ENGAGEMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF TELEWORK: WHAT ARE THE KEY SUCCESS FACTORS ?

Abstract

Teleworker engagement has been a cause for concern for organizations for several decades. The psychological engagement of employees who telework has been further questioned by employers and managers, mainly due to their physical distance and lesser visibility. The pandemic of 2020 has diffused teleworking practices, asking an unprecedented proportion of employees to work suddenly from home. In this context, we study the impact of three dimensions of engagement: meaningfulness, safety and availability (embodied into 11 distinct influence factors) on teleworker engagement. Results based on the analysis of cross-organizational data collected from 357 employees show that meaningfulness followed by safety are the most predictive dimensions. In addition to the need for psychological resources for teleworking, our results highlight the key importance of enriched tasks development, management role, social support and interpersonal trust, in particular with managers. 
We also found that women are more engaged than men in all four tested models and that older workers are more engaged than younger ones in the two most complete models. We then discuss the implications of our findings for organizations and research.