Objectives: The study objective was to measure the association between exposure to technological advances and work engagement, adjusting for personal and workplace factors.
Methods: We conducted a nationwide online longitudinal survey study in Japan. The sample was stratified to represent Japanese workforce conditions. Work engagement was measured using the Japanese version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-9. Exposure to technological advances was measured using a single question with Likert scale responses. Industry characteristics that were more/less likely to be replaced by automation were also measured. Linear regression was used for statistical analysis.
Results: There were 16 629 participants. We found that exposure to technological advances was associated with work engagement after adjustment for age, sex, education, income, and industry characteristics. We observed a significant interaction between age and exposure to technological advances (coefficient 0.891, P < .001), and conducted an age-stratified linear regression analysis. The significant association between age and exposure to technological advances reduced as age increased, and disappeared after adjustment for baseline work engagement.
Conclusions: Longitudinal observations showed that exposure to technological advances was not significantly associated with work engagement.
Keywords: automation; information; job resources; technology; training; work performance.
© The Author(s) [2024]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Occupational Health.