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Organizations have been challenged to identify antecedents to improved employee adjustment to the work environment changes that arose in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic. This study aims to explore the effect of multilingualism on employee ability to adjust to workplace changes based on the concept that multilinguals have been found to switch between tasks more efficiently as compared to monolinguals.

Applying a sequential explanatory mixed methods research approach, quantitative performance evaluation data on 207 credit union employees is analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling to predict employee performance, and thematic analysis of qualitative data representing the adjustment narratives of six monolingual and six multilingual employees within the sample is conducted, corresponding to the period during which employees were adjusting to broad workplace changes after the onset of the global pandemic.

The results suggest greater predicted improvement in the performance of multilingual employees. Reliance on the task-switching ability associated with multilingualism is found to be the primary self-evaluative factor for successful change adjustment among multilingual employees.

In light of work performance benefits identified in this study, organizations may consider multilingualism as a characteristic preceding better adjustment to organizational change, and not simply as a skill applicable to tasks requiring language proficiency, suggesting practical implications for human resource and organizational management.

This is the first sequential explanatory study focusing on the task-switching ability of multilinguals as an antecedent to change adjustment evidenced by improved work performance within an organizational context.

Virtual reality (VR) presents an important technological advancement that can enable management researchers to improve their laboratory work and test theories previously considered untestable. VR places a participant in a virtual environment completely designed and controlled by the research team. These environments can range from anything as benign as a regular corporate board meeting or a job interview to as hostile as a CEO answering questions in front of Congress or witnessing sexual harassment in an office hallway. A key feature of experimental work using VR is drastic improvements in external and ecological validity – VR allows researchers to transition experiments from measuring how participants self-report they would react in the real-world to measuring how they actually behave when confronted with a scenario literally in front of their eyes. While alluring, the design, coding, and implementation of studies using VR adds technical complexity to projects and care must be taken to be intentional throughout the process. In this manuscript, we provide guidance to management scholars to understanding VR, its potential applications, and the considerations one must undertake when creating studies using VR. Overall, we advocate the use of VR by management researchers in their work and introduce both a roadmap and best practices to jump-start such endeavors.