Coping with Techno-Stressors: A Qualitative Insight into Employee Videoconferencing Experiences

In recent years, videoconferencing has become the primary mode of communication among employees. While it facilitates social interaction and enhances connectivity, studies have highlighted its negative implications such as videoconference fatigue and technostress. Most existing research has employed quantitative methods, revealing a positive relationship between videoconferencing use and stress. This study advances the discourse by offering qualitative insights into the stressors, resultant strains, and coping mechanisms adapted by employees at different hierarchical levels. Through 30 interviews and 7 diary studies in Singapore, the study found new insights on the strains experienced and coping measures adopted among different employees, highlighting a need for videoconferencing etiquette and norms, and showing paradoxical ways of coping by using more technology to counter technostress and more social interaction to counter strains. This study extends the literature on stress and strain from a qualitative perspective, and revisits the existing technostress framework in the current context.