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Understanding the impact of COVID‐19 pandemic on teleworkers' experiences of perceived threat and professional isolation: The moderating role of friendship

Abstract Drawing from conservation of resource theory and the social support resource theory, this study examines how the severity of an exogenous disruptive event – the COVID‐19 pandemic – in one's community influences teleworkers' well‐being outcomes indirectly through their perceptions of pandemic‐related threat and experience of professional isolation, as well as the buffering effect of friendship on these relationships. Utilizing time‐lagged data from participants of a two‐wave survey panel (N = 351) and objective data of COVID‐19 severity from counties around the United States, we found that perceived threat, but not professional isolation, mediated the negative effect of proportion of confirmed COVID‐19 cases in the community on teleworkers' well‐being outcomes. Further, consistent with our predictions, support from friends significantly weakened the negative effects of threat and professional isolation on well‐being. Key theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.

of COVID-19 incidence in communities and well-being outcomes of teleworkers. We view these mediators as indicators of resource-loss resulting from actual threat to health and livelihood, as well as missed opportunities for professional advancement, respectively. According to COR theory, resource loss has a disproportionate larger effect on individuals than does resource-gain. While a disruption in work routines and a transition to remote work might have a silver lining in the form of potentially increasing time spent with one's family (Allen et al., 2015), it also results in higher levels of professional isolation (Golden et al., 2008) such that distance from previous organizational connections and routines triggers perceptions of being left out of key communication channels and developmental opportunities among others. These perceptions are likely to be exacerbated by the fact that transition to remote work during the early part of the pandemic was a sudden reaction to the salient threat of infections. The latter created uncertainty for many workers in terms of job security, financial stability, and health. Thus, in our study, we utilize both the perceived threat of COVID-19 and professional isolation as mediators considering them as addressing separate facets of resource loss emerging from the pandemic -one in the personal domain (perceived threat), and the other in the work domain (professional isolation).
Our work contributes to the understanding of the COR theory by examining how an external disruptive event may threaten resource loss and negatively influence well-being.
Finally, building from the social support resources theory (SSR; Hobfoll et al., 1990), we explore the role of friendship in moderating the negative impact of perceived threat and professional isolation on well-being. As research on the psychological costs of the pandemic continues to unfold, we note the need for research on how to buffer these negative consequences and perhaps even facilitate well-being.
Extant research on social support tends to focus on sources of support from work and family domains (e.g., Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014); however, support from friends has not been studied extensively. In this study, we further examine friendship as an important source of social support for teleworkers already struggling with the social aspects of remote work including decreased social interactions and lack of socialization.
In the following sections, we elaborate on theoretical arguments using existing empirical findings to develop our hypotheses. We then employ structural equation modelling to test our hypotheses using two-waves of time-lagged data collected during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our work to the research on negative experiences and coping of disrupted events.

| THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
1.1 | Linking COVID-19 incidence to perceived threat and professional isolation COR theory suggests that individuals "strive to retain, protect, and build resources and that what is threatening to them is the potential or actual loss of these valued resources." (Hobfoll, 1989, p. 513 These valued resources are often referred to as physical, psychological, social, organizational, or contextual factors that help workers achieve work or life goals and prevent future resource loss (Halbesleben et al., 2014). Specifically, ten Brummelhuis and Bakker (2012) categorized these resources based on the source and the transience or stability; in particular, they recognized that individuals also obtain resources from the social context (i.e., macro resources), such as elements of culture, public policies, and economic status of their community. The COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly influenced these macro resources. As workers perceive the net loss of resources or a lack of resource gain due to an exogenous event, they may be concerned with how to meet various demands in both general and specific domains (e.g., work), which would lead them to experience strain reactions (Hobfoll, 1989).
The COVID-19 pandemic can be considered an environmentallevel contextual event that is characterized by its high levels of disruption, novelty, and criticality, which may further influence worker behaviours and experiences (Morgeson et al., 2015). This pandemic is (a) disruptive, because many people have been forced into making changes to routine behaviours and adjust to the "new normal," including transitioning to shelter-in-place and working from home, wearing masks, and practicing social distancing; (b) critical, because, similar to other infectious disease (e.g., Inhorn & Brown, 1990), it has enormous impact on public health, environment, and the economy (Cheval et al., 2020;Lin & Meissner, 2020); and (c) novel, because it appeared unexpectedly. More importantly, though the coverage of COVID-19 is wide in the US, its severity differs between communities. A recent paper analyzed COVID-19 incidence and deaths by US county-level data and showed that the severity of the pandemic was affected by a variety of factors including population density, poverty rates, large presence of racial minorities, and political patterns (Desmet & Wacziarg, 2021). Thus, in conceptualizing the contextual influence of COVID-19, we investigated an objective crisis indicator of the pandemic at the level of where an individual resides, that is, proportions of confirmed COVID-19 cases in one's counties. The disruption, especially in areas with higher incidence, likely increases the perception of threat of COVID-19, which could be shown in various aspects. For instance, recent research showed that financial concerns and job insecurity experienced during the pandemic and the uncertainty of the event were linked to negative mental health outcomes (Lin et al., 2021;Satici et al., 2020).
In addition, the pandemic and related preventive measures such as social distancing also disrupted normal work routines and communication patterns in organizations. For instance, as workers abruptly transitioned to teleworking, natural forms of communication (e.g., small talk), which previously benefited their adaptation to work, were reduced (Methot et al., 2020). To that end, this study also investigates whether working during the pandemic also influences worker experiences of professional isolation, that is, beliefs that they lack sufficient connection to critical networks of influence and social contact (Golden et al., 2008). Findings from a qualitative study suggested that teleworkers experience professional isolation in part due to lack of opportunities for professional development (e.g., chatting with a coworker, mentoring from coworkers or supervisors) and limited information sharing (Cooper & Kurland, 2002). We argue that teleworkers in communities with higher levels of COVID-19 severity are likely to experience more stringent restrictions related to physical proximity with others and spend longer periods of time away from their workplace (McKenzie & Adams, 2020), which may be associated with resource-loss in terms of lack of autonomy in conducting work and reduced social belongingness. The isolation imposed by others (in this case, the order of shelter-in-place) is also associated with control over one's interaction boundaries (Vega & Brennan, 2000). In addition, required and extended teleworking tend to have adverse impact on experience of professional isolation (Allen et al., 2015). Consistent with our argument, recent research con- will be positively associated with (a) perceived threat, and (b) professional isolation.

| Linking perceived threat and professional isolation to well-being
According to COR theory (Halbesleben et al., 2014), when individuals are in threatening situations, they experience resource loss that may lead to a loss spiral and subsequently negatively affect physical and psychological well-being. Accordingly, we examine three types of well-being related outcomes as consequences of negative experiences associated with teleworking during the pandemic. The first outcome is work exhaustion, representing "the depletion of emotional and mental energy needed to meet job demands" (Moore, 2000, p. 336). While voluntary teleworking comes with benefits in terms of job-related outcomes (e.g., reduced work-related stress, and increased job satisfaction; Gajendran & Harrison, 2007), these positive effects may decline as employees telework for extensive periods during the week (cf. Golden, 2006). Thus, as individuals get thrust into high-intensity teleworking regardless of their work preferences and while facing an environmental threat, they are likely to experience increased levels of work exhaustion. The second well-being consequence explored in this paper, is negative affect -a form of affective well-being. Experiences of negative and major events tend to activate negative affective reactions, which likely lead to downstream job-related attitudinal and behavioural outcomes (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). The third well-being outcome is subjective general health, wherein individuals provide a rating based on their summary of various subjective (i.e., body sensations, perceptions, and evaluations) and objective (i.e., information and knowledge from one's objective health reports) health indicators (Tissue, 1972;Ware et al., 1981). Although there have been several HU AND SUBRAMONY -3 recent studies on general health outcomes of COVID-19, findings related to how variations in geographic location contribute to one's subjective evaluation of health are still not clear (Vindegaard & Benros, 2020). As we have noted previously, subjective general health evaluations may vary depending on one's immediate communities, and our paper aims to investigate this assertion.
The three well-being indicators encompass work-related wellbeing, affective well-being, and global level evaluations of health.
Recent literature has provided some initial evidence suggesting that perceived threat and professional isolation can drain personal resources, and lead to poor well-being consequences. Further, recent evidence suggests that perceived threat of COVID-19 is associated with higher levels of negative affective well-being (Pérez-Fuentes et al., 2020), and this relationship can be explained by anxiety related to uncertainties in the future (Paredes et al., 2021). The associated anxiety or worry about adapting to the 'new normal' of isolation and uncertainty in the new remote work arrangements may require more effort on the part of employees, leading to increased levels of exhaustion and other negative health outcomes (Brosschot et al., 2006). Additionally, research has consistently demonstrated that professional isolation is associated with impaired employee wellbeing (Charalampous et al., 2019;Van Zoonen & Sivunen, 2021), such that workers experiencing professional isolation may experience less satisfaction related to their belongingness needs and perceive losses in their opportunities for professional development (e.g., mentoring; Eby et al., 2008). Together, these factors can result in increased illbeing among teleworkers (Charalampous et al., 2019). Thus, we hypothesized that: Hypothesis 2: (a) Perceived threat of COVID-19 and (b) professional isolation will be associated with increased level of work exhaustion and negative affect, and lower level of general health.
COR theory posits that resources expended while experiencing a threatening event may trigger further resource loss and exacerbate the difficult task of restoring or rebuilding resources (Halbesleben et al., 2014). The experiences of perceived threat and professional isolation are likely to continue negatively influencing emotional and mental resources in individual workers, manifesting in poor wellbeing outcomes. Thus, we propose that perceived threat and professional isolation will mediate the relationships between COVID-19 severity in teleworkers' community and their well-being outcomes.
Hypothesis 3: Proportion of confirmed COVID-19 cases will have indirect effects on work exhaustion, negative affect, and general health via (a) perceived threat of COVID-19 and (b) professional isolation.

| The moderating role of friendship
Friendship, referring to social relationships that are formed voluntarily, established with reciprocity of support and social exchange, and valued for a period of time, has been shown to be conducive to one's well-being (Hartup & Stevens, 1997;Rawlins, 1992). Building upon COR theory's fundamental proposition, SSR theory (Hobfoll et al., 1990) proposes that "people will strive to maintain social support both to meet their needs to preserve particular resources and in order to protect and maintain their identity" (p. 467). These resources could offset the negative impact of work and nonwork demands. We suggest that friendship can serve as a key form of social support resource and help replenish teleworkers' resource reservoirs. Though social support may come from other life domains, such as work (coworker and supervisor support) and family (spousal and parental support), these domains also may impose demands on employees and require resource expenditure to meet pertinent demands (e.g., Greenhaus & Kossek, 2014). During pandemics, teleworkers may experience a rapid accumulation in household and childcare demands, while simultaneously adapting to new work patterns. In this context, friendship can play an important role in providing both emotional (i.e., provide encouragement) and instrumental support (i.e., help resolving problems) for individuals. In addition, friendships are formed and developed based on voluntary choices and mutual agreement between the person and their friend (Hartup & Stevens, 1997;Rawlins, 1992), which suggest that unlike the role demands in kin (family responsibilities) or workplace (work demands) relationships, friends tend not to have extensive requests or demands on others due to the potential threat to sustaining a friendship. To that end, support from friends, that are completely spontaneous and voluntary, signifies value for oneself, thereby enhancing psychological resources. Linking to teleworkers' experiences during this pandemic, sharing one's concerns and frustration related to the difficulties posed by the pandemic and discussing work-and career-related issues, such as promotion opportunities during a pandemic with friends, may alleviate the negative psychological experiences due to perceived threat and professional isolation.
Previous research using working adult samples has shown that support from friends can contribute to worker well-being via boosted self-esteem above and beyond support received from other domains (Craig & Kuykendall, 2019). In addition, friendship has been found to be critical in reducing resource-loss in navigating the work-family interface among dual-earner couples (Carlson et al., 2021), once again suggesting that it serves as a unique source of support. Recent research conducted in the pandemic context has also provided some initial evidence suggesting the importance of friendship in offsetting perceived stress among college students (Lippke et al., 2021;Ye et al., 2021). In addition, connecting with friends frequently via various media could help individuals to cope with the extended isolation in the forms of reducing loneliness and anxiety (Juvonen et al., 2021). We argue that friendship provides workers with resources outside of one's work and family domains to buffer negative resource-draining experiences such as pandemicrelated threat and professional isolation. 1 Therefore, we propose that, Hypothesis 4: Support from friends will moderate the relationships between (a) perceived threat of COVID-19, (b) professional isolation and well-being outcomes, such that the relationships will be weaker at high levels of support from friends.

| Procedure and participants
Two waves of data were collected from full-time employees in the US who transitioned to teleworking due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Participants were recruited via Qualtrics Panel Service, a tool that provides researchers with targeted individuals to collect data. Metaanalytic evidence suggested that online panels can be good sources for sampling working adults, and that the results from Qualtrics panels and other online panels may be as reliable and valid as data obtained through other sources of data (Walter et al., 2019). Participants were invited to complete two surveys with a one-week interval to separate the measurement of predictor and outcome variables. One-week lagged design has been used in other applied psychology research (e.g., Beck & Shen, 2019;Sousa & Neves, 2020); thus, we chose a one-week lag in measurement to not only help reduce common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003), but also to help study the effects of shorter time lags on work-related attitude and experiences (Dormann & Griffin, 2015  participants felt socially connected to their friends in the past week by using a prompt, "think about your friends in general and rate the extent to which you felt that…". Participants answered each item using a scale of 1 (never) to 5 (always). An example item was "it has been easy to relate to others." This scale, used in previous research on teleworking (Anderson et al., 2015), demonstrated adequate internal consistency (α = 0.79).
HU AND SUBRAMONY -5 Work exhaustion (T2). Work exhaustion was measured using a three-item scale adapted from the Maslach Burnout Inventory General Survey (Schaufeli et al., 1996), which has been used in previous studies (e.g., Demerouti et al., 2012). Participants were asked to indicate their level of work exhaustion over the past week on a scale from 1 (not true) to 5 (always true). An example item was "I felt emotionally drained." This measure demonstrated good internal consistency (α = 0.91).
Negative affect (T2). Negative affect was measured using the negative affect subscale from the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule Short Form (PANAS-SF; Thompson, 2007). Participants rated how they felt over the past week on five items (e.g., "upset", "hostile") using a scale from 1 (never) to 5 (always). This validated measure has been previously used in organizational research (e.g., Wayne et al., 2013) and demonstrated adequate internal consistency (α = 0.85).
General health (T2). General health was assessed using one item, "over the past week, would you say your health in general is…" with a five-point scale ranging from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), which has been used widely in previous health-related psychological studies (Freyer-Adam et al., 2019).

Control variables.
We considered teleworking hours computed by averaging the reported teleworking hours from both timepoints as a control variable, because professional isolation has been largely studied in the context of teleworking (Cooper & Kurland, 2002;Golden et al., 2008) and worker well-being outcomes (Allen et al., 2015). Similarly, sudden transition to working from home may accompany increased technological use for both work and nonwork purposes; much research has demonstrated that excessive use of technology use for work tends to have detrimental impact on wellbeing (e.g., Ďuranová & Ohly, 2016). Thus, information and communication technology (ICT) use is important to be tested as another control variable to rule out potential explanations of changes in wellbeing due to the increases in ICT use. Lastly, following previous research on professional isolation and well-being of teleworkers (Golden, 2012;Golden et al., 2008), several demographic variables (i.e., age, gender, organizational tenure) that have shown significant correlations with at least one well-being indicators in the current study were also included as control variables.

| Preliminary analysis
Descriptive statistics, reliabilities, and bivariate correlations among all variables are presented in Table 1.
Though our data is hierarchical (i.e., participants nested within the county or states), we found that 92.6% of participants resided in different zip-code areas and the largest county cluster only had six participants. We computed the intraclass correlation (ICC [1]) for all study variables to verify the amount of variance at the county-or the state-level. Results revealed null or very minimal between-county (0.00-0.13) or between-state (0.00-0.06) variance (with an exception of COVID-19 cases having between-state variance), suggesting that variance of our variables came from between-person differences rather than between-county differences. Given that this study focuses on the individual perceptions of threat, isolation and well-being consequences, we decided to analyze our data at the between-person level.
Before specifying structural models for testing hypotheses, we first specified a measurement model to ensure that all items loaded onto corresponding latent constructs. Item parcelling was used for two unidimensional constructs (professional isolation and friendship).
Item-parcels tend to have higher reliability and higher likelihood of normal distribution than individual items; and additionally, models Thus, we retained five factors in the structural model specification.

| Hypothesis testing
We used latent moderated structural equation (

| Supplementary analysis
The role of trait negative affectivity as well as other individual difference characteristics are important to consider when interpreting how one's perceived threat of COVID-19 may influence psychological well-being (cf. Han et al., 2021;Liu et al., 2021). We explored whether the effects of perceived threat on well-being outcomes remained after controlling for negative affectivity (using negative affect at T2 as a proxy). Results showed that after controlling for negative affect, the effect of perceived threat on exhaustion became nonsignificant (b = 0.24, SE = 0.13, p = 0.059), but the effect on general health still remained (b = −0.30, SE = 0.12, p = 0.017). The moderating effect of friendship on the effect of threat on exhaustion also remained (b = −0.74, SE = 0.36, p = 0.040), such that the effect was significant only when friendship was low. However, as negative affectivity could be linked to strain outcomes via different mechanisms, such as exposure to more stressors, hyper-responsivity to environments, thus statistically controlling for negative affectivity bias should be done with caution in future research (Spector et al., 2000).

| DISCUSSION
In the current study, we found that the perceived threat from COVID-19 significantly mediated the relationship between the proportion of COVID-19 cases in the community and teleworkers' experienced work exhaustion, negative affect, and general health.
Our findings corroborate the COR argument that the threat of resource loss can trigger strain and loss of well-being (Halbesleben et al., 2014). Specifically, teleworkers living and working in communities with high levels of COVID-19 infection incidents were more likely to perceive pandemic related threats such as infection, financial pressures, and job insecurity and experienced higher levels of emotional exhaustion and negative affect, and lower levels of subjective health, than those in communities with low levels of COVID-19 severity. In addition, our study revealed that the perceived displacement from a regular work routine, lack of access to social and professional contacts, and the increasing responsibility of managing the boundaries between work and family are likely to have played critical parts in resource depletion and ill-being.
Also consistent with COR and SSR theories (Hobfoll, 1989;Hobfoll et al., 1990), we found that friendship significantly weakened the negative effect of perceived threat of COVID-19 on work exhaustion. resulting from sustained levels of stress. Indeed, individuals turn to friends for support when experiencing suffering, major negative events, or unpleasant moments (Greco et al., 2015).
Our study did not support our prediction that the proportion of COVID-19 cases would influence teleworkers' experience of professional isolation. One reason for this might be that professional isolation is driven more by organizational factors (e.g., restricted access to professional resources, lower quality of social interactions with coworkers) rather than community characteristics. That is, organizations initiatives related to virtual communications, and flexible human resources policies might have reduced teleworkers' experience professional isolation even though the focal worker might have been located within a community with high pandemic prevalence. In addition, workers' expectations and value for professional development opportunities may play a role in how professionally isolated one may feel (Cooper & Kurland, 2002). Thus, future research could further examine both organizational and individual factors as potential antecedents of professional isolation.

| Strengths and limitations
Buttressing the above contributions is the strength of our study design. We utilized multi-wave panel data drawn from the breadth of the US and in addition, used objective data related to  proportions in zip-codes. Utilizing these different data sources allowed us to provide a robust test of our mediation hypothesis that required time lags between the predictor (COVID-19 proportions), mediator (COVID-19 threat), and outcomes (well-being).
However, this study is also not without limitations. First, the time-lag between the mediator and the outcome was only a week, which was sufficient to reduce common source variance, but not enough to explore other alternative explanations or detect any changes in our key variables. Specifically, individual perceptions of COVID-19 pandemic have been heavily politicized in the US; recent evidence showed that partisanship has been linked to adoptions of preventive measures (e.g., physical distancing) and incidence and death rates, especially during the early stages of the pandemic (Clinton et al., 2021;Gollwitzer et al., 2020;Neelon et al., 2021).
Thus, future research could explore how the perception of COVID-19 threat may differ due to regional differences in partisanship, which may explain the differential incidence rate of COVID-19 cases at a different level (e.g., county, state, country) of analysis. In addition, we recommend the utilization of longer time lags to capture changes in these constructs over time (e.g., Did threat perceptions and wellbeing change during the pandemic? Did the arrival of vaccines mitigate these threats? Did perceived threats change when exposed to a new variant?).
Another limitation of this study is that we did not explore the differing influences of the community and organizations where the teleworkers worked, on employees' perceptions and well-being. As we noted earlier, one possible reason why we did not notice an effect of COVID-19 proportions on professional isolation is that the latter variable might be driven more by organizational factors rather than the community. We recommend future studies to examine organizational variables such as organizational/supervisory support, flexible human resource policies/practices, and relation- Finally, this study examined the role of general friendships, without specifying the sources. Friendships have been studied in the organizational context as the social processes have resulted in various benefits such as personal growth, career development, and creativity (Sias & Gallagher, 2009). As friendship at work could have a more focussed effect on facilitating domain-specific self-esteem and well-being (Craig & Kuykendall, 2019), future research could further explore whether workplace friendships may be more effective in offsetting the negative consequences of work-related stressors (e.g., experiences of work-related isolation). In addition, the methods used by individuals to stay connected socially has changed with the use of technology when physical proximity was limited (Pew Research Center, 2021). Even though past research provided evidence that physical proximity was not the most important indicator for initiating friendship under work context or when teleworking (Sias et al., 2012), future research is warranted to further explore the role of friendships in the virtual context; for instance, how technology use (e.g., smartphone apps, Zoom gatherings) and quality of communication (Stevic et al., 2021) may influence friendships as well as its role as a psychological resource.

| Managerial implications
This study has several managerial implications. First, we note the importance of organizations mitigating pandemic related threats through the implementation of safety-enhancing practices, and flexible and compassionate human resources policies (e.g., providing jobsecurity, maintaining wages, providing additional personal and family health benefits) to reduce anxiety and uncertainty. Second, we recommend that organizations provide employees with the opportunity to build positive social relationships, including but not limited to friendship, which might serve similar resource-replenishing roles for enhancing satisfaction with work (Venkataramani et al., 2013).
This could be accomplished through team-building sessions, social hours, collective volunteering activities, all of which could be implemented in face-to-face or virtual formats. Third, we recommend that organizations provide employees the resources needed to successfully transition to teleworking. This might include training on ICT use, tips for managing work and family boundaries, building virtual teams, and accessing organizational resources. Relevant training or information may help teleworkers to be better prepared for remote work and find ways to stay socially and professionally connected with others and the organization.
In conclusion, this study revealed a critical facet of work during situations of external disruption. We found that the prevalence of COVID-19 in the community plays a significant role in influencing teleworkers' well-being through its effect on these workers' threat perceptions. While the findings of this study are particularly relevant to pandemic situations requiring remote work, and entailing shutdowns, social isolation, and economic uncertainty, these findings might be applicable to a variety of crises: employees experience resource loss during uncertain and threatening times, as well as the role of friendship in mitigating this loss. In this connected and increasingly turbulent world, the next crisis can come from almost anywhere. It behoves us to understand and manage employee reactions to this turbulence, and our study is a step in that direction.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to acknowledge that this research was supported by the College of Business and the Office of Research and Advancement at Northern Illinois University.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

ETHICS STATEMENT
This study received approval from the Institutional Review Board at Northern Illinois University prior to data collection.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

ORCID
Xinyu (Judy) Hu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2442-2948 Mahesh Subramony https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7796-3014 ENDNOTE 1 Though the previous research has further studied the mechanisms of workplace/coworker friendships, such friendships could play complicated roles and induce negative reactions due to various psychosocial factors (e.g., social status, closeness; Pillemer & Rothbard, 2018). In addition, research examining the transition from coworker to close friendships showed that the context (work vs. nonwork) distinction is often blurry due to the "extra-organizational socializing" (Sias & Cahill, 1998). Thus, this study focuses on general friendship based on participants' own perception of access to and support from any friends.