Pre-travel risk assessment for international business travellers during the COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19: prevalence of job-demands, stress, work–life difficulties and work–life balance among international business travelers

“…Furthermore, the participants reported a sizeable increase of health concerns, which is consistent with prior reports on travelers psychological distress (Han et al. , 2020; Tufnell et al. , 2021) and families going through a very stressful time because of the COVID-19 (Losada-Baltar et al.…”

“…job satisfaction and a sense of work-life accomplishment from business traveling (Pinto and Maia, 2015), especially when travel demands are manageable (Westman et al, 2009); so no meaningful improvement could be observed just from the immediate decrease of IBTs mobility (Bakker et al, 2010;Bakker and Demerouti, 2017). Furthermore, the participants reported a sizeable increase of health concerns, which is consistent with prior reports on travelers psychological distress (Han et al, 2020;Tufnell et al, 2021) and families going through a very stressful time because of the COVID-19 (Losada-Baltar et al, 2021). The external job context was found to change individuals' subjective experience of the job demands especially in a crisis situation like the COVID-19 (Barello et al, 2021;Sokal et al, 2020), which lend support to recent developments of the JD-R model reflecting the importance of the (external) job context in triggering a health impairment process (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017;Schaufeli and Taris, 2014).…”

“…In the international context, the physical and psychological demands related to intensive business travel constitute job-demands that are specific of IBTs (Chen, 2017;Dimitrova, 2020;Jensen, 2014) and affect their job-stress (Westman and Etzion, 2002); health (Jensen and Knudsen, 2017); well-being (Espino et al, 2002;Rogers and Reilly, 2002;Ye and Xu, 2020); work-family conflict (Baker and Ciuk, 2015;M€ akel€ a et al, 2015a) and job exhaustion (M€ akel€ a et al, 2021). Generally, the decline in business activity that occurred during this period (McKinsey Global Institute, 2021), including major lockdowns and travel restrictions disrupted IBTs routines (Hiselius and Arnfalk, 2021;Liu-Lastres et al, 2021;Tufnell et al, 2021). It is likely then that former IBTs might experience a sudden drop in job JGM 10,2 demands, such as intensive and excessive traveling and related workload.…”

“…Travel decline, virtual meetings and remote work are shifts that are likely to remain to varying degrees in the long run (Liu-Lastres et al, 2021;Tufnell et al, 2021). In this context, it is likely that employers and customers, including IBTs, will question the necessity of business tripsand the answer may be not as much as before.…”

“…This pandemic has further raised the importance of contextual demands for business travelers (Hiselius et al, 2021;Liu-Lastres et al, 2021) including risk assessment (Tufnell et al, 2021) and health concerns (Barello et al, 2021;Ye and Xu, 2021). Employers and HRM professionals can then benefit from the understanding provided by the present study in that (1) specific job demands, such as business travel and workload can diminish without a sizeable improvement of IBTs stress, well-being and WLB; (2) workload and stress are two major antecedents of IBTs health and relational difficulties and (3) the management of IBTs workload can decrease their work-life difficulties and boost their WLB.…”