“Good teleworking”: Under what conditions does teleworking enhance employees’ well-being?

Abstract

Myth: The home is a benign place to work and enables teleworkers to “have it all” – excel at both work and family. Work is portable to home without any downside. Reality: For many employees, moving the workplace to the home can hurt an employee's home life and create new social dilemmas, especially if employees do not perceive control over the timing, location, and process of work, and believe they are able to create boundaries that allow them to sometimes separate work and family roles. Given the increasing availability of formal and informal access to teleworking and other flexible work arrangements, in this chapter our goal is to understand the kinds of psychological working conditions under which use of teleworking is more likely to enhance employee well-being. We will show that “good teleworking” or teleworking where use is likely to be related to favorable outcomes for the workers' well-being has several psychological job design characteristics. We draw on survey and interview data from a sample of 316 professional employees in two Fortune 500 firms. Our chapter emphasizes two main features of good teleworking. First, perceived psychological control over when, where, and how one teleworks matters for well-being. We will show that employees with higher perceived personal control over the location, timing, and process of work experience significantly lower work–family conflict, turnover intentions, and are less likely to want to move to a new career.