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This paper examines the effect of information and communication technology (ICT) hassles on employee job performance and investigates the mediating effect of well-being and the moderating effect of psychosocial safety climate (PSC).

This study was conducted on a sample of 294 employees working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bootstrap regression and moderated mediation analyses were carried out using the macro PROCESS version 4.2.

The results suggest that ICT hassles negatively affect well-being, which, in turn, impacts job performance. This study also finds that this indirect relationship worsens when employees are in a weak psychosocial safety climate.

As organizations plan to pursue telecommuting on a massive scale in a post-pandemic world, these findings are crucial in informing organizations of the need to create a healthy work environment and to provide optimal virtual working conditions.

As one of the first studies to examine the relationship between ICT hassles and job performance in an unprecedented telecommuting environment, it emphasizes the importance of rebalancing the demands arising from the use of technologies and the resources available to employees.

This study aims to integrate research on multimodal congruency with the stereotype-content model to offer a novel explanation of why and when consumers respond favorably to vision-sound congruency in online service settings.

A mixed methods approach included a field study (360° panoramic desktop-virtual tour of a winery) and a laboratory study (fully immersive virtual realtiy (VR) tour of a pub). The explanatory mechanism was tested through conditional process analyses, specifically, a custom-made serial mediation model where effects of cross-modal congruency were channeled through telepresence and warmth/competence with familiarity with the service provider included as a moderator. Category knowledge and involvement were included as controls. Study 2 additionally accounted for sensory olfactory and haptic information present in the consumer’s physical location.

Congruency between vision and sound positively influences consumer intention to visit the environment in person, to purchase online and to engage in positive word-of-mouth. These effects are channeled through enhanced feelings of telepresence as well as more favorable perceptions of service provider warmth. Congruency effects are robust in the presence of additional sensory input in the offline environment and across levels of involvement and knowledge but may depend on a consumer’s familiarity with the setting.

The study offers a novel process explanation for how cross-modal congruency in online service settings influences consumer intention. Examining two specific sensory modalities and two service settings presents limitations.

The findings help service providers to better understand how perceptions of warmth and competence transmit cross-modal congruency effects, resulting in more favorable responses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is among the first to adopt a stereotype-content and multimodal congruency perspective on consumer response to online service settings.

In the context of a larger study aiming to develop a workplace mental health support tool during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper sought to document the measures targeting the psychosocial work environment that were introduced or maintained in Quebec’s health and social services network institutions, in Canada, and the perceived efficacy of the measures by human resources advisors.

This study is based on a descriptive research design using an online questionnaire administered between May 14 and June 4, 2021 to human resources advisors who were responsible for implementing such measures, and thus served as key informants.

On the basis of respondents from 31 participating institutions, it was found that measures focusing on interpersonal relations, flexible or reduced work time and access to protective equipment were most frequently reported as implemented and were amongst the measures deemed most efficacious, along with COVID-19 screening, financial compensation during isolation and facilitation of telework. Several staffing and worktime measures with the potential to directly target excessive workload during the pandemic were deemed less efficacious by these advisors.

This study proposes an alternative to avoid directly soliciting healthcare staff when they are not easily available. In addition to providing an overview of promising organizational measures that institutions can implement in times of crisis and beyond, this study contributes to the literature on intervention processes, by highlighting the possibility and added value of surveying key informants as a means of gaining insight into implementation through the lens of human resources advisors.