The relationship between telework and job characteristics: A latent change score analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a sizable proportion of employees conducted home-based telework to contain virus spreading. This situation made it possible to investigate the relationship between telework and job characteristics. Many positive and negative associations between telework and job characteristics have been proposed in the literature, but most studies relied on cross-sectional data as well as narrow samples (e.g. employees voluntarily choosing to telework). Repeated measures designs investigating the association between telework intensity and job characteristics using less selective samples are currently rare. To address this research gap, we collected data at two time points in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 479) and investigated if change in telework intensity was associated with change in 19 job characteristics using structural equation modeling. Our analyses showed that—in contrast to several prior cross-sectional studies—telework intensity had a small to moderate association with only two out of the 19 job characteristics: Work scheduling and decision-making autonomy. Hence, the study challenges the previously assumed manifold positive and negative associations between telework intensity and job characteristics and adds to the debate about the role of telework intensity as an antecedent of work design. Future studies should investigate the generalizability of the findings to non-pandemic work contexts. © 2023 The Authors. Applied Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Association of Applied Psychology.

Working at home during Covid-19: Are extent and/or flexibility important for job satisfaction, social support, commitment and work interruptions?

The debate on the advantages and disadvantages of teleworking (i.e., working from home) has gained momentum during the Covid-19 pandemic: Even public authorities have given their employees the opportunity to switch to teleworking. Many studies on teleworking have been carried out with employees who have been teleworking for years. However, it is unclear which consequences a sudden shift to teleworking has. This article examines to what extent the use of teleworking and the possibility of its flexible usage are associated with work-related variables such as job satisfaction, social support, affective commitment and work interruptions. A total of 477 employees of a medium sized public agency took part in the online survey. Our analyses show that more teleworking is associated with fewer work interruptions. We did not find any significant association between the extent of teleworking and job satisfaction, affective commitment and social support. However, there were positive relationships between the perceived flexibility of the place of work with all outcomes with the exception of work interruptions. The findings provide evidence of the importance of the flexible use of teleworking and thus the perceived opportunity to decide for oneself whether to work from home. This implies that organizations-including public agencies-need employee-oriented flexibility, that is, they should give employees the greatest possible decision latitude on the individual use of flexible work options.