Work-related use of information and communication technologies after hours and employee fatigue: the exacerbating effect of affective commitment

Abstract

PurposeWork-related use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) after hours can be potentially detrimental to employee well-being. In the current study, we examine whether psychological detachment mediates the link between work-related use of ICTs after hours and fatigue and whether affective commitment exacerbates this mediated relationship.Design/methodology/approachWe collected two waves of data from 295 employees in Vietnam, with 51% being female and an average age of 37.81 years old (SD = 7.93).FindingsWork-related use of ICTs after hours was positively related to employees' fatigue via psychological detachment. The negative relationship between work-related use of ICTs after hours and psychological detachment was stronger for employees with higher affective commitment.Practical implicationsOrganizations are encouraged to set policies and procedures to reduce work-related use of ICTs after hours to protect employee health; when work-related use of ICTs after hours is necessary, organizations should provide employees, especially those with higher affective commitment, with resources and strategies to better detach from this experience.Originality/valueOur findings contribute to the understanding of how work-related use of ICTs after hours might adversely affect employee well-being through psychological detachment and that more committed employees can be more affected in this process.

How Does Organisational ICT Implementation Affect E-Commerce Potential? Empirical Evidence from Serbia

“…Similarly, organisational ICT use was also found to be denoted by digital skills and competences of employees in the context of national ICT use (Yunis et al, 2012). In this sense, relevant indicators can be related to the number of staff trained for handling ICTs (Cuevas-Vargas et al, 2016), the percentage of personnel with ICT skills (Giotopoulos et al, 2017) or work-related use of ICTs after hours (Lee et al, 2021).…”

The Impact of Work-Related Use of Information and Communication Technologies After Hours on Time Theft

“…As mentioned earlier, W_ICTs refers to the use of information and communication technology (e.g., smartphones or laptops) to handle work-related tasks before and after hours or during breaks (Lee et al, 2021 ; Piszczek, 2017 ; Xie et al, 2018 ). With the development of information and communication technology, W_ICTs becomes very common, so employees can handle work anytime and anywhere (Xie et al, 2018 ).…”

“…Emotional exhaustion refers to the fatigue caused by excessive consumption of mental and emotional resources (McDowell et al, 2019 ; Yao et al, 2020 ). Some studies have found that W_ICTs will make employees consume their resources to deal with the work, which will exert a negative impact on their psychological detachment (Lee et al, 2021 ; Sonnentag & Fritz, 2015 ). By physically and mentally “switching off” from work after hours, employees can restore their depleted resources from job stressors and maintain their health and well-being (Lee et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Some studies have found that W_ICTs will make employees consume their resources to deal with the work, which will exert a negative impact on their psychological detachment (Lee et al, 2021 ; Sonnentag & Fritz, 2015 ). By physically and mentally “switching off” from work after hours, employees can restore their depleted resources from job stressors and maintain their health and well-being (Lee et al, 2021 ). Nevertheless, W_ICTs not only causes employees unable to recover their resources after working hours but also makes them more likely to fall into a state of resource depletion (i.e., emotional exhaustion) which might decrease employees’ well-being to some extent (Lee et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Many employees still need to spend a lot of time on unpaid overtime work after hours (Brynjolfsson et al, 2020 ; Steffensen et al, 2021 ). This method of using information and communication technologies such as smartphones and laptops to handle work during non-working hours is called work-related use of information and communication technologies after hours (W_ICTs, Lee et al, 2021 ; Xie et al, 2018 ). Although W_ICTs can effectively reduce the cost of internal communication in an organization, it also causes the boundary between employees’ work and life to become more blurred, which leads to some negative behaviors of employees (Rapp et al, 2021 ; Schlachter et al, 2017 ; Steffensen et al, 2021 ; Xie et al, 2018 ).…”