Examining the impact of discretionary human resource practices on workplace loneliness implication during home-based telework

Abstract

"The advancement of information and communication technologies has revolutionized work– life balance in the 21st century by migrating work from traditional office spaces to remote locations. For many, employees, this means working from home, in what is called ""homebased telework"" (HbTW). During the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of HbTW was significantly accelerated as a part of quarantine measures aimed at containing the spread of the virus. Considering that HbTW could become deeply assimilated into employees' work– life balance, it is vitally important that human resource management (HRM) understand the implications of HbTW in order to proactively shape the future of their organization and its employees. One of the outcomes of HbTW in a relational context is significant professional and personal isolation, which may contribute to workplace loneliness among employees. Although loneliness in the workplace tends to have deleterious affective, mental, attitudinal, and behavioral consequences for the employees and has become a pervasive organizational concern, it has received limited attention in HRM literature. This research first qualitatively explores factors that affect HbTW and highlights the role of discretionary human resource (HR) practices (Study 1). Based on the findings of Study 1, our research further enriches the existing scholarly work by empirically examining the antecedents of workplace loneliness, which is one of the critical outcomes of HbTW (Study 2A), and probes the work behaviors of teleworkers while analyzing the role of discretionary HR practices (Study 2B). The study uses a mixed-method research design to explore and investigate the proposed linkages in the following three studies. In Study 1, the research qualitatively explores the impact of HbTW on employees and examines the role of discretionary HR practices. Furthermore, the study highlights the themes that would influence the link between telework and its implications. In Study 2A, the study empirically examines the relationship between HbTW and one of its outcomes: workplace loneliness. Furthermore, the factors affecting the given linkage are probed. Drawing from the job demand–resource model and conservation of resources theory, we argue that HbTW can precipitate workplace loneliness through augmented social disconnectedness. In Study 2B, the study quantitatively shows that counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is one of the instrumental outcomes arising from the social emotion of loneliness in the telework context. Furthermore, the study probes the role of individual personality and discretionary HR practices that would influence the relationship between an employee's workplace loneliness and CWB during HbTW."