Digital Human Resource and Employee Wellbeing: A Case for Responsible Digital Work Engagement in Nigeria

The operations of contemporary organisations including Human Resource (HR) functions have been digitalised. However, the degree to which this transition affects employees’ health and wellbeing requires further scrutiny, especially in the context of developing economies such as Nigeria, where the availability of related resources is limited and the drive for financial sustainability is higher. This chapter explores the future of digitalising HR roles in Nigeria’s employment terrain, with a specific focus on a responsible approach to managing risks to employees’ health and wellbeing that stem from digital transformation. By adopting an interpretive qualitative methodology and thematically analysing data from 33 semi-structured interviews with respondents across five organisations from the Nigerian banking sector, operating within three cosmopolitan cities, the study corroborated the long-standing findings in the extant literature—showcasing the extent to which the digitalisation of HRM functions is perceived to be desirable due to its associated convenience, efficiency, high-productivity and profitability. Likewise, the risks to employees’ health and wellbeing (including excessive digital work engagement and compromise of work-life balance, increased stress level and others) because of digital transformation and the culture of bringing the workplace into the home or to other remote locations was also laid bare. To address this problem, the study proposed and developed a ‘responsible digital work transformation framework’ for organisations to consider as they harness the benefits of digital transformation while averting the associated risks to workforce’s health and wellbeing. The contributions, implications, limitations and direction for future study on this topic are discussed.