Stronger Together? Impact of daily energy management strategies profiles on telecommuters’ performance

Abstract With the rapid advancements in telecommunication technology, telecommuting as a new form of work increasingly found their way into the workplace. In this context, employees inevitably faced work time ambiguous, which might impede their energy recovery process. This study aimed to investigate the categories of energy management strategies of telecommuter and how they were related to performance. The study was conducted by electronic questionnaire across five consecutive workdays among telecommuters. Latent profile analysis identified three patterns of energy management strategies and respectively named energy management strategies double-low type (A), energy management strategies double-high type (B), Low micro break—High work related strategies (C). Moreover, group C showed to have significantly higher task performance as well as organizational citizenship behavior compared to group A, which also showed significant lower task performance and organizational citizenship behavior compared to group B. As such, the current research represented a new perspective on how telecommuters could effectively maintain, sustain and restore energy to improve their performance.