Employee wellbeing: A computational review on the consequences of workplace automation

The integration of automation into workplaces presents complex implications for employee wellbeing. Drawing on the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model, this study reviews how automation-enabling technologies generate new job demands and resources across four dimensions of employee wellbeing: performance, physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing, and workplace relationships. Combining a computational literature review with qualitative content analysis, we identify and synthesize a multidisciplinary body of related literature. Our analysis reveals that automation disproportionately introduces new or intensified demands—particularly in performance, mental and relational dimensions—while resources tend to cluster around performance and physical wellbeing. Further, we show how these effects often spill across wellbeing dimensions, with technologies designed to improve efficiency often resulting in unintended cognitive, emotional, or social strain. Our synthesis extends the JD-R framework to better capture the distribution, alignment, and cross-domain effects of automation-induced changes in job characteristics, offering a structured agenda for future research and highlighting practical implications for human-centric technology design, organizational management, and employee support. • Disaggregates automation-induced job demands across four employee wellbeing dimensions. • Reveals mental and relational wellbeing as most strained and least supported. • Proposes operationalization of the Job Demands–Resources theory in automation-intensive contexts. • Shows spillover effects where demands in one wellbeing dimension affect others negatively. • Offers literature-based pointers for aligning automation with employee wellbeing.