Career entry in times of mobile work: An empirical study on the influence of mobile working on the psychological well-being of commercial apprentices in Hamburg

Abstract

The COVID 19 pandemic has led to an increase in the number of employees in Germany who work from home. The cohort of apprentices is also particularly affected by this development. Since the beginning of the pandemic, some of them have started their working lives, partly completely, in a virtual manner. In the study conducted, the JDR model was used to investigate the influences of remote working on the psychological well-being of apprentices. One assumed that the intensity of remote working has a negative impact on job resources on the one hand and a positive impact on job demands on the other. A structural equation model was specified to analyze the theoretically derived relations between the constructs. The underlying data resulted from a conducted online survey (n= 110). Contrary to expectations, the results of the survey did not provide evidence that the intensity of remote working negatively affects apprentices’ psychological well-being through the path of job demands or job resources. Based on the results, it became apparent that a special focus in apprenticeship design should be on the topics of boundary management, technostress and learning opportunities.

Keywords: JD-R model; Well-being; Onboarding; Mobile work; Training.