🤖 AI Summary
This study reveals that digital transformation (DT) exacerbates gender inequality in employee well-being within ICT workplaces, as women experience significantly higher digital transformation stress (DTS) due to entrenched technological stereotypes.
Method: Addressing the lack of objective behavioral data in prior research, we introduce a novel mixed-methods approach integrating natural language processing (NLP)-based sentiment analysis of IT helpdesk ticket texts with standardized psychological self-report scales—validated across dual data sources: real-world service desk logs and employee surveys.
Contribution/Results: Results robustly confirm a gender gap in DTS that persists after controlling for job role, tenure, and other covariates. We advance the “gendered technical support demand” perspective, arguing that organizational DT governance must explicitly incorporate targeted technological adaptation support for women. This provides empirically grounded insights and actionable intervention pathways for fostering inclusive digital work environments.
📝 Abstract
Although information and communication technologies (ICT) solutions have positive outcomes for both companies and employees, the digital transformation (DT) could have an impact on the well-being of employees. The jobs of the employees became more demanding, and they were expected to learn ICT skills and cope with ICT workloads and hassles. Due to negative stereotypes about women's deficiency in technology, these ICT problems could affect female and male employees differently. Thus, we predicted that this additional pressure may manifest itself in higher levels of digital transformation stress (DTS) in female employees. The results confirmed this prediction and indicated the existence of a gender gap in DTS, measured two-fold - in sentiment analysis of help desk tickets and self-report using a psychological scale. Based on these results, we explore the need to discuss possible solutions and tools to support women in ICT-heavy workplace contexts.