Boundary Management and Recovery when Working from Home

Abstract

Blurred work–home boundaries can hamper teleworkers’ recovery from job demands. We investigate teleworkers’ temporal, physical, communicative, and technological boundary tactics as predictors of recovery experiences (i.e., psychological detachment and control during leisure time) and recovery outcomes (i.e., exhaustion). We hypothesized that individuals’ work–home segmentation preference as a personal factor and availability demands as a situational factor should moderate the relations between boundary tactics and recovery. We collected data from 207 individuals who mainly worked from home in a lockdown period during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the use of temporal tactics was positively associated with psychological detachment, control, and lower exhaustion. The use of physical tactics was related to higher control and lower exhaustion. Our moderator hypotheses were partly confirmed: Only for individuals with high segmentation preference and high availability demands, technological boundary tactics were associated with higher detachment. Further, for teleworkers with high availability demands, the associations between temporal tactics and detachment, between physical boundary tactics and control, and between technological boundary tactics and lower exhaustion were stronger. Our study contributes to a better understanding of teleworkers’ recovery processes and provides actionable knowledge on how to enable and sustain teleworkers’ recovery.