Data on work-related consequences of COVID-19 pandemic for employees across Europe

The COVID-19 pandemic influenced the work of employees across all continents. This article presents raw data that may be used to describe how the pandemic affected the work of employees in four European countries and how it influenced their job attitudes, feelings and work performance. In total, 726 respondents from Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Italy filled out an extensive online survey and provided information about changes in their workload, work difficulty, income, social contact, work from home, task performance and organizational commitment during the pandemic, and about the risk of being infected by COVID-19 during their workday. The employees also reported their actual work performance, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, intention to leave and irritation in the time of the pandemic. To reveal factors that might help employees cope with pandemic, the respondents filled out established questionnaires measuring servant leadership of their supervisor, perceived organizational support, social support provided by colleagues, their own occupational self-efficacy, resilience, job crafting and readiness for change. The data is unique as it was collected in a specific situation during the pandemic, when the work of employees was affected by security measures and lockdown introduced by governments in countries where they worked.


a b s t r a c t
The COVID-19 pandemic influenced the work of employees across all continents. This article presents raw data that may be used to describe how the pandemic affected the work of employees in four European countries and how it influenced their job attitudes, feelings and work performance. In total, 726 respondents from Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Italy filled out an extensive online survey and provided information about changes in their workload, work difficulty, income, social contact, work from home, task performance and organizational commitment during the pandemic, and about the risk of being infected by COVID-19 during their workday. The employees also reported their actual work performance, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, intention to leave and irritation in the time of the pandemic. To reveal factors that might help employees cope with pandemic, the respondents filled out established questionnaires measuring servant leadership of their supervisor, perceived organizational support, social support provided by colleagues, their own occupational self-efficacy, resilience, job crafting and readiness for change. The data is unique as it was collected in a specific situation during the pandemic, when the work of employees was affected by security mea-sures and lockdown introduced by governments in countries

Data description
The COVID-19 pandemic plunged Europe into a crisis in the first half of 2020. To reduce the spread of the virus, governments have introduced lockdown and security measures. In the Czech Republic, the government declared a state of emergency on March 12th and introduced a number of new restrictions between March 14th and 30th (Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic, https://koronavirus.mzcr.cz/vyvoj-udalosti-v-case/ ). From April 14th, a plan for the gradual release of security measures was announced. The state of emergency was lifted on May 17th, but a number of measures lasted until the end of June or even longer (Government of the Czech Republic, https://www.vlada.cz/cz/epidemie-koronaviru/dulezite-informace/ mimoradna-opatreni-_ -co-aktualne-plati-180234/ ).
In Slovakia, the government declared a state of emergency on March 11th and lifted it on June 14th. During the first weeks of the state of emergency, the government introduced several restrictions. Starting on April 22nd, the first phase of the gradual release of security measures has begun. The eighth phase of release started on July 1st and even after this date some restrictions still applied (Government office of the Slovak Republic, https://korona.gov.sk ). In Germany, some federal states and their cities started to declare the state of disaster on March 16th. On March 22nd, the government and the federal states introduced restriction of contact and activities. On April 20th, the government presented a 10-point-plan for the national health system and a week later, on April 27th, the obligations to wear a mask or other safety devices begun. Between April 30th and May 6th, the gradual easing of the restriction for public activities had begun. Due to new infections in some areas between the end of May and the beginning of June, the responsible federal states decided to reinstate restrictions on public activities (German Federal Ministry of Health, https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium. de/coronavirus/chronik-coronavirus.html ).
In Italy, the government declared the state of emergency on January 31st. The first publicactivity restrictions (phase 1) were instated on February 23rd and since February 25th the government had been introducing new restrictions. On May 16th, the government launched the socalled phase 2 (May 18th -June 14th), restoring some commercial and public activities with the obligation of the use of safety devices. On June 11th, the government announced phase 3 (June 15th -July 14th) which still loosens -but does not remove -containment measures (Government office of the Italy, http://www.salute.gov.it/ ).
The lockdown and various security measures may have had serious consequences for employees. Some could not work or had to work from home and lose social (work) contact. Some employees lost part of their income due to the employer's problems or because their employer had no work for them. For other employees, the work has become more demanding and difficult due to the need to comply with safety measures or due to an increase in the workload (e.g. paramedics). Some employees took a risk of being infected with COVID-19 during their workday (e.g. cashiers, bus drivers). However, the means to counter the worst effects differed considerably across nations (e.g. short-time work, financial support). Our data describe the consequences of the pandemic and the security measures on the work conditions of employees in different European countries and the attitudes, perceived performance and resources of employees in the time of a pandemic. We also examined personal and organizational factors that could mitigate the potential negative impact of a pandemic situation. The data were obtained in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Italy during May 2020 and at the beginning of June 2020, when most security measures were still in place and employees had at least one month of experience with working under security measures.
In total, 1.372 respondents started our survey. We excluded some of them from the sample according to the pre-set conditions. 552 respondents did not answer 30% or more questions related to the research variables. Another 22 respondents were employed in their organization for less than 5 months and therefore could not assess the changes associated with the pandemic. 72 respondents did not work in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Italy. There-   fore, the presented dataset consists of responses of 726 people who were employed in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The socio-demographic and job-related characteristics of the sample are described in Table 1 and Table 2 . Table 3 describes how the pandemic and lockdown affected the work of employees in each of the 4 countries. Table 4 describes the attitudes, feelings and perceived performance of employees in the time of the pandemic and also the perceived change in their performance and organizational commitment in comparison to the time before pandemic. Table 5 describes organizationrelated (servant leadership of the supervisor, perceived organizational support, social support from colleagues) and personal (resilience, occupational self-efficacy, job crafting, readiness for change) characteristics that might help employees cope with the pandemic situation and lockdown. The variables that were measured by scales with several items (see Table 7 ) were computed as a mean of all valid answers provided by each respondent. The McDonald's omegas which indicate the internal consistency of the scales are presented in Table 7 . Code book and all variables are available in the associated dataset ( http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/77dcsp2vcw.2 ) in raw form. The dataset enables describing and analysing the work-relates consequences of COVID-19 pandemic in various countries and examining the moderation effect of organizational and personal factors.

Design, materials and methods
We obtained the data via an online survey. The survey was promoted at social networks, in articles in online newspapers, by direct emails and in a university newsletter. We formulated new items to measure the impact of pandemic and lockdown on the work of employees and to measure job satisfaction and intention to leave (see Table 6 ). To measure organizational commitment, work performance, irritation, work intensification and various organizational and personal factors, we used established questionnaires (see Table 7 ). We modified the instructions and response scale (see Appendix) of Individual Work Performance Questionnaire and Klein's unidimensional scale of commitment to be able to measure the change in task performance and  organizational commitment during the pandemic. We also modified the instructions of Irritation scale and Work intensification scale to measure irritation and work intensification in time of the pandemic and lockdown (see Appendix).