Crafting telework: a process model of need satisfaction to foster telework outcomes

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to offer a model explicating telework as a dynamic process, theorizing that teleworkers continuously adjust – their identities, boundaries and relationships – to meet their own needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness in their work and nonwork roles.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses the lens of job crafting to posit changes teleworkers make to enhance work-nonwork balance and job performance, including time-related individual differences to account for contingencies in dynamic adjustments. Finally, this study discusses how feedback from work and nonwork role partners and one’s self-evaluation results in an iterative process of learning to telework over time.FindingsThis model describes how teleworkers craft work and nonwork roles to satisfy needs, enhancing key outcomes and eliciting role partner feedback to further recraft telework.Research limitations/implicationsThe propositions can be translated to hypotheses. As such the dynamic model for crafting telework can be used as a basis for empirical studies aimed at understanding how telework adjustment process unfolds.Practical implicationsIntervention studies could focus on teleworkers’ job crafting behavior. Organizations may also offer training to prepare employees to telework and to create conditions under which teleworkers’ job crafting behavior more easily translates into need satisfaction and positive outcomes.Social implicationsMany employees would prefer to work from home, at least partly, when the COVID-19 crisis is over. This model offers a way to facilitate a smooth transition into this work mode while ensuring work nonwork balance and performance.Originality/valueMost telework research takes a static approach to focus on the work–family interface. This study proffers a dynamic approach suggesting need satisfaction as the mechanism enabling one to combine work and domestic roles and delineating how feedback enables continuous adjustment in professional and personal roles.