Can Teleworking Improve Workers’ Job Satisfaction? Exploring the Roles of Gender and Emotional Well-Being

Abstract

With the rise of teleworking during the past decades, the impacts of teleworking on job satisfaction have been extensively debated. Teleworking might benefit workers by improving work-life balance and emotional well-being, but it also brings considerable challenges. This study empirically investigates the impacts of teleworking on workers’ enjoyment across daily working episodes and job satisfaction and its gendered patterns, using Ordinary Least Squares regressions and the latest nationally representative time-use survey data in the UK. Moreover, it uses the Karlson/Holm/Breen (KHB) decomposition method to examine the role of enjoyment at work in mediating the associations between teleworking and job satisfaction. Overall, this study yields two major findings. First, among men, teleworkers tend to have higher levels of enjoyment at work and job satisfaction, but this is not the case for women. Second, around 46% of teleworking’s positive impacts on men’s job satisfaction can be explained by higher levels of enjoyment at work. Taken together, by integrating different theoretical perspectives on teleworking, gender and emotional well-being, this study provides interdisciplinary insights into the nuanced social consequences of teleworking, highlights the disadvantaged position of women in the use of teleworking, and demonstrates the need to enhance emotional well-being in future labour market policies.