Workers Pay the Price: Effort, Identity, and Emotional Well-Being

This paper asks whether identity relates to employees’ work and emotional well-being, when very high effort may be necessary for their jobs. Using survey data we collected in a single organization during the Covid-19 pandemic, we document high levels of emotional distress among workers and find that this distress varies systematically with how employees identify with their work and the organization. Workers with the largest decline in mental health were more likely to indicate their jobs required more effort than before the pandemic and that the organization does not share their values. Levels of stress and anxiety, in particular, are related to work and identity, with higher levels for employees who are more likely to report that work is important to them. Requiring greater effort, identifying with work, and not sharing the organization values interact to reinforce the associations with worse emotional well-being. These relationships hold across job roles, career stage, and the number of children in households, indicating fundamental associations between employees’ emotional well-being, their identities, and their work.