Telework quality and employee well-being: Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) forced organisations to implement intensive telework for many of their workers overnight. This scenario was completely new, and the emergency caused by COVID-19 created the possibility of experimenting with new ways of working with an unknown impact on employee well-being. Drawing on previous literature, we defined a model of telework quality consisting of the following four core domains: agile offices within organisations, functional remote workstations, flex-time and engaging management. We identified two high-quality and low-quality telework profiles using latent profile analysis on a data sample of 2295 insurance and financial sector employees. Demographic, occupational and procedural characteristics were associated with the probability of being in the positive or negative profiles. Our results showed that employees' emotional exhaustion and work engagement levels were related to telework quality. This study suggests that organisations need to consider the quality of telework to effectively adopt new ways of working that foster employee well-being.     

The link between computer use and job satisfaction: The mediating role of job tasks and task discretion

This study focuses on the consequences of the use of computerized work equipment (hereafter: computer use) on the content and quality of work. It investigates, first, the relationship between computer use and both job tasks and task discretion and, second, their mediating role for the relationship between computer use and job satisfaction. With our German-UK comparison, we contribute to the long-standing debate on the upskilling/de-skilling nature of the use of technology and its repercussions on the quality of work. We analyse data from the Skills and Employment Surveys for the UK and the BIBB/BAuA Employment Surveys for Germany using structural equation modelling. In line with the literature on routine-biased technological change, we show that computers are complementary to the performance of less routine and more abstract cognitive tasks and that this relationship is conducive to a higher level of task discretion and job satisfaction in both countries. Accounting for differences in job tasks performed, we find a negative direct effect of computer use on both task discretion and job satisfaction in the United Kingdom but not in Germany. Our results indicate that the ultimate effect of computer use on both task discretion and job satisfaction depends on the institutional contexts in which technology is introduced.     

Telework paradoxes and practices: the importance of the nature of work

Research on telework often focuses on the outcomes of telework, investigating if telework is ultimately a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing for teleworkers and their organisations. However, findings across telework research studies are often inconclusive, requiring deeper engagement with potential explanations for contradictory and paradoxical results. This study uses virtual ethnography (netnography) to investigate naturally occurring data. By analysing online debates related to Yahoo!'s decision to ban telework for its employees, this study surfaces aspects currently overlooked by telework research. These findings suggest that the diversity of the nature of work undertaken by knowledge workers and perceived differences in the suitability of different tasks for telework are of critical importance for understanding telework from a practice perspective. However, deeper engagement with the different kinds of work activities of knowledge workers is currently missing in the telework research literature. This study therefore contributes to better understanding of telework and paradoxical findings in telework research.     

高绩效工作系统、工作倦怠对员工离职倾向的影响研究

本文基于员工感知的视角，以工作倦怠作为中介变量，探索员工感知的高绩效工作系统对离职倾向的影响机制。通过来自企业256 个有效样本的实证研究发现，员工感知的高绩效工作系统与离职倾向显著负相关；工作倦怠及其子维度情感耗竭、玩世不恭与离职倾向显著正相关，而子维度成就感低落与离职倾向相关性不显著；工作倦怠在员工感知的高绩效工作系统与离职倾向之间起部分中介作用；员工感知的高绩效工作系统可通过影响员工的情感耗竭、玩世不恭情绪，间接对离职倾向产生影响，而成就感低落的中介效应不显著。     

Making gigs work: digital platforms,job quality and worker motivations

Technology has driven new organisations of work and employment relationships, rendering changes that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago. The rise of digital platforms has not only enabled new forms of work activity but also transformed the way workers find new opportunities. This development, referred to as gig work, is distinct from traditional employment in that it is mediated through online platforms. While we can somewhat objectively designate traditional job characteristics as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, designating gig work itself as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ overlooks the fact that workers are inclined to evaluate the quality of their jobs according to their own individual needs, priorities, backgrounds and other circumstances—even if those jobs are objectively the same. Unlike previous scholarship on gig work, which has viewed job quality largely from a platform-focused perspective, this article takes a worker-centric approach and provides a typology of gig workers. The typology demarcates how gig work is used and indicates key attributes that differentiate how workers approach such jobs. Moreover, the typology reveals heterogeneity in gig workers’ motivations, characteristics and intentions. Consequently, platforms with ‘bad’ job quality characteristics can still offer work that some workers will see as ‘good’ and vice versa.     

Coping Strategies in Call Centres: Work Intensity and the Role of Co-workers and Supervisors

It has been observed that customer service workers often develop mutually supportive coping strategies to protect themselves from the emotional strain of overwork. These strategies can receive tacit support from supervisors, who may accept them as a means of getting the work done. The study explores the impact of a number of different forms of support on emotional exhaustion among a group of 480 call centre workers focusing, in particular, on the role of supportive behaviours relating to absence taking. The research shows that a supportive co-worker absence culture and team leader absence permissiveness can lessen the effects of job demands on emotional exhaustion and improve worker well-being. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Paradoxical implications of personal social media use for work

New information and communication technologies can have paradoxical implications: they may be liberating and constraining at the same time. This field study examines the direct implications of personal social media use for work on employees’ autonomy and work pressure, and the indirect effects on exhaustion and work engagement. A total of 364 employees of three large multinationals responded to a web‐based survey. Results demonstrate the presence of a paradox, as social media for work is associated positively with both autonomy and work pressure. SNS use has indirect effects on exhaustion and engagement through autonomy, and on exhaustion through work pressure, but not on engagement through work pressure. Furthermore, one's responsiveness to colleagues’ communication decreases the relation between use and autonomy, although not between use and work pressure. Overall, employees seem more likely to be burdened by the use of social media for work than benefit from it, but managing one's responsiveness can help.     

All work intensity is not created equal: Effort motives,job satisfaction and quit intentions at a grocery chain

Prior research has shown that the well-being of employees engaged in intensive work can vary with the discretion their jobs afford regarding how and when to carry out the work. This article explores a different avenue. It argues that well-being also varies with employees’ individual motives for working intensively. The article introduces self-determination theory to the domain of work intensity and focuses on two hypotheses. The first is whether intensive work driven by explicit or implicit incentives is more positively associated with an employee's job satisfaction than intensive work driven by job demands. The second is whether intensive work driven by intrinsic motives is more positively associated with job satisfaction than that driven by explicit or implicit incentives. In both these cases, the article also examines whether equivalent effects exist on (reduced) quit intentions. Original data from a major Greek grocery chain provide corroborative evidence that is robust to a rich set of covariates, including increasingly demanding adjustments for job discretion. The findings contribute to a more complete understanding of why differences in well-being exist among employees performing intensive work, with implications for workers and employers.     

Under Pressure: The Impact of Recession on Employees in Ireland

Ireland is experiencing the worst recession since the foundation of the state, and the effects on the labour market have been dramatic. This article explores the impact of recession for those still in employment by examining work pressure, using two large, nationally representative workplace surveys from 2003 (boom) and 2009 (recession). We find a significant increase in work pressure between 2003 and 2009. Staff reductions and company reorganization are both associated with increased work pressure, as is current job insecurity. Other job changes, like large pay cuts, increases in responsibility and monitoring are also associated with increased work pressure. We argue that negative organizational and job changes in the previous two years play an important role in accounting for the rise in work pressure.     

Can psychological capital reduce stress and job insecurity? An experimental examination with indian evidence

Increasingly, work stress and job insecurity have become pervasive issues in today’s dynamic workplace. Extant literature suggests that individual psychological resources play a significant role in job insecurity and stress. A review of the literature on psychological capital (PsyCap) suggests that there is a dearth of experimental investigation on the effect of PsyCap interventions (PCI) on stress and job insecurity. The primary purpose of this study is to experimentally examine whether an increase in PsyCap through PCI results in a significant decrease in stress and job insecurity. This experimental investigation was conducted on a sample of 234 adults employed in the telecom sector. This study used a two-group (treatment group and placebo control group) pre-test and post-test design. Subjects were randomly assigned either to the treatment group (N?=?124) or the placebo control group (N?=?110). Findings suggest that those subjects who were given PCI (treatment group) developed their PsyCap and there was a significant reduction in stress and job insecurity. On the contrary, participants of the placebo control group did not report any significant change in stress and job insecurity. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

     

Designing flexible work practices for job satisfaction: the relation between job characteristics and work disaggregation in different types of work arrangements

The literature on flexible work practices has not yet evaluated in detail how the characteristics of a job affect job satisfaction. This study makes a distinction between two types of flexible work practices according to their aims: the accommodation of employees’ personal lives (employment practice) and the operational reasons of a firm (work practice). Based on this distinction, we studied how the characteristics of a job, which reflect the use of ICT to support the spatial disaggregation of business processes, influence the relationship between the two types of flexible work practices and job satisfaction. We show, through a survey conducted on 987 workers, that the characteristics of a job that favour work disaggregation positively moderate the influence of flexible work as a work practice on job satisfaction, but they do not moderate the influence of flexible work as an employment practice. The implications for managers, workers and scholars are discussed.     

高绩效工作系统对员工敬业度的影响机制研究——被调节的中介效应

本文以20家企业的467名员工为样本，运用层级回归分析方法和Bootstrap方法验证了个人-组织契合和心理契约破裂对高绩效工作系统和员工敬业度关系的影响。研究结果发现，高绩效工作系统能够显著提高员工敬业度；个人-组织契合在高绩效工作系统与员工敬业度之间起着部分中介作用；心理契约破裂在个人-组织契合与员工敬业度之间起着负向调节作用，即与高心理契约破裂水平相比，低心理契约破裂的情境下个人-组织契合对员工敬业度的影响更大；个人-组织契合对高绩效工作系统与员工敬业度的中介效应的强弱受到心理契约破裂水平高低的影响，即与高心理契约破裂相比，低心理契约破裂的情境下个人-组织契合对高绩效工作系统与员工敬业度的中介作用更强。     

External Churning and Internal Flexibility: Evidence on the Functional Flexibility and Core-Periphery Hypotheses

Functionally flexible systems for organizing work may reduce job instability and insecurity by reducing employers' reliance on job cuts or contingent work to respond to changes in their environments. Related arguments hypothesize that contingent work allows firms to adjust labor while "buffering" their core of permanent workers from job instability. We find evidence that internally flexible work systems are associated with reduced involuntary and voluntary turnover in manufacturing but that contingent work and involuntary turnover of the permanent workforce are positively related regardless of sector, in contrast to the prediction of the core-periphery hypothesis.     

Mechanisms to improve labor productivity by performing telework

This study investigates mechanisms underlying the influence of telework on labor productivity in Japan. First, this study finds that appropriate telework hours increase labor productivity, but when telework hours are too long, telework decreases labor productivity. Second, telework increases life satisfaction, and life satisfaction improves labor productivity. However, telework increases the stress of balancing work and domestic chores, contrary to Japanese governmental expectations, and the stress decreases life satisfaction. The stress, fortunately, does not directly reduce labor productivity. Although telework increases happiness and work satisfaction, these factors do not influence labor productivity. Third, this study clarifies that telework is more efficient for improving labor productivity if workers commute more than 1 h or commute by trains or buses that are usually very crowded during rush hours in Japan. Finally, the effect of telework for workers who have a greater number of potential trivial duties is insignificantly larger. Supervisors and colleagues often ask others to perform trivial, extra tasks without regard for schedules. Telework may help workers avoid such trivial duties and increase labor productivity. However, the importance of trivial duties is also demonstrated in this study.     

The role of sales team intragroup conflict on critical job outcomes

Sales teams are often structured into groups by territories, product categories, or hierarchical levels of salespeople which provide support to one another while counter-intuitively competing for individual resources, rewards, and promotions. We posit that the impact of conflict within the sales team (sales team intragroup conflict) on critical individual-level job outcomes (job satisfaction and intent to turnover) is contingent upon two loci of influences: individually-influenced goal orientations (learning and performance) and managerially-influenced justice perceptions (procedural and distributive). We empirically examine sales team intragroup conflict through a primary data collection of 195 distributor salespeople organized into 20 geographically dispersed teams. Our results largely support our hypotheses that there are nuanced effects across the loci of influences, such that in conflict-laden environments, having a performance orientation or perception of organizational distributive justice enhance job satisfaction, while a perception of organizational procedural justice decreases job satisfaction. Thus, we answer the call to better understand the role of conflict in marketing exchanges.     

Two paths towards job instability: Comparing changes in the distribution of job tenure duration in the United Kingdom and Germany, 1984–2014

This study provides novel evidence on trends in job stability in the United Kingdom and Germany, two capitalist economies with distinct sets of institutions and labour market reform trajectories. While we find evidence of an increase in short-term jobs for men in both countries, we also find important differences in the overall patterns of change in the distribution of job tenure duration. The United Kingdom follows a masked instability pattern with opposite job stability trends for men and women. On the other hand, we find evidence of a polarization of the job tenure distribution among men and women in Germany. These findings are partly consistent with expectations from the dualization literature, emphasizing a growing segmentation of the labour market between insiders and outsiders. More generally, this study highlights the existence of multiple paths towards increased job instability that appear to be rooted in institutional differences.     

Technical Professionals in Cross-functional Teams: Their Quality of Work Life

The idea that R&;D professionals typically spend a considerable amount of their time working as members of teams makes sense. After all, plenty of research indicates that the use of cross-functional teams improves the effectiveness of product development efforts. However, the increasing use of cross-functional teams raises an important question for researchers and R&;D practitioners: Does the use of cross-functional teams improve the quality of work life for technical professionals?Rene Cordero, George F. Farris, and Nancy DiTomaso address this question in study of 1,714 R&;D professionals working on projects. They suggest that being a member of a cross-functional team may be more demanding than working as a member of a functional project group. On the other hand, they expect that working on a cross-functional project team may be more rewarding than working in a functional project group. Their study tests these hypotheses by examining the relationships between measures of the extent to which respondents work on cross-functional teams and five measures each of the participants’ job demands and positive job outcomes.The study identifies positive relationships between working on cross-functional teams and the five positive job outcomes studied: job growth, job security, membership in successful teams, earning money, and job satisfaction. The study finds less consistent and weaker relationships between working on cross-functional teams and the five job demands studied. Specifically, the study identifies positive relationships between working on cross-functional teams and the following job demands: effort, job involvement, and considering a lot of difference of opinion. The results of this study do not find a conclusive relationship between cross-functional team membership and time pressure. And contrary to expectations, the study finds a negative relationship between working on cross-functional teams and job stress.Comparing the responses of participants who work on project teams with those who do not, the results of the study indicate that respondents who work on project teams face greater job demands than positive job outcomes. However, working on cross-functional teams seems to increase positive job outcomes more than job demands. In other words, working on cross-functional teams appears to increase the quality of work life for the technical professionals in this study.     

Impacts of the Broadband Initiatives Program on broadband adoption and home telework

This study investigates the impacts of the Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP), established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, on growth in broadband adoption and use of home telework. We find robust positive impacts across multiple econometric models and methods using census tract-level data in first differences. Across models and methods, the estimated average impact of BIP is in the range of 1.1–3.0 percentage point increase in the share of households adopting broadband and 0.2 to 0.4 percentage point increase in the share of workers using home telework. The estimated impacts of BIP represent roughly one-fourth to two-thirds of the average increase in broadband adoption and one-third to two-thirds of the average increase in home telework in the study tracts during the study period. The impacts of BIP vary across geographic contexts. Broadband and home telework adoption are also affected by prior levels of broadband availability, adoption, and telework, and by demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the population and the industrial structure of the economy.     

Job Lock: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design

Employer‐provided health insurance may restrict job mobility, resulting in “job lock.” Previous research on job lock finds mixed results using several methodologies. We take a new approach to examine job lock by exploiting the discontinuity created at age 65 through the qualification for Medicare. Using a novel procedure for identifying age in months from matched monthly Current Population Survey data and a relatively unexplored administration measure of job mobility, we compare job mobility among male workers in the months just prior to turning age 65 to job mobility in the months just after turning age 65. We find no evidence that job mobility increases at the age 65 threshold when Medicare eligibility starts. We also do not find evidence that other factors such as retirement, reduction in hours worked, Social Security eligibility, pension eligibility, and sample changes confound the results on job mobility in the month individuals turn 65.     

Job Satisfaction and Quitting Intentions: A Structural Model of British General Practitioners

A structural model of job satisfaction and quitting intentions is estimated using data from a survey of general practitioners in the UK. Previous research has used reduced form models, making the interpretation of coefficients problematic. The use of a structural recursive model helps to clarify the relationships between intentions to quit, overall job satisfaction, domains of job satisfaction and personal and job characteristics. Job and personal characteristics have a direct effect on job satisfaction in addition to their indirect impact through job satisfaction domains. Job satisfaction domains have a direct effect on intentions to quit, in addition to their effect via overall job satisfaction. The structural approach provides a richer interpretation of the role and effect of job characteristics on job satisfaction and intentions to quit than is found in previous research. This is particularly relevant in some public sector labour markets, where the opportunity to alter wages to compensate for the relative advantages and disadvantages of jobs is limited because of national wage bargaining.