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In these times of successive lockdown periods due to the health crisis induced by COVID-19, this paper investigates how the usages of collaborative and communication digital tools (groupware, workflow, instant messaging and web conference) are related to the evolution of teleworkers’ subjective well-being (job satisfaction, job stress) and job productivity comparing during and before the first lockdown in spring 2020. Using a sample of 438 employees working for firms located in Luxembourg, this analysis enables, first, to highlight different profiles of teleworkers regarding the evolution of usages of these tools during the lockdown compared to before and the frequency of use during. Second, the analysis highlights that these profiles are linked to the evolution of job satisfaction, job stress and job productivity. Our main results show that (1) the profile that generates an increase in job productivity is the one with a combined mastered daily or weekly use of all of the four studied digital tools but at the expense of job satisfaction. On the contrary, (2) the use of the four digital tools both before and during the lockdown, associated with an increase in the frequency of use, appears to generate too much information flow to deal with and teleworkers may suffer from information overload that increases their stress and reduces their job satisfaction and job productivity. (3) The habit of using the four tools on a daily basis before the lockdown appears to protect teleworkers from most of the adverse effects, except for an increase in their job stress. Our results have theoretical and managerial implications for the future of the digitally transformed home office.

Research over the past two decades has found significant gender differences in subjective job satisfaction, with the result that women report greater satisfaction than men in some countries. This paper examines the so‐called “gender paradox” using data from the European Social Survey for a subset of fourteen countries in the European Union. We focus on the hypothesis that women place higher values on certain work characteristics than men, which explains the observed differential. Using estimates from Probit and ordered Probit models, we conduct standard Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions to estimate the impact that differential valuations of characteristics have on the gender difference in self‐reported job satisfaction. The results indicate that females continue to report higher levels of job satisfaction than do men in some countries, and the difference remains even after controlling for a wide range of personal and job characteristics and working conditions. The decompositions suggest that a relatively small share of the gender differential is attributable to gender differences in the weights placed on working conditions in most countries. Rather, gender differences in job characteristics contribute relatively more to explaining the gender–job satisfaction differential.

PurposeThis article estimates the empirical relationship between workplace diversity in terms of nationality and individual worker job satisfaction in the context of a multicultural country. It also examines the role of the level of communication between coworkers in moderating this relationship.Design/methodology/approachUsing merged survey and administrative data, the paper estimates OLS and ordered Probit regression estimates of the correlations between two measures of workplace diversity and self-reported job satisfaction.FindingsThe relationship between nationality diversity and job satisfaction is negative. While there is some evidence of a nonlinear relationship, it depends on the specification and measure of diversity used. Contrary to expectations, the level of interaction between colleagues does not moderate this relationship.Practical implicationsThe research highlights the need for employers to actively manage the diversity within their firms.Originality/valueThe paper adds to the diversity and job satisfaction literature by focusing on the nationalities of coworkers. It also is the first to measure the impact of the levels of interactions with coworkers on the diversity-satisfaction relationship.