Thread by @erimbau

During forced #remotework, employees who perceived greater job control reported lower exhaustion and higher work-life balance, but this was conditional on their segmentation preferences.
#research
#thread
buff.ly/3GPNyNn

Let’s unpack this a little. First, the main terms:

1) Job control
The job demands-control (#JDC) theory of stress (Karasek, 1979) posits that when employees are subjected to a high level of job demands at work it increases strain on employees,

but job control (autonomy) can buffer the relationship between job demands and strain. That is, even when job demands are challenging (e.g., in the COVID-19 context), high control over one’s job reduces strain and can diminish the negative outcomes of high job demands.

2) Segmentation preferences
Work-family segmentation preferences refer to the degree to which one prefers to separate various aspects of work and family from each other by creating more or less impermeable boundaries around the work and family domains (Kreiner, 2006).

The research shows that employees who prefer to segment their lives struggled with the unexpected and forced shift to remote work despite the potential for increased job control.

This means that employee segmentation preferences moderates the relationship of individual job control perceptions with emotional exhaustion and work-life balance and subsequent well-being and work outcomes.

The moderation effect was particularly important for #WorkLifeBalance, as employees with high segmentation preferences didn't show any beneficial effect for job control.
The study calls attention to important individual influences on employee well-being &motivation in remote work

Implications:
Organisations can positively impact employee #wellbeing and productivity by emphasising the aspects of #remotework that afford greater employee job control, particularly during times of forced change or high uncertainty.

Also, a one size fits all approach to #remotework is not optimal, as not all employees benefit uniformly from perceptions of high job control.
Specifically, employees who prefer to segment their lives experience fewer benefits, particularly in the realm of work-life balance.

Also interesting:
The researchers also found that employees who experienced greater work #loneliness reported greater exhaustion and lower work-life balance. In addition these effects were modestly negatively correlated and so tended to exacerbate each other.

End.

#remotework

I almos forgot! References:
The research article:
Surviving remotely: How job control and loneliness during a forced shift to remote work impacted employee work behaviors and well-being. WJ Becker, LY Belkin, SE Tuskey, S Conroy (2022) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hr…

Karassek paper is not openly available, but you can learn about the job demand-co here: ckju.net/en/dossier/job…

Kreiner (2006), to learn about segmentation and integration: scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup…