Together at Work, Yet on Screen: Same-Site Virtual Meetings and Burnout in Public Sector Managers

Post-pandemic return-to-office policies are often justified by the value of physical co-presence for collaboration, mentoring, coordination, and cohesion. Yet many employees and managers are back on-site while still attending virtual meetings with colleagues in the same workplace. This article conceptualizes this neglected configuration as same-site virtual meetings (SSVMs), defined as virtual meetings joined from the workplace when at least one other participant is physically present on the same worksite. Drawing on the job demands–resources model, this article theorizes SSVMs as a distinct job demand because they combine digital mediation with available physical proximity, generating media-place incongruence, cognitive load, attentional fragmentation, and underuse of co-presence. Using original survey data from public-sector managers in Quebec, this study applies inverse probability weighting within an extreme tercile design to estimate the effect of high SSVM exposure on two attributional forms of burnout: work-related and colleagues-related. High SSVM exposure is significantly associated with higher work-related burnout but not colleagues-related burnout. These findings suggest that SSVMs operate primarily as an organizational rather than a relational demand. The study contributes to the science of hybrid work research and public personnel management by identifying a distinct post-pandemic meeting practice that may undermine the benefits of returning to the office.