A mixed-method exploration of effects of technostress on remote / hybrid working professionals

The world has experienced an unprecedented socio-economic transformation due to the COVID 19 outbreak in the year 2020. As a result, firms across the world were compelled to embrace prolonged remote working. However, this has created unique challenges for employers and employees alike and might result in increased friction between work and family life. This study adopted a mixed-method design to investigate how stress induced by excessive use of technology might affect work-family outcomes of employees. Study 1 explored the experiences of managers (n = 20) and subordinates (n = 24) through in-depth interviews about remote working. Also, this study attempts to understand if the stress generated from excessive use of remote working technology affects employee work-related outcomes, and do virtual competencies help in coping. Hence in Study 2, employed professionals (n = 508) across different industries were requested to participate in an online survey. Conditional process analyses were conducted to test for interlinkages between technology-induced stress, work-family role conflict, virtual working competencies, and the perceived effectiveness of employees. The results show that there are possibilities of the negative impact of remote working irrespective of an organization's attempts to safeguard the transition to prolonged remote working. Therefore, making it inevitable for organizations to preempt negative effects.