Teleworking at Different Locations Outside the Office: Consequences for Perceived Performance and the Mediating Role of Autonomy and Work-Life Balance Satisfaction

Abstract

Enhanced communication technologies increasingly allow us to work anytime and anywhere. Many organizations have moved from traditional offices to flexible workplaces in which employees are allowed to vary their work hours and work at different locations both outside and inside the office. So far, findings are inconclusive regarding the effects of teleworking and few studies have examined its use by employees. Our study, which addresses the pre-COVID-19 context, is based on COR theory and explores how employees working in a Dutch public sector organization (N = 873) use teleworking and what the consequences of this are for individual perceived performance. With respect to teleworking, we focus on time spent working from home and time spent working elsewhere. To test hypotheses, we conducted SEM in AMOS using a two-step approach. Mediation analysis showed that the paths from teleworking to performance via autonomy and work-life balance satisfaction were significant for working from home.