Already exhausted when arriving at work? a diary study of morning demands, start-of-work-day fatigue and job performance and the buffering role of temporal flexibility

Abstract

ABSTRACT The energetic state before the start of work has been associated with work-related outcomes (e.g. job performance). However, little is known regarding the determinants of the energetic state before starting work. It can be assumed that working parents, in particular, face various resource-consuming demands (e.g. childcare-related demands) before they start working that may impact the subsequent workday. To test this assumption, we conducted a diary study involving 130 working parents over five workdays. We investigated the effects of childcare-related and commute-related demands as predictors of changes in fatigue between awakening and starting work. Furthermore, we examined the mediated effect of morning demands on job performance via start-of-work-time fatigue. Finally, we investigated whether work schedule flexibility and childcare drop-off time flexibility attenuated the adverse effect of morning demands on fatigue. The results indicated that morning childcare-related and commute-related demands had a significant indirect effect on job performance, as these morning demands predicted start-of-work-time fatigue, which in turn was associated with daily job performance. Work schedule flexibility, but not drop-off time flexibility, buffered the effect of morning demands on start-of-work-time fatigue. To enhance the job performance of working parents, future research should pay more attention to contextual factors before daily work starts.