Role of Virtual Leadership and Digital Fatigue on Employee Engagement

1. Introduction

Recent years have seen a substantial increase in the popularity of remote work (Snow, 2022), thanks to technology developments, better connectivity, and shifting views on work-life balance (Hopkins & McKay, 2019; Matli, 2020). Many businesses and organisations have implemented remote work rules, either fully or partially, enabling staff to work from home frequently or just when necessary (Waizenegger et.al., 2020). The concept of remote work is commonly understood as the execution of tasks and responsibilities outside of the traditional boundaries of an organization's physical workspace and designated working hours. While it is true that certain individuals, such as self-employed professionals, artists, authors, and craftspeople, have the flexibility to work from home and determine their own working hours, the majority of employees adhere to a standard nine-to-five schedule within a designated organizational setting (Olson, 1983; Salmi, 1997). The remote work or work from home (henceforth WFH) facility was first appeared to give ease to employees. Employees willingly opted for remote-work and were pleased with WFH facility. However; the COVID 19 pandemic has forced every organization to operate remotely to cope with the ever-changing environment. Information technology with internet connection played a vital role in creating remote work remarkably smooth for most people (Mostafa, 2021; Sengupta & Al-Khalifa, 2022). However, employees never had an idea that by the time this so-called “facility” of WFH might create “hinderance” for many employees. Employees were not appreciating the online meetings. They were facing many challenges i.e., technological hindrances, communication problems, digital fatigue and lack of emotional exchange etc. In essence, various researchers found that individuals view remote work as a double-edged sword (Duffy, 2022, Aziz, 2021). Some were happy to view it as the opportunity to spend more time with family and upon various leisure activities. But others felt stressed due to this nonvoluntary transition; employees felt isolated and socially dejected and had difficulty in managing the work life balance (Duffy, 2022). It is difficult to draw any conclusion with this mixed employee reactions. Therefore, we need to identify factors that have affected and will continue to influence the way we work. The study also emphasized that remote work cannot be synonymous with work from home; it may be work from anywhere. Various studies have reported the impact of remote work over employee engagement. Researchers countered many aspects of the job, though digital fatigue has not been countered much during these years. Encountering the mixed pressure; few researchers showed that it provided job autonomy and flexibility to the employees to manage the work schedule accordingly. Therefore, the objective of the study is to identify the factors positively mitigating the role of remote work and enhancing the employee engagement. Based on JD-R theory we consider the traditional antecedents of employee engagement; the factors has been classified in two ways i.e., job resources and job demand. In this scenario we consider job autonomy and work life integration as a job resource and digital fatigue as a job demand.