The impact of telework on emotional experience: When, and for whom, does telework improve daily affective well-being?

Teleworking has become increasingly popular in organizations around the world. Despite this trend towards working outside of the traditional office setting, research has not yet examined how people feel (i.e., their affective experiences) on days when working at home versus in the office. Using a sample of 102 employees from a large US government agency, we employed a within-person design to test hypotheses about the relationship between teleworking and affective well-being. We also examined four individual differences (openness to experience, rumination, sensation seeking, and social connectedness outside of work) as cross-level moderators. Results show that employees experience more job-related positive affective well-being (PAWB) and less job-related negative affective well-being (NAWB) on days when they were teleworking compared to days they were working in the office. Findings show that several of the individual differences moderated the relationships. Discussion focuses on the need to consider the affective consequences of telework and the characteristics that determine who will benefit more or less from working at home.