Technology-assisted supplemental work, psychological detachment, and employee well-being: A daily diary study

Abstract

Information and communication technologies facilitate connectivity to work-related matters after official working hours. Therefore, more and more employees engage in technology-assisted supplemental work (TASW) during recovery time. However, research on the association between TASW and well-being has shown mixed results. To shed further light on this relationship, we tested a moderated mediation model. Drawing upon the extended stressor-detachment model (Sonnentag and Fritz, 2015), we proposed that psychological detachment mediates the relationship between TASW and well-being (i.e. affect and vigor). Further, we expected appraisal to moderate the relationship between TASW and psychological detachment, as well as cognitive coping to moderate the relationship between psychological detachment and well-being. To test these hypotheses, we analyzed daily diary data from 100 employees. As hypothesized, daily psychological detachment after hours mediated the positive association between daily TASW and daily negative affect at bedtime. Contrary to expectations, daily TASW was not significantly related to daily positive affect at bedtime and daily vigor in the next morning. Additionally, we found no support for the moderating roles of appraisal and cognitive coping. These results suggest that TASW can be associated with negative well-being states via impaired recovery, but that further studies are needed to explore the ambiguous outcomes of TASW. We discuss practical implications and future research avenues regarding individual differences in the experience of TASW.

When Thinking About Work Makes Employees Reach for Their Devices: A Longitudinal Autoregressive Diary Study

“…2 demonstrate that on days when individuals are less able to detach from work, they spend more time using ICT for work. Of note, the within-person cross-sectional relationships between detachment and ICT use for work (− 0.51 at T1 and − 0.48 at T2) were consistent with the negative relationships in previous studies (e.g., Derks et al, 2014aDerks et al, , 2014bEichberger et al, 2020).…”

“…A theoretical framework for research in this area is the stressor-detachment model (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2015), according to which psychological detachment is impaired when individuals face high stressors at work. Oftentimes, work-related ICT use in the evening (also called technologyassisted supplemental work) has been conceptualized as a stressor in the model (e.g., Derks et al, 2014aDerks et al, , 2014bEichberger et al, 2020; see also Ďuranová & Ohly, 2016). It has been argued that detachment, defined as the sense of being physically and mentally away from work (Etzion et al, 1998;Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007), is impaired by ICT use because it An earlier version of this paper has been published in the best paper proceedings of the 2018 Academy of Management conference in Chicago, IL.…”

“…This notion has received considerable support. For example, Derks et al (2014b) and Eichberger et al (2020) linked daily ICT use after hours to lack of detachment in the evening, and indirectly to higher levels of exhaustion.…”

Why people engage in supplemental work: The role of technology, response expectations, and communication persistence

“…In addition, Chong et al (2020) noted that the interdependency of work may generate greater task setbacks under conditions of forced telework during the pandemic, which may require workers to engage in supplemental work to maintain individual and team performance levels. However, technology‐assisted supplemental work (TASW) has been steadily on the rise over the past decades and may contribute to a host of negative outcomes (Eichberger et al, 2020) the ways individual, social, and technological factors independently or conjointly affect these work practices are largely unknown. Hence, the current study builds on the TASW framework to examine how different factors present in contemporary work environments may exert pressure to engage in TASW.…”

A daily diary study on technology-assisted supplemental work, unfinished tasks, and sleep: The role of problem-solving pondering.

“…As prevalence rates of TASW are expected to rise in the future, scientific interest in the outcomes of TASW is growing. So far, studies mainly revealed the downsides of TASW, for example, by relating it to low psychological detachment (e.g., Eichberger et al, 2021) and poor sleep (e.g., Lanaj et al, 2014).…”