Employees' work engagement may vary by work location (office vs. home office), assuming that working at home requires greater self-regulation. Hence, self-leadership may play an important role when employees work at home. The present study investigates whether employees use self-leadership strategies (self-goal setting, self-reward, self-punishment, self-cueing, and visualization of successful performance) more often on home days than on office days. We also examine how these strategies are related to daily work engagement, and whether they are more effective for promoting work engagement depending on the work location. One hundred and one employees completed daily questionnaires on office and home days, resulting in 514 observations. Multilevel analyses revealed that employees reported higher use of self-goal setting, self-reward, and visualization on home days than on office days. Furthermore, we found that applying these strategies was positively related to day-specific work engagement. Nevertheless, self-cueing had no effect and self-punishment was detrimental to work engagement. Moreover, we found no support for the idea that the effectiveness of self-leadership strategies for promoting work engagement depends on the work location. These findings contribute to our understanding of self-leadership strategies promoting work engagement on home and office days.

The positive impact of coworker social support on employee behaviour and well-being is well-described in the job demands-resources model. However, the specific mechanisms through which it operates have received scarce research attention. The current study investigated the distinct roles of relatedness need satisfaction (i.e. connectedness) and need frustration (i.e. isolation) to explain how available coworker social support relates to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and depersonalisation. We used a three-wave panel design (N = 1259/704/405 at Time 1/2/3) to test the indirect effects of social support on OCB via connectedness and on depersonalisation via isolation. Coworker social support at Time 1 predicted increases in connectedness and decreases in isolation from Time 1 to Time 2. Contrary to expectations, increases in connectedness predicted decreases in OCB, and decreases in isolation did not predict decreases in depersonalisation, from Time 2 to Time 3. Overall, our results highlight the importance of coworker social support to increase connectedness and decrease feelings of isolation in the workplace, which can ultimately affect interpersonal work outcomes.

The norm of reciprocity proposes that one who receives support feels obliged to return obtained benefits. Yet how employees regulate the mutual flow of social support with one another does not always follow a reciprocal dynamic, which may have different implications for employee outcomes based on whether social exchanges gain, drain or conserve resources. To better understand support exchange patterns and their relationship with basic need satisfaction (for autonomy, competence and relatedness) and emotional exhaustion in employees' daily lives, we performed a multilevel latent profile analysis (N = 124 employees, 894 days). At the day level, we identified four support exchange profiles differing in low vs high received and provided social support (i.e., low-reciprocating, under-reciprocating, over-reciprocating and high-reciprocating days). At the person level, we identified three support exchange classes of employees, differing in the degree to which employees showed certain support exchange profiles over time (i.e., over-reciprocators, low-reciprocators and high-reciprocators). Pairwise comparisons with multinomial logistic regression revealed that over-reciprocating days were associated with the highest levels of need satisfaction for autonomy and relatedness and the lowest levels of emotional exhaustion. Moreover, over-reciprocators were most likely to satisfy their needs for autonomy. We discuss theoretical and practical contributions of our findings.

The present study challenges the prevalent negative view of personal smartphone use at work and advances our understanding of its effects on the work–nonwork interface. Drawing on border theory, we focus on the social and instrumental feature of smartphones that allows employees to be connected with their private contacts (e.g. friends and family members) while at work and, thereby, test the influence of day‐level personal smartphone use at work on positive and negative work–nonwork interaction (WNI). In considering social experiences of smartphone‐enabled communication, we propose underlying explanatory mechanisms, namely, the social benefits (i.e. feeling in touch with private contacts) and social costs (i.e. feeling expected to respond to private contacts) of communication. One hundred and twenty‐seven employees participated in a diary study. They completed online questionnaires three times a day over ten working days, resulting in a total of 1,066 days of data. Multilevel structural equation modelling indicated that on the day‐level of analysis, personal smartphone use at work promoted positive WNI through the perceived social benefits of communication and increased negative WNI through the perceived social costs of communication. We discuss our findings and extend current research on personal smartphone use at work by acknowledging this widespread workplace behaviour as both beneficial and detrimental for successfully managing the daily interplay of the work and nonwork domains.Practitioner points Personal smartphone use at work should not be classified as exclusively detrimental workplace behaviour, as it can help employees attend to personal responsibilities more easily. For a more comprehensive evaluation of the consequences of personal smartphone use at work, social experiences of communication should be considered when compiling workplace guidelines. Educating employees on how to make the most of personal smartphone use at work and understanding the underlying social mechanisms may help them to better manage work and nonwork responsibilities.