More Than Background Sound: Investigating Impact of Work-Related Podcasts on Employee Wellbeing

Abstract

As an intriguing concept, podcasts have been increasingly popular and one of the fastest-growing media in recent decades. While podcast listening has attracted the growing attention of scholars from a variety of disciplines, no studies to date have explored podcast listening in management literature. In this context, the current study aims to investigate the motivations and consequences of work-related podcast listening in terms of employee wellbeing. Data were collected from 12 academicians from a variety of fields via a semi-structured interview, and thematic analysis was performed using MAXQDA software. The current study demonstrated that (1) academicians have different podcast listening habits in terms of gender, generation, and position; (2) academicians have motives for work-related podcast listening, including information-related motivation, creativity-related motivation, and relaxation-related motivation; and (3) work-related podcast listening is related to different aspects of employee wellbeing, such as hedonic wellbeing, social wellbeing, and eudaimonic wellbeing. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.