How do Teleworkers and Organizations Manage the COVID-19 Crisis in Brazil? The Role of Flexibility I-Deals and Work Recovery in Maintaining Sustainable Well-Being at Work

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the economic market and labor contexts worldwide. Brazil has suffered one of the worst social and governmental managements of the COVID-19
crisis, forcing workers and organizations to develop coping strategies. This environment can affect
both well-being and performance at work. Sustainable well-being at work refers to different patterns of relationships between performance and well-being. It may include eudaimonic (e.g., Meaning of Work—MOW) or hedonic (e.g., emotions) forms of well-being. This study tests the moderating role of recovery from work stress in the relationship between flexibility i-deals and patterns of
sustainable well-being at work in Brazilian teleworkers. We relied on two studies to achieve this
objective. In Study 1, conducted during the pandemic’s first outbreak in Brazil (N = 386), recovery
experiences moderated the relationship between i-deals and clusters formed by performance and
MOW (eudaimonic happiness). In Study 2, conducted during the second outbreak (N = 281), we
identified relationships between clusters of emotions (hedonic happiness) and MOW (eudaimonic)
with performance. The results supported the idea that recovery experiences moderated the relationship between i-deals and patterns of sustainable well-being at work differently. Our findings have
implications for Human Resource Management and teleworkers, especially for employee behaviors
to deal with stress. 

KEYWORDS:

COVID-19; recovery from work stress; sustainable well-being at work; teleworkers; idiosyncratic deals (i-deals); performance; coping strategies