“You’ve Got Mail”: a Daily Investigation of Email Demands on Job Tension and Work-Family Conflict

Abstract

Email represents a useful organizational tool that can facilitate rapid and flexible communication between organizations, managers, and employees regardless of their physical location (e.g., office, home, on vacation). However, despite the potential benefits of email, its usage is a double-edged sword that also has the potential to negatively affect its users. To advance knowledge and inform both researchers and practitioners of such negative outcomes, we integrate the job demands-resources model with spillover theory to investigate email as a potential job demand and explore how it may relate to employees’ job tension and work-family conflict. Using an interval-contingent experience sampling methodology with respondents from two separate organizations ( n = 134) providing 704 observations across 6 days of surveys, we hypothesize that, as a job demand, email can have negative consequences on the job that can spill over into the home. Furthermore, we also examine an individual trait (i.e., trait self-regulation) as a potential boundary condition that moderates the extent to which experienced tension from email demands spills over into home life. Finally, theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

Burnout in Professional Psychotherapists: Relationships with Self-Compassion, Work–Life Balance, and Telepressure

“…As demand increases so will the workload for psychotherapists. Increased workload (e.g., longer working hours, limited resources) and associated pressure (e.g., threat of exposure to the virus, lack of updated information) impact work-life balance, which is a contributing factor to burnout [18,24]. These models and findings suggest psychotherapists are at risk of burnout, however research evaluating this mental health construct in this workforce has been thin to date.…”

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

“…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 ). W_ICTs enables employees to work more flexibly and improves their work efficiency (Steffensen et al, 2021 ; Xie et al, 2018 ); however, the unpredictability of W_ICTs causes employees to consume a lot of time and energy to pay attention to work messages (e.g., e-mail). Therefore, W_ICTs will hinder the psychological detachment of employees, bring psychological pressure to employees, aggravate work–family conflict, and ultimately affect employees’ behaviors in the workplace (Andrade & Matias, 2021 ; Cavazotte et al, 2014 ; Jarvenpaa & Lang, 2005 ; Piszczek, 2017 ; Ter Hoeven et al, 2016 ).…”

“…These studies believe that such behavior is not only an unethical behavior but also a serious violation of organizational rules and regulations (Harold et al, 2021 ; Yan & Berry, 2013 ). However, few scholars have analyzed the reasons for such behaviors from the perspective of employees (Peng et al, 2020 ; Zhao et al, 2021 ), e.g., employees’ leisure time is taken up by the work (Steffensen et al, 2021 ). In fact, with the rapid development of the internet and electronic information technology, electronic communication has crossed the time and space limit, thus, making the boundary between work and non-work increasingly blurred (Schlachter et al, 2017 ).…”

“…In fact, with the rapid development of the internet and electronic information technology, electronic communication has crossed the time and space limit, thus, making the boundary between work and non-work increasingly blurred (Schlachter et al, 2017 ). 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 ).…”

“…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 ). We expect that W_ICTs will have an impact on employee time theft.…”