept essential services functioning during these times of crisis by performing well in their jobs. Based on this observation, our research seeks to answer an important question: How does being recognized as an essential employee during a crisis shape work effectiveness? Drawing on the Transactional Theory of Stress, we propose that compared to nonessential employees, essential employees are more likely to appraise major crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic as a challenge and less likely as a hindrance. These enhanced favorable appraisals in turn facilitate higher in-role job performance and more taking charge behaviors. Moreover, we argue that organizational adaptive capacity as a work resource amplifies the beneficial appraisals of essential employees. Data from a two-wave multisource survey study of employees and their supervisors during the pandemic (N=544) supported our conceptual model. More specifically, being recognized as an essential as compared to a nonessential employee was related to higher challenge and lower hindrance appraisal and associated performance. Furthermore, working for an organization with high levels of adaptive capacity further strengthened the challenge appraisals of essential as compared to nonessential employees. This study expands our understanding of how the external role designation of essential employees during a crisis can boost their performance.

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