Flexible forms of work are often seen as the key to improved productivity. Yet they also contribute to a blurring of the boundaries between work and private life and require a high degree of self-control. We are investigating the conditions under which flexible forms of work lead to performance, work-home balance, or exhaustion and how such effects emerge.
Research projects
Work-home boundary management
Evidence-based guidelines on ICT use for a fair handling of boundaryless working time
The project deals with the development of evidence-based guidelines for the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) away from the workplace. In addition to technological solutions, recommendations on the demarcation between work and private life will also be elaborated.
ICT such as the Internet, networks, laptops or smartphones are being used more and more frequently in the world of work and enable flexible work both in terms of location and time. On the one hand, ICT-based work is associated with many advantages, such as better compatibility of job requirements and family or private commitments. On the other hand, it also brings disadvantages, such as more intensive, irregular and longer working hours.
In many Styrian companies, there are still no guidelines for the use of ICT outside the workplace. This project will therefore develop guidelines for ICT-based work, which will be made available to interested companies and individuals in the form of a brochure. These guidelines are intended to counteract the potential negative effects of the demarcation of work. Styrian companies should thus be enabled to benefit from the advantages of ICT and at the same time reduce the negative effects.
Duration: 10/2020 - 09/2022
Funding: "Work 4.0" project fund of the Styrian Chamber of Labor
Project head: Univ.-Prof. MMag. Dr. Bettina Kubicek
Project staff: Andrea Noja, BSc MSc, Florian Laxhuber, BSc
Cooperation partners: Institute for Labor and Social Law, Research Network Human Factor in Digital Transformation, Joanneum Research Forschungsgesellschaft
Good teamwork even with home office and flextime
Flexible work in teams
Working flexibly (home office or flexitime) is often seen as the key to higher productivity, greater work engagement, and better work-life balance. However, it also creates challenges. These challenges are especially highlighted when it comes to working in teams. Working in flexible teams requires more and richer communication, better knowledge sharing and more coordination of work between the team members. In this project we examine together with the Technical University of Vienna (Martina Hartner-Tiefenthaler), how working flexibly impacts team functioning and how team members interact with each other and with their task environment when they are not working at the same time in the same place. Click here for a short description of the study.
What are the benefits of participating in the study?
Upon participating in the study, team managers and their teams receive feedback on:
- team communication, coordination und planning compared to benchmarks from other teams
- managers and team members' perceptions of team cohesion, team engagement and team performance
Building on these results, you can plan and promote initiatives for the long-term health and performance benefits of your team or intervene in the optimal design of work.
How to participate?
- Team managers register with their email (we will only contact you to send you the link for the surveys and the team results).
- Team managers fill in the team-leader survey and send the link of the employee-survey to their employees.
- Employees fill in the employee survey.
- Team feedback is sent out to the managers (if at least 5 team members have participated in the study).
Term: 03/2017-02/2022
Funding: Austrian Research Fund (FWF)
Project management: Univ.-Prof. MMag. Dr. Bettina Kubicek
Project assistant: Dr. Sabina Hodzic
Cooperation partner: Dr. Martina Hartner-Tiefenthaler (Technical University of Vienna)
Contact: flex-teams(at)uni-graz.at
Telework experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, currently more people than ever before are teleworking. Telework or remote working is not a new phenomenon and its effects on workers’ well-being have been explored previously. Typically mentioned benefits of telework are greater work-life balance, job autonomy, and increased job satisfaction. However, research also found certain downsides to telework, such as increased time pressure, stress, and overwork, as well as social isolation and lack of support from colleagues. Research findings on telework are still inconclusive and some important questions regarding teleworkers’ cognitive demands and affective states are still unanswered.
In order to gain insights into teleworking in different European countries, we are conducting a weekly study on workers’ telework experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. With this study, we want to answer questions about how people experience telework and what consequences telework has on different work-related and well-being aspects. Besides, the focus of the study is not only on affective and social dimensions of telework but also on cognitive demands and whether and how they change over the time that work is conducted from home.
We are looking for employees who are currently teleworking to participate in the study. The study consists of short questionnaires that are to be filled out at the end of as many work weeks as possible in the coming weeks. Answering the questions takes about 10-15 minutes in the first week and about 10 minutes in the following weeks. Once the study is finished, participants will receive individual results through an automated feedback to observe changes in their telework experience over the last weeks. The questionnaires can be filled out in four different languages – English, German, French and Spanish: https://www.soscisurvey.de/telework-study/
Duration: 03/2020 - ongoing
Project investigators: Dr. Sabina Hodzic, Dr. Roman Prem, Prof. Bettina Kubicek
Cooperation partners: Dr. Xavier Borteyrou and Dr. Franck Zenasni from Université de Paris as well as Dra. Esther Villajos Girona from the International University of Valencia.
Work-home boundary management and burnout
Grenzziehung zwischen Arbeit und Privatleben und Burnout
Permanent accessibility and blurring boundaries between work and private life have become inevitable characteristics of today’s working life for many employees. At the same time, employee reports of work-related stress and burnout are on the rise. Therefore, the research project "Work-home boundary management and burnout" investigates which factors encourage employees to perform work tasks during their leisure time and to what extent such behaviour is related to states of exhaustion, such as job burnout.
Performing work during what should be off-work time may adversely affect recovery. If recovery is hampered, acute or chronic stress reactions may result that ultimately lead to exhaustion. Considering these potentially negative effects of work-related activities in leisure time, the question arises which factors encourage such behaviour. The research project examines whether unfinished work tasks are associated with more frequent work activities during leisure time, and whether this is even more likely the more people tend to have negative thinking patterns.
Furthermore, the correlation between work-home boundary management and job burnout will be examined. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the burnout process and to help workers to better cope with work-related stress, an intervention will be conducted. Based on cognitive-behavioural therapy and mindfulness research workers will be trained to separate work and private life in order to promote recovery during non-working time.
Duration: 01/2019 - 12/2021
Funding: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
Principal investigator: Univ.-Prof. MMag. Dr. Bettina Kubicek
Cooperation partner: Doz. Dr. Sara Tement (University of Maribor)