New Normal, but Good Normal? Testing the Effect of a Hybrid Way of Working on Employee Effectiveness

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has made telecommuting the “new normal”. Employees can now move rather freely between work locations, from the office to home, back again, or even to another location to perform their work. This increased flexibility in the location of work raises the question of whether employees’ weekly work effectiveness varies when they telecommute to varying extents throughout the week. Applying the conceptual framework of conservation of resources theory, the current study addresses this critical issue by developing and testing a conceptual model that highlights how employees’ effectiveness waxes and wanes in response to their extent of telecommuting during a workweek. Furthermore, I explore the moderating role of self-goal setting in this process. Results from a panel study of German employees conducted over 1.5 years provide support for a curvilinear within-person relationship between the extent of telecommuting and employees’ effectiveness in terms of work performance and work engagement in the shape of a “U”. I discuss the implications of these results for the literature on telecommuting. Furthermore, these findings also have important implications for practitioners who face the challenge to shape a post-pandemic future of work in which a hybrid way of working is possibly here to stay.