What is it about?
Hybrid work is often discussed mainly in terms of whether employees work from home or in the office. We instead examined how daily time pressure and professional isolation relate to the same employees’ engagement and emotional exhaustion across different work locations. Eighty-eight hybrid workers completed surveys over ten working days. Time pressure was associated with both higher engagement and greater exhaustion, making it a double-edged demand. Professional isolation was linked to lower engagement and greater exhaustion. Work location generally did not change these relationships. One important exception was that isolation was associated with higher exhaustion on remote days but not on office days.
Featured Image
Photo by Ian Harber on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The findings challenge simple conclusions that working from home or working in the office is inherently better. Employees’ daily working conditions appear to matter more than location alone. Organizations should manage time pressure carefully: clear priorities and meaningful deadlines may support engagement, but sustained overload increases exhaustion. They should also actively prevent professional isolation, especially on remote days, through reliable access to colleagues, regular feedback, clear coordination practices, and purposeful check-ins. Shared expectations about availability, meetings, and the intended use of home and office days may help organizations create hybrid arrangements that support both performance and well-being.
Perspectives
Much of the debate about hybrid work asks where employees should work. Our findings suggest that a more useful question is what employees experience on a particular day. Time pressure can make people feel engaged while simultaneously exhausting them, and professional isolation can be especially taxing when working remotely. For me, the central practical message is that hybrid work should not be treated merely as a scheduling issue. Location alone is less decisive than the working conditions created around it. Organizations and teams need realistic workloads, reliable social access, and clear agreements that give both remote and office days a meaningful purpose.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Rigotti
Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research (LIR) and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Within-Person Dynamics of Stressors and Well-Being in Hybrid-Work Arrangements, Zeitschrift für Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie A&O, June 2026, Hogrefe Publishing Group,
DOI: 10.1026/0932-4089/a000481.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
