The unprecedented outbreak of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused an economic downturn and increased the unemployment rate in China. In this context, employees face health and social economic stressors. To assess their mental health (i.e., anxiety, depression, insomnia and somatization) and work attitudes (i.e., work engagement, job satisfaction and turnover intention) as well as the associated factors, we conducted a cross-sectional study among people who resumed work after the Spring Festival holiday during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that the prevalence of anxiety, depression, insomnia and somatization among these people was 12.7%, 13.5%, 20.7% and 6.6%, respectively. The major risk factor for mental health was worrying about unemployment, and the main protective factors were psychological strengths (i.e., resilience and optimism). Regarding work attitudes, the percentage of people who felt more satisfied with their job (43.8%) was larger than that of those who felt less satisfied (26.9%), while the percentage of people who thought about quitting their job more frequently (15.7%) was smaller than that of those who considered it less frequently (63.2%). However, work engagement was lower than usual. Similar to the factors associated with mental health, the major risk factor for work attitudes was also worrying about unemployment, and the main protective factors were resilience and optimism. In addition, the nature of the organization, job status, age, position and income changes were also related to these work attitudes. Our findings shed light on the need for organization administrators to be aware of the status of and factors associated with employees’ mental health and work attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Policies or interventions could be developed based on our findings.

In order to validate the 12-item Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-12) and investigate the latent profiles of psychological capital (PsyCap) in Chinese employees, we conducted two studies. In Study 1, we systematically evaluated the psychometric properties of the PCQ-12 among a sample of 755 Chinese employees. The results showed that the PCQ-12 is a reliable and valid tool for measuring Chinese employees’ PsyCap and that it is superior to the 24-item Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-24). In Study 2, the validated PCQ-12 in Study 1 was used to measure the PsyCap of 1,349 Chinese employees from various organizations and industries, and a person-centered analytic approach was adopted to investigate the latent profiles of PsyCap. The results revealed four distinct profiles with the four components (i.e., efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience) of PsyCap at similar levels, that is, low, low/moderate, high/moderate, and high. These profiles significantly differ in work outcomes, with the employees in the High PsyCap profile exhibiting the highest levels of work engagement and job satisfaction and the lowest levels of turnover intention, while employees in the Low PsyCap profile exhibit the opposite. Our research demonstrated that the PCQ-12 is a valid and convenient instrument to measure Chinese employees’ PsyCap and offers a fine-grained portrait of their PsyCap in Chinese culture. Moreover, the quantitatively distinct PsyCap profiles found in our research support the unitary structure of PsyCap with its four components converging into an underlying positive capacity and emphasize the synergistic effects of the four components on work outcomes, which informs the current debate over PsyCap and enriches the existing PsyCap literature, thus further shedding light on managerial practice.