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

Abstract

Purpose

The 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/approach

This 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.

Findings

This 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/implications

The 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 implications

Intervention 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 implications

Many 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/value

Most 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.

Citation

Biron, M., Casper, W.J. and Raghuram, S. (2023), "Crafting telework: a process model of need satisfaction to foster telework outcomes", Personnel Review, Vol. 52 No. 3, pp. 671-686. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-04-2021-0259

Introduction

Telework (or telecommuting, virtual work or remote work) allows employees to work in locations other than their primary office. The roots of telework trace back to the early 1990s when employers implemented telework to reduce fixed costs (Raghuram et al., 2019). Most recently, employees worldwide have transitioned to full- or part-time telework to reduce the spread of COVID-19 (Haag, 2020; Kramer and Kramer, 2020). Yet, as the pandemic subsides, long-term telework is being considered by many firms (Streitfeld, 2020). A recent survey revealed that 63% of workers prefer to work from home, at least part-time, after the COVID-19 crisis (Mikula, 2020). These upward trends in telework frequency underscore the need to understand how to enhance work–nonwork balance and productivity among teleworkers.

The extant telework literature suffers from two major shortcomings. First, it mostly discusses telework in static terms, ignoring changes that teleworkers make to cognitions, physical spaces and relationships over time. Second, it focuses primarily on the work–family interface, ignoring interactions with work-related role partners like coworkers, supervisors, customers and suppliers. With regard to the first concern, with a few exceptions (e.g. Biron and van Veldhoven, 2016; Tietze, 2002; Tietze and Musson, 2005), telework research utilizes cross-sectional data, often comparing high- and low-intensity telework (i.e. number of days of remote work; Wiesenfeld et al., 2001) or office workers and home-based teleworkers (Hill et al., 1998). Importantly, most samples include teleworkers at different levels of adjustment. For example, one study sample might include experienced teleworkers with established productivity patterns, and new teleworkers who are struggling to adjust to telework, and those anywhere in between. Such an approach captures respondents’ perceptions at a single point in time and cannot explain the process of learning to telework – the cognitive and behavioral adjustments that people make to telework effectively. This may explain why telework is sometimes linked to positive outcomes and other times to negative outcomes (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007). For example, some studies find that telework relates to increased work–nonwork balance (Hill et al., 1998: Wheatley, 2012), higher job satisfaction (McNall et al., 2009), reduced stress (Biron and van Veldhoven, 2016) and improved productivity (Mikula, 2020), whereas others find more work–nonwork conflict (Kossek et al., 2006), greater social isolation (Bailey and Kurland, 2002) and lower organizational identification (Wiesenfeld et al., 2001).

The second shortcoming of telework research is a focus on the work–family interface (e.g. Hill et al., 1998; Kossek et al., 2006) to the exclusion of other important aspects of telework. The most common alternate work location is the home, which carries implications for coordinating work and family roles (Bailey and Kurland, 2002; Gajendran and Harrison, 2007; Tietze et al., 2009). Notably, Tietze and colleagues explore the dynamic aspects of telework, but their work is limited to work and family boundaries. They proffer that teleworkers cope with practical, social and moral tensions resulting from co-locating work and home by continuously negotiating with family and adjusting the use of temporal and spatial resources (Tietze, 2002; Tietze and Musson, 2005). Similarly, Whapshott and Mallett (2011) discuss the on-going (re)construction of space use due to a collapse in the demarcation of home and work spheres in telework. These authors discuss telework as a dynamic phenomenon but fail to consider teleworker negotiations with work role or nonwork role partners other than family. This is an important oversight, because teleworkers are physically distanced from work role partners (i.e. colleagues and managers) and may have important nonwork role partners besides family.

A dynamic holistic view is important to guide research on how people learn to telework harmoniously with work and nonwork requirements and fosters work performance. With the increasing prevalence of telework, such research is practically relevant. Yet, to our knowledge, only one paper has explored how teleworkers learn. Limburg (2003) draws from the lens of learning to offer a prototype to guide firms implementing telework. He suggests firms (1) identify aspects of the organization and work involved in a change to telework (i.e. current routines, procedures and communication technology) and (2) provide managers, employees and project teams with clear objectives and guidelines for teleworking. While Limburg (2003) offers good suggestions, there is clearly a need to advance theory that can stimulate research on learning to telework over time.

We offer a theoretical model that outlines a process by which teleworkers craft aspects of their work and nonwork roles to foster satisfaction with autonomy, relatedness and competence needs and facilitate positive outcomes (de Bloom et al., 2020; Ryan and Deci, 2000; Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001). As such, we advance a dynamic view of telework in four ways. First, we extend job crafting theory to telework. Second, we extend research that considers how teleworkers negotiate and adjust with family members by including other role partners (stakeholders) from both work and nonwork domains, such as supervisors, colleagues, customers, nonwork friends and professional and local community members. Third, we introduce time-related individual differences, which may explain for whom the association between telework crafting and need satisfaction is stronger. Finally, we integrate sensemaking into our model (George and Jones, 2001) to theorize about how teleworkers continuously use feedback from internal (self) and external (e.g. supervisor, family and friends) sources to further (re)craft teleworking to foster need satisfaction and telework in a more effective and harmonious way (Klein, 1989).

In sum, the aim of this paper is to develop a theoretical model of the dynamism inherent in telework. In our holistic, iterative model, we propose that when employees experience new work schemas, like those afforded by telework, they can optimize work routines, consider misalignments and positive aspects of their work design and change as needed – so as to enhance productivity and well-being in work and nonwork domains (Zammuto et al., 2007). Our process model is illustrated in Figure 1.

Crafting telework for need satisfaction

Employees shape work activities and experiences to create conditions that enable optimal functioning (i.e. feeling and performing well) by engaging in job crafting (Vogel et al., 2016). The role-based approach to job crafting (Bruning and Campion, 2018; Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001) describes three kinds of crafting: cognitive crafting – defining and framing what a job means to one’s identity; physical crafting – managing the quantity, scope and location of job tasks; and relational crafting – managing interactions with people at work. Whereas crafting research traditionally focused on work, more recently scholars have recognized that crafting occurs in both work and nonwork roles (Sturges, 2012; Wessels et al., 2019).

Psychological needs satisfaction has been suggested as the underlying process through which cognitive crafting fosters positive attitudes and behaviors (de Bloom et al., 2020). However, in addition to cognitive crafting, physical and relational crafting may also foster need satisfaction of teleworkers. Specifically, teleworkers may be motivated to craft aspects of work and nonwork roles to satisfy needs to (1) use resources effectively to meet work and nonwork requirements (need for competence); (2) have greater control over their job and life (i.e. need for autonomy); and (3) have meaningful interactions with other people (need for relatedness) (Berg et al., 2008). We draw from self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000) to discuss how the flexibility to work in different times/locations offers teleworkers discretion in how to pursue work and nonwork goals, enabling them to craft behaviors to fulfill various needs.

Cognitive crafting

Teleworking has implications for how people see themselves as employees and in relation to other people. People form personal identities based on roles and relationships, and collective identities based on group membership (Stryker and Burke, 2000; Tajfel and Turner, 1986). Social identity theory suggests that people have multiple identities, which are arranged hierarchically by salience (Stets and Serpe, 2013). Identities that are most central to the self are more salient than those that are less central to self, and identity salience can change over time (Ibarra, 1999). Individuals have the capacity to shape new identities as they work towards “hoped-for” identities (Kreiner and Sheep, 2009) and develop provisional liminal identities – an in-between state of current and aspired identities (Ibarra, 1999; Raghuram, 2013). Teleworkers can engage in cognitive crafting to develop identities that closely match their “ideal self” (e.g. both an ideal parent and an ideal employee), which can foster need satisfaction.

Work identity

During telework, an employee's identity as an organizational member may be threatened by fewer work-related in-person interactions. Teleworkers who feel isolated from the organization may also perceive less respect at work (Bartel et al., 2012) and are less likely to identify with the organization (Thatcher and Zhu, 2006). To restore a work-related identity, teleworkers may engage in activities to affirm positive self-concepts as contributing members (Tajfel and Turner, 1986). For example, they may decorate a home office with reminders of the organization (e.g. awards from work) or dress in work clothes to “go to work” in a home office (Thatcher and Zhu, 2006). Such rituals help teleworkers to satisfy needs for competence and autonomy (e.g. being perceived as a professional by work role partners, opting in or out of work rituals as they see fit). Moreover, teleworkers may find new ways to stay connected with role partners at work (Swann et al., 1992), such as virtual interactions with work colleagues (via Teams or Zoom), meeting needs for relatedness (Wiesenfeld et al., 2001).

Nonwork identity

Besides changing how they work, teleworkers may also change their self-view in the nonwork domain (Ashforth et al., 2000). The flexibility of telework can provide opportunities to invest in important nonwork identities such as family member, friend or volunteer. Affirming these nonwork identities can satisfy teleworker needs for relatedness (being with family, friends, etc.), competence (being effective as a spouse or parent) and autonomy (to invest in identity-salient roles). For example, compared to office workers, teleworkers have more flexibility to participate in children’s school activities (e.g. chaperone a school trip), help an aging parent, drive a friend to a medical appointment or volunteer in an animal shelter. Such activities may enable teleworkers to develop a more positive self-concept as a parent, daughter/son, friend and community member.

Proposition 1a.

Teleworkers engage in cognitive crafting of work and nonwork identities to foster satisfaction of needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness; as need satisfaction increases, they engage in less cognitive crafting.

Physical crafting

Teleworkers work in various locations, but we focus on two common locations: home and office (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007). A key concern with working from home is that it leads to collapse of work-nonwork boundaries (Kossek et al., 2006; Tietze and Musson, 2005; Whapshott and Mallett, 2011). Teleworkers may use two forms of physical crafting to minimize conflict between work and nonwork and foster need satisfaction: boundary management and task allocation.

Work-nonwork boundaries management

People use boundary management strategies to build, keep, arrange and/or cross boundaries between work and nonwork (Ashforth et al., 2000; Kossek, 2016). Boundaries vary in the degree to which they are permeable and flexible and can be physical or psychological in nature (Nippert-Eng, 1996). Permeable boundaries are those in which one domain can enter the other domain (Ashforth et al., 2000). For example, a home boundary becomes permeable when a person answers work-related phone calls at home. Flexibility of boundaries has to do with the ability to enact roles in different places (location flexibility) or at different times (temporal flexibility) (Ashforth et al., 2000). Teleworkers often have some location flexibility to work either at an office location or at home, but there may be differences between teleworkers in their location flexibility. Teleworkers also differ in the degree of temporal flexibility afforded by their work. For example, an employee whose job involves mostly report writing may have high temporal flexibility to work at any hour of the day, while an educator who teaches synchronously must deliver lectures at the time they are scheduled.

People vary in their preferences for boundaries between work and home (Kreiner, 2006). Some people have strong preferences to create and enforce strong boundaries between work and home – an approach called role segmentation, where they maintain impermeable and inflexible boundaries to keep work and home separate (Ashforth et al., 2000). In contrast, others prefer integration, where boundaries are permeable and work and home blend together (Kossek, 2016). Teleworkers whose jobs are highly flexible can often craft boundaries that align with their preferences. For instance, those who prefer integration create permeable boundaries to combine work and home when teleworking (e.g. answering work-related e-mails while homeschooling; Kossek, 2016). In contrast, teleworkers who prefer segmentation create impermeable boundaries to reduce cross-role interruptions (e.g. remote working in a home office that family members do not enter) (Fenner and Renn, 2004; Olson-Buchanan and Boswell, 2006). Yet teleworkers’ boundary management behavior is influenced not only by their own preferences but also by those of family members or other cohabitants. While a teleworker who prefers segmentation wants to work in a home-office with no interruptions, an interruption-free zone would need to be negotiated with home role partners.

In addition to people in the home, teleworkers may have to negotiate their boundary management behavior with role partners at work, such as members of their work team or supervisor. For example, organizational norms for constant availability via communication technology may be enforced by work role partners, forcing teleworkers to integrate work and nonwork. This may be counter to their personal preferences (or abilities) of segmentation (Derks et al., 2016). Teleworkers may also craft their physical space based on negotiations with colleagues or supervisors. For example, when working on a team project, teleworkers may split work time between the office and home after negotiating to complete part of a task away from the office on a particular day. For some teleworkers, this location flexibility may also coexist with temporal flexibility.

Given physical role integration offers both benefits and costs, successful crafting may involve a cycling boundary management approach in which teleworkers alternate between integrating and segmenting, depending on what best fits the situation, to foster need satisfaction (Kossek, 2016). For example, a teleworker on a short deadline might use segmentation, declining personal calls to focus on task completion, satisfying needs for competence and autonomy. At other times, the same teleworker may attend an important family event but keep her phone nearby to attend to work-related calls as needed. In this latter case, integration enables the teleworker to satisfy need for relatedness (being with family) and competence (attending to work).

Allocation of tasks

Location and temporal flexibility enable teleworkers to decide which work tasks are best completed at which location. To be effective, task allocation between work and home should be guided by task requirements and leveraging the benefits of each location. For instance, tasks may be professional/technical or administrative/clerical in nature, independent or interdependent or vary in the tools and information required to perform them (Picot et al., 2008). Interdependent tasks, customer service tasks and feedback-giving often benefit from the physical presence and rich face-to-face communication. Technology-enabled meetings (e.g. video-conferences) capture fewer socio-emotional cues and engender less associative thinking, which may impair team creativity (Postmes et al., 1998). However, as telework allows concentration in a less intrusive environment (home), tasks that require undisturbed stretches of time (e.g. writing) are better done away from the office (Bailey and Kurland, 2002; Golden and Gajendran, 2019).

Effective task allocation involves the completion of tasks at their designated location (Fenner and Renn, 2004). This is not always easy because people who telework part-time often compress meetings with customers, colleagues and supervisors into a short time at the office. They may compensate for a low organizational presence working at home by “showing themselves” when they are in the office (Thatcher and Zhu, 2006), occupying office time with meetings and social interactions such that tasks originally assigned for office completion spillover to home, leaving home domain duties unfinished (Sonnentag, 2012). Teleworkers who are careful in how much they transfer office tasks to home and vice versa are likely to satisfy needs for autonomy and competence.

Proposition 1b.

Teleworkers engage in physical crafting in the form of boundary management and task allocation to foster satisfaction of needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness; as need satisfaction increases, they engage in less physical crafting.

Relationship crafting

Teleworking challenges relationships in both work and nonwork domains (Bailey and Kurland, 2002; Gajendran and Harrison, 2007). Teleworkers may engage in relational crafting of professional and personal networks to increase need satisfaction.

Professional networks

Comprised of relationships with supervisors, coworkers and customers, professional networks are often created and maintained informally during unscheduled, face-to-face interactions or through formal meetings (Kurland and Pelled, 2000). Telework can limit access to such networks because teleworkers have fewer, less intensive interactions with work role partners, creating difficulty transferring (seeking, giving and receiving) tacit knowledge or to learning vicariously when teleworking (Golden and Raghuram, 2010; Raghuram, 1996). As such, Bartel et al. (2012) suggested that teleworkers may use impression management strategies (e.g. frequent online communication, timely responses to supervisors) to project an image of themselves as attentive professionals, meeting needs for relatedness and competence. These needs can also be met by expanding professional networks beyond their employer through membership in professional associations and online communities. By relying less on their employer for mentoring and advice, external networks also help teleworkers satisfy needs for autonomy (Skyrme, 2007).

Personal networks

If teleworkers feel isolated from work peers, unmet needs for relatedness may underlie relational crafting outside of work to develop personal role identities (Westaby et al., 2014). For example, teleworkers with temporal flexibility can volunteer for activities at a child’s school during school hours, allowing access to diverse social and emotional resources (Cohen, 2004). Teleworkers may receive instrumental support from personal networks, which can meet needs for competence in nonwork roles (Wellman and Wortley, 1990), as a rich community network may provide resources to manage nonwork challenges related to home maintenance or dependent care (House, 1981). Broader networks outside of work can also satisfy autonomy needs as teleworkers rely less on organizational sources (e.g. colleagues and supervisor) for support and diversify their support network outside of work (e.g. neighbors, friends and family members).

Proposition 1c.

Teleworkers engage in relational crafting by developing relationships with work and nonwork role partners to foster satisfaction of needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness; as need satisfaction increases, they engage in less relationship crafting.

Need satisfaction and telework outcomes

In the previous section we proposed that cognitive, physical and relational crafting leads to autonomy, competence and relatedness need satisfaction. In this section, we theorize that need satisfaction fosters the key outcomes of work–nonwork balance and job performance.

Need satisfaction and work–nonwork balance

Work–nonwork balance has been recently defined as “Employees' evaluation of the favorability of their combination of work and nonwork roles, arising from the degree to which their affective experiences and their perceived involvement and effectiveness in work and nonwork roles are commensurate with the value they attach to these roles” (Casper et al., 2018, p. 197). This definition conceptualizes balance as an attitude about how work and nonwork roles fit together, based on how employees combine important work and nonwork roles, their evaluation of how effective they are in combining these roles, and their perception of whether they are adequately involved in these roles. We argue that as teleworkers satisfy distinct needs through job crafting, work–nonwork balance will improve.

A meta-analytic study (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007) shows that teleworkers, compared to office workers, perceive higher autonomy in determining how time and resources are allocated to work. When the need for autonomy is met, teleworkers can more effectively attend to work and nonwork roles (e.g. swap between tasks). Met needs for competence across work and nonwork roles help reduce teleworkers’ concerns about work and nonwork role performance, fostering confidence and comfort in inhabiting dual identities. Finally, satisfying relatedness needs (due to good relationships in both work and nonwork domains) can provide employees with pleasurable experiences in their valued work and nonwork roles, likely fostering work–nonwork balance (e.g. Maruyama and Tietze, 2012; Tims et al., 2012).

Proposition 2.

As teleworkers satisfy their needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, they perceive higher work–nonwork balance.

Need satisfaction and performance

Job performance is a multi-faceted construct with both task and contextual aspects. Task performance focuses on technical aspects of a job (e.g. quantity and quality), whereas contextual performance includes extra-role behaviors that aid the successful functioning of an organization (Borman and Motowidlo, 1997). Both aspects of performance are important to consider in teleworkers’ contribution to their employer (Gajendran et al., 2015).

As teleworkers satisfy their need for autonomy due to the perceived flexibility of their job in time and place, they can engage in timely and well-informed actions that fit their performance objectives. This can result in being effective in role-prescribed tasks (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007). For example, with fulfilled needs for autonomy, teleworkers can service clients in different time zones via communication technology – for example, they might change their work hours to match those of the client. Moreover, fulfilled needs for autonomy free up cognitive and temporal resources, so teleworkers can more efficiently engage in both task-related and extra-role behaviors (Demerouti and Bakker, 2011; Gajendran et al., 2015). For example, teleworkers save commute time which they can devote to helping colleagues or serving on committees.

As teleworkers meet competence needs, they make their skills visible inside and outside their organization and can leverage their social capital for better performance (e.g. through diverse professional networks that offer access to new ideas) (Zhang and Venkatesh, 2013). Simultaneously, teleworkers with an established professional standing can engage in contextual performance by sharing their expertise with colleagues and, in turn, benefit the organization.

Lastly, satisfied needs for relatedness can foster both task and contextual performance. When teleworkers feel connected, they may feel valued in the organization (Raghuram et al., 2001), fostering a desire to help (Kurtessis et al., 2015). Relatedness can also increase teleworkers' trust in work relationships (e.g. with peers) and the organization. Such positive relationships may foster a willingness to share know-how and exert discretionary task performance (Golden and Raghuram, 2010).

Proposition 3.

As teleworkers satisfy their needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, they exhibit higher task and contextual performance.

Time-related moderators

While there may be many moderators that impact the association between telework crafting and need satisfaction, our model considers time-related individual differences (see Shipp and Cole, 2015), which may explain why people adapt to telework more or less quickly (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001).

First, career stage is likely relevant to how quickly teleworkers adapt. Teleworkers at an advanced career stage may have well-established work identities, professional networks, and good understandings of task demands gained via experience in the job and/or organization (Parker, 2014). Their higher level of work-related knowledge (formal and informal) should strengthen the relationship between crafting and need satisfaction. Second, those who have experience with teleworking (Raghuram et al., 2001) are more likely to have already crafted their work and nonwork identities, learned to manage boundaries between work and home and developed community networks. Thus, experienced teleworkers should require less crafting to foster need satisfaction and adapt more easily to more intense teleworking. Third, time management skills such as goal setting, scheduling and sequencing tasks (Shipp and Cole, 2015) may enable crafting telework with greater ease. Teleworkers with good time management skills may be better able to leverage the temporal flexibility of telework to craft work and nonwork domains toward satisfying needs (Raghuram et al., 2003). Finally, we consider polychronicity, which refers to a preference to work on multiple tasks, switching back and forth among different activities rather than doing one thing at a time (Slocombe and Bluedorn, 1999). As telework can require managing work and nonwork roles simultaneously, people high in polychronicity might enjoy the multi-role juggling act of telework, naturally using cognitive, physical and relational crafting to satisfy needs in work and nonwork domains (Sonnentag et al., 2014).

Proposition 4.

The relationship between telework crafting and satisfaction of needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness is stronger for individuals (1) in more advanced career stages, (2) with more telework experience, (3) with stronger time management skills and (4) with a preference for polychronicity.

Feedback loops in the telework process

We argue that within-teleworker need satisfaction increases over time as teleworkers engage in cognitive, physical and relationship crafting, fostering work–nonwork balance and performance. Once needs are met, crafting efforts may be reduced until the teleworker receives feedback urging reconsidering of need fulfilment and, subsequently, recrafting. In this final piece of our model, we explain how need satisfaction is continuously assessed by heeding feedback from internal (self) and external agents (e.g. family, friends, colleagues and supervisors). Teleworkers make sense of this feedback by comparing actual vs desired outcomes. If they perceive unmet needs, they can further modify their approach with job recrafting to improve need satisfaction and ultimately foster better telework outcomes (cf. Klein, 1989).

We theorize that knowledge gathered via feedback loops leads to reconsideration of cognitive, physical and relational crafting. This is because repeated internal and external push-backs help teleworkers clarify their thinking about their job design and identify problems and opportunities for a redesign (i.e. changes that can enhance need satisfaction). For example, teleworkers may self-evaluate progress at work by comparing goals with achievements, self-assess family dedication by comparing performance on household duties to family expectations or personally experience telework as generating high or low stress; family members may express opinions about a teleworker's work–home balance; coworkers may commend or criticize a teleworker's work dedication. Role partners' views are communicated to a teleworker through ongoing interactions at work and home, which can impact teleworker attitudes and beliefs (Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978). Such feedback from others and self about actual outcomes is compared to desired outcomes. The “comparison” element in our model explains how tensions between desired and actual outcomes potentially result in perceptions of (un)met needs, which can “lead to a change in existing schemas and, hence, changes in individual perceptions, interpretations, and behaviors” (George and Jones, 2001, p. 421; Ibarra, 1999).

Feedback loops depict the reciprocal relationship between need satisfaction and telework crafting – an interplay that goes both ways – crafting leads to high need satisfaction, and low need satisfaction (created by negative feedback) fosters recrafting of telework behavior to better satisfy needs. This within-person learning process evolves over time. As teleworkers gain skills and experience, teleworking becomes more beneficial to work–nonwork balance and performance (Parker, 2014). Ariely and Carmon (2000) discussed how people develop experience profiles over time. These profiles are dynamic, that is, the trend of experiences over time shape expectations for the future and thereby, current experiences. A teleworker’s mastery of job crafting, which fosters effective telework at an earlier point in time, may provide a reference point for improvement in using job crafting at a later time; teleworkers continuously assess their progress on important outcomes (relative to where they want to be; see the “Comparator” element in Figure 1) and make adjustments (Li et al., 2017). These feedback loops determine within-person changes and are key in understanding telework as a dynamic rather than static process (Shipp and Fried, 2014).

Proposition 5.

Utilizing feedback, teleworkers adjust their crafting to closely align their needs satisfaction and desired states of work–nonwork balance and performance

Discussion

In contrast to extant telework research, which is primarily cross-sectional, our model offers a more accurate illustration of how telework behavior unfolds over time to impact work–nonwork balance and performance, depicting telework as a dynamic, iterative process wherein teleworkers satisfy psychological needs by engaging in crafting behavior to achieve positive telework outcomes. We suggest that teleworkers continuously use internal feedback from the self and external feedback from work and nonwork role partners to compare actual and desired outcomes, assess need satisfaction and recraft telework behavior as needed.

Research implications

Our model carries several implications. First, we demonstrate a need for within-person studies to follow teleworkers over time, linking their cognitive, physical and relational job crafting to changes in need satisfaction, work–nonwork balance and performance. The trajectory of adapting to telework over time may show an initial slow adjustment, which levels off, or trajectories may vary based on individual differences. Longitudinal studies with many observations are required to identify such trajectories (Roe, 2014). Second, we theorize about between-person differences in career stages, telework experience, time management skills and polychronicity that impact within-person changes over time (Shipp and Fried, 2014). We urge researchers to examine how these differences moderate the relationship between crafting and need satisfaction.

Future research might also examine how the source of feedback relates to teleworker performance, work–nonwork balance and need satisfaction. For example, some feedback sources (e.g. spouse, peers or supervisor) may be more salient to teleworkers; teleworkers may receive contradictory feedback from different role partners; and different sources of feedback may vary in importance over time.

Our model is also relevant to job crafting by virtual teams. Indeed, virtual teams and teleworkers are similar in their technology dependence and geographic dispersion, although they differ in level of analysis (Raghuram et al., 2019). Research could explore how virtual team members engage in crafting to foster better teamwork over time. For example, crafting relationships among virtual team members is important to create team mental models based on shared tacit knowledge and enhance team performance (Maynard and Gilson, 2014). Without face-to-face meetings, virtual team members may need more frequent communication with rich communication media. Virtual team members may engage in cognitive crafting to affirm their identities as capable and committed team members, for example, by holding virtual “happy hours.” Such self-verification can improve within-team trust (O'Leary and Cummings, 2007; Schaubroeck and Yu, 2017). Lastly, physical crafting to manage boundaries is critical when team members are temporally distributed. Time zone differences and needs for synchronous communication (Schaubroeck and Yu, 2017) may require working during family time at home, impairing work–nonwork balance (Raghuram et al., 2019).

Crafting and need satisfaction may require special attention for managers who telework, due to the impact of leader behavior on subordinates (Golden and Fromen, 2011). Telework may require changes in leadership style. For example, teleworking managers may need to develop unique skills in mentoring, task delegation, coordination and information exchange (Golden and Fromen, 2011; Purvanova and Kenda, 2018). The crafting-need satisfaction relationship for leaders who telework may be influenced by leader-employee trust (Raghuram and Fang, 2014) or by team cohesion and collective efficacy (Kozlowski and Chao, 2012). Our model can be extended to include these and other factors that influence telework among specific occupational groups like managers.

The model may also apply to e-lancers with some adaptation to capture unique features of their work. Unlike traditional telework as part of an employee–employer relationship, contract work involves a triangular relationship between worker, requester (organization or individual consumer) and an online platform (in case of an e-lancer) (Aguinis and Lawal, 2013; Breidbach et al., 2014; Meijerink and Keegan, 2019). This may create liability and trust issues, requiring additional effort to establish professional networks (relationship crafting) or allocate tasks (physical crafting). Future research could examine the relationship between crafting, need satisfaction and outcomes (e.g. business growth) that are relevant for e-lancers and other contemporary remote work arrangements.

Our model draws from role-based job crafting, which is a motivational approach to job design (Wrzesniewski and Dutton, 2001) that can explain the reciprocal relationship between needs satisfaction and telework crafting. Research might consider other approaches such as resource crafting (Bruning and Campion, 2018; de Bloom et al., 2020), which involves an individual's strategy to acquire resources, avoid job demands, increase efficiency and conserve resources (Tims et al., 2012), as an alternate lens into telework crafting.

Finally, in light of contemporary discourses on telework amid crises such as COVID-19, we urge researchers to consider societal disruptions that can impact employee desire and ability to craft telework to meet their needs. These include macro stressors and crises associated with war and terrorism, extreme weather conditions, natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks (Donnelly and Proctor-Thomson, 2015). For example, after the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, companies whose offices were located in the disaster area (e.g. Morgan Stanley) had to rapidly transition to remote work; a similar approach was taken by AT&T in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (Roitz and Jackson, 2006).

Practical implications

Our model has practical implications for teleworkers and their employers. Intervention studies could focus on teleworkers' job crafting behavior. While not all teleworkers make conscious choices about managing the work–nonwork boundary, interventions in form of training and telework policies could encourage them to experiment with different forms of boundary management, reflect on the effectiveness of each strategy and take self-assessments to identify their preferred approach (Kossek, 2016). Changes in boundary management strategies could be tracked over time and linked to changes in need satisfaction, work–nonwork balance and performance outcomes.

Employers may prepare employees to telework and provide support to translate teleworker job crafting behavior into need satisfaction and positive outcomes. For example, firms can provide communication technology (availability, support) or a telework-buddy (experienced teleworker mentor) to boost the crafting-need satisfaction association. As firms like Amazon hire customer service employees to support increased demand during COVID-19, experienced teleworkers can help these new remote employees with advice about effective remote work.

Conclusion

Addressing calls for understanding the dynamism of telework, we offer a model for crafting telework that illustrates cognitive, physical and relational changes teleworkers make to foster need satisfaction, work–nonwork balance and job performance (see Tietze et al., 2009). We discuss time-related individual differences as contingencies to within-person changes. Finally, we incorporate the role of feedback – originating from others and one’s own evaluation – in the iterative process of learning to telework over time. Our model can direct future research to extend our understanding of telework and job crafting and guide practitioners to design interventions to help achieve desired telework outcomes.

Figures

Figure 1

A process model of telework