Surviving remotely: How job control and loneliness during a forced shift to remote work impacted employee work behaviors and well‐being

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of job control and work-related loneliness on employee work behaviors and well-being during the massive and abrupt move to remote work amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We draw on job-demands control and social baseline theory to link employee perceived job control and work-related loneliness to emotional exhaustion and work-life balance and posit direct and indirect effects on employee minor counterproductive work behaviors, depression, and insomnia. Using a two-wave data collection with a sample of U.S. working adults to test our predictions, we find that high job control was beneficially related to emotional exhaustion and work-life balance, while high work-related loneliness showed detrimental relationships with our variables of interest. Moreover, we find that the beneficial impact of high perceived job control was conditional on individual segmentation preferences such that the effects were stronger when segmentation preference was low. Our research extends the literature on remote work, job control, and workplace loneliness. It also provides insights for human resource professionals to manage widespread remote work that is likely to persist long after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Benefits of Being Proactive While Working Remotely: Leveraging Self-Leadership and Job Crafting to Achieve Higher Work Engagement and Task Significance

“…Since in this study we are interested in understanding how self-leadership contributes to employees’ proactive behaviors during remote working, we focus on self-leadership behavioral strategies. In the context of COVID-19, characterized by a widespread and abrupt change to remote work ( Becker et al, 2022 ), we expect individuals who could effectively set goals for themselves and reinforce their own positive, desirable behaviors during remote working to be better equipped to initiate the proactive redesign of their remote—or virtual—work characteristics.…”

“…The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led millions of people across the world into remote work, with remote and hybrid working arrangements becoming the “new normal” almost overnight ( Wang et al, 2020 ; Kniffin et al, 2021 ; Becker et al, 2022 ). This situation poses new challenges to understanding the processes and outcomes of remote work since it is no longer based on individual arrangements and specific requests but represents an entirely new context of work ( Wang et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Literature provides initial evidence for the importance of self-discipline as a means of dealing with the challenges of remote work and mitigating the demands which undermine employee wellbeing ( Wang et al, 2020 ). Yet, the understanding of how people manage themselves when working remotely has been largely omitted in previous studies and is particularly limited when considering the new ways of working that took shape after the outbreak of COVID-19 ( Wang et al, 2020 ; Becker et al, 2022 ). This lack of knowledge on how proactivity unfolds during remote work after COVID-19 is particularly relevant.…”

The influence of remote work in particular during the Covid-19 pandemic on changes in human behaviour patterns within organisations

“…Another challenge for the managerial staff will be maintaining the right level of motivation in employees (Becker et al, 2022). It is obvious that previously just the presence of a superior in the office was enough to keep the employees ready to carry out their duties.…”

Alienation in Pandemic-Induced Telework in the Public Sector

“…Emerging research echoes these findings. In recent research about telework loneliness during the pandemic, Becker et al (2022) argued for recognizing individualized preferences in terms of organizational responses. They summarized their findings as “that individual employees will perceive and respond to these changes in working conditions differently,” and acting upon the differences maximizes the impact on employee well-being (Becker et al, 2022, p. 3).…”