Technostress and work wellness

Abstract

Technology in businesses is advancing at a fast and furious pace, and is leaving a trail of technostress at every level of the organisation. Due to fast-growing technology, computer professionals, as well as computer users face a great demand for continuous learning in order to secure and sustain their jobs. If this and other technological demands are not met, employees can feel inadequate and/or insecure with regard to their jobs, which in turn can leave them "technostressed”. Major consequences of technostress have been proved to be job insecurity and burnout, as well as a decrease in work engagement. Computer professionals, as well as computer users (N = 229) in the Vaal Triangle were targeted for this research. A cross-sectional survey design was used to reach the research objectives. Six standardised questionnaires were used in the empirical study, namely the Computer Anxiety Rating Scale (CARS), the Computer Thoughts Survey (CTS), the General Attitudes Towards Computer Scale (GATCS), the Job Insecurity Questionnaire (JIQ), the Maslach Burnout Inventory - General Survey (MBI - GS) and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). The results showed that technostress (computer thoughts) was related to increased levels of exhaustion and cynicism and decreased levels of professional efficacy and work engagement. Positive computer thoughts were found to be inversely related to cognitive and affective job insecurity. Job insecurity partially mediated the relationships between technostress (computer thoughts) and burnout, as well as technostress (computer thoughts) and work engagement. Conclusions were made, limitations of the current research were discussed and recommendations for future research were put forward.