Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Mar 24;18(7):3330.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph18073330.

Telecommuting, Off-Time Work, and Intrusive Leadership in Workers' Well-Being

Nicola Magnavita  1   2 , Giovanni Tripepi  3 , Carlo Chiorri  4
Affiliations

Telecommuting, Off-Time Work, and Intrusive Leadership in Workers' Well-Being

Nicola Magnavita et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Telecommuting is a flexible form of work that has progressively spread over the last 40 years and which has been strongly encouraged by the measures to limit the COVID-19 pandemic. There is still limited evidence on the effects it has on workers' health. In this survey we invited 905 workers of companies that made a limited use of telecommuting to fill out a questionnaire to evaluate intrusive leadership of managers (IL), the request for work outside traditional hours (OFF-TAJD), workaholism (Bergen Work Addiction Scale (BWAS)), effort/reward imbalance (ERI), happiness, and common mental issues (CMIs), anxiety and depression, assessed by the Goldberg scale (GADS). The interaction between these variables has been studied by structural equation modeling (SEM). Intrusive leadership and working after hours were significantly associated with occupational stress. Workaholism is a relevant moderator of this interaction: intrusive leadership significantly increased the stress of workaholic workers. Intrusive leadership and overtime work were associated with reduced happiness, anxiety, and depression. These results indicate the need to guarantee the right to disconnect to limit the effect of the OFF-TAJD. In addition to this, companies should implement policies to prevent intrusive leadership and workaholism.

Keywords: COVID-19; anxiety; depression; happiness; health promotion; psychosocial stressors; smart work; work-related stress.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Structural equation model for the prediction of effort/reward imbalance (ERI); happiness (HAP); anxiety (ANX); and depression (DEP) using gender (SEX); age (AGE); intrusive leadership (IL); off-time work (OW); workaholism (WA); and the interactions of WA with IL (WA × IL) and OW (WA × OW). Ovals represent latent variables; rectangles represent observed variables. Solid lines represent direct effects or correlations; dotted lines represent interaction (moderation) effects. Observed variables whose name contains “_P” denote parcels of observed variables (see text for more details). Latent variables whose name contains “u_” denote uniquenesses (or residual variances) of the corresponding observed variables.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mediating effect of workaholism on the association between intrusive leadership and effort/reward imbalance.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Gajendran R.S., Harrison D.A. The good, the bad, and the unknown about telecommuting: Meta-analysis of psychological mediators and individual consequences. J. Appl. Psychol. 2007;92:1524–1541. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.92.6.1524. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Nilles J.M. Making Telecommuting Happen: A Guide for Telemanagers and Telecommuters. Van Nostrand Reinhold; New York, NY, USA: 1994.
    1. Dingel J.I., Neiman B. How many jobs can be done at home? J. Public Econ. 2020;189:104235. doi: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104235. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Karako K., Song P., Chen Y., Tang W. Shifting workstyle to teleworking as a new normal in face of COVID-19: Analysis with the model introducing intercity movement and behavioral pattern. Ann. Transl. Med. 2020;8:1056. doi: 10.21037/atm-20-5334. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Henke R.M., Benevent R., Schulte P., Rinehart C., Crighton K.A., Corcoran M. The Effects of Telecommuting Intensity on Employee Health. Am. J. Health Promot. 2016;30:604–612. doi: 10.4278/ajhp.141027-QUAN-544. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources