Are Teleworkers Less Likely to Report Leave Intentions in the United States Federal Government Than Non-teleworkers Are?

Abstract

Teleworking is the most common alternative work schedule used in public organizations. Despite the adoption of teleworking in government agencies, no studies were found that empirically examined the effect it has on retention in these agencies. This article therefore extends the literature by examining the impact of teleworking on turnover intentions in U.S. federal agencies. In so doing, the findings suggest that teleworking did not exact a social exchange in public agencies. That is, teleworkers and nonteleworkers reported similar intentions to quit implying that telecommuting should not be used by managers and organizations "solely" to reduce the turnover of government employees. Furthermore, an examination of each of the teleworking and nonteleworking arrangements revealed that government workers were more likely to report a leave intention when they were denied the opportunity to telecommute. As a result, this finding validates the social denial hypothesis. The managerial and theoretical implications of these findings are thoroughly discussed in the article.

Turnover Intentions and Work Motivations of Millennial Employees in Federal Service

“…Younger workers expressed a sense of a higher degree of support from their supervisors with regard to work-life balance, than did older workers. Job satisfaction still appeared as the most important predictor in the models, similar to previous work focusing on public agencies (Caillier, 2013;Moynihan & Landuyt, 2008). Factors such as creativity, opportunities for professional development, work-life balance, appreciation of the work group, or meaningfulness of work were not particularly more important for Millennial workers.…”

“…Simple additive indices similar to the ones in Caillier (2013) and OPM (2012) were constructed using several items from the survey as measures of fairness, skills' development, having good people to work with and report to, professional growth opportunities, work-life balance, and creativity. All items were measured using a five-point agree-disagree scale, where higher scores in the resulting index indicates more positive reviews of the construct.…”

Family-Friendly Work Practices and Job Satisfaction and Organizational Performance

“…Thus, multicollinearity does not appear to be a problem. This study includes a sizable number of observations and with such a large number of observations; meaningless variations within variables may be statistically significant (Caillier, 2013). Therefore, careful interpretation is needed in the large sample study.…”

The Impact of Decoupling of Telework on Job Satisfaction in U.S. Federal Agencies

“…Research to date shows diverse effects of telework on organizational performance, turnover rate, motivation, work-life balance, personnel recruitment, job satisfaction, and retention (Caillier, 2012(Caillier, , 2013Lee & Hong, 2011;Saltzstein et al, 2001;Taskin & Edwards, 2007). Saltzstein et al (2001) mention that teleworking may have both advantages and disadvantages according to the nature of the home working environment.…”