Towards More Proactive Sustainable Human Resource Management Practices? A Study on Stress Due to the ICT-Mediated Integration of Work and Private Life

This article discusses sustainability in Human Resource Management (HRM) in the blurreddigital working life, focusing on the emotion of stress. Its empirical basis is an activity and emotiondiary study conducted with 26 employees of three industrial companies in Sweden. Our resultsshow that work and private life are integrated by digital activities and also by emotions. Due tothe extensive use of digital devices, stress in the working sphere is not only connected with work,and stress in the private sphere is not only connected with private life. The study also shows thatstress is often episodic and can end due to activities connected with both the trigger and non-triggerspheres. From a social sustainability perspective, this study suggests that HRM should gently extendemployee consideration beyond the traditional temporal and spatial boundaries of work, i.e., alsoincluding private life when understanding work in the digital age.