People walk across an intersection in Seoul on March 24, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — A recent survey showed that the ‘corona blues,’ referring to depression resulting from the onset of the coronavirus epidemic, take a different shape depending on an individual’s position at work.
Employees in lower-level positions tended to have anxiety about their future, while those in higher level positions reported feeling a sense of isolation.
Lotte Academy, an internal training center of the South Korean retail giant Lotte Group, conducted a survey of 221 employees to check their depression level in four categories – emotional, cognitive, social and physical aspects.
As a result, 58.8 percent of assistant manager-level workers answered that they had corona blues in the cognitive category, indicating that they feel anxiety about their career development and future position.
In contrast, among executive-level employees, the largest share of the respondents (42.9 percent) answered that they had corona blues in the social category, as they felt a sense of isolation due to the decrease in interactions with others.
Overall, however, the largest number of respondents (53.3 percent) said that they had corona blues in the emotional category.
Lotte Academy suggested that this is because a variety of factors such as health, family care, economic hardships and change in work environment caused stress to the workers.
The share of the workers who said they had corona blues in the social category remained the lowest at 28.1 percent. This is because they continued online communication through work at home programs and video conferencing.
By job type, employees engaged in tourism and service-related industries that were hit hard by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic were most likely to be suffering from the corona blues, while those engaged in chemical and construction industries were relatively immune.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
