Mindful while working from home? A facet-level investigation of the daily costs of telecommuting for workplace mindfulness

Against the backdrop of mindfulness scholarship, the present work highlights the potential costs of telecommuting, specifically the ways it may undermine employees' ability to work mindfully, and explores strategies for mitigating these challenges. Specifically, we argue that mindfulness involves the regulation of attention and attitudes and that this regulation capacity is hindered on telecommuting days due to increased home-to-work interference. Furthermore, we posit that individuals’ general tendency to be mindful (i.e., trait mindfulness) has the potential to buffer day-specific negative effects of telecommuting on home-to-work interference. Importantly, we acknowledge the multifaceted nature of mindfulness and disentangle the role of attentional (i.e., act with awareness) and attitudinal aspects (i.e., nonjudging and nonreactivity) of mindfulness in these relationships. Results from a 14-day experience-sampling study involving two measurements per day (N = 193) largely confirmed our hypotheses. Employees experienced lower levels of mindfulness in terms of act with awareness and nonreactivity on telecommuting compared to non-telecommuting days due to increased home-to-work interference. Furthermore, trait nonreactivity (but not act with awareness or nonjudging) buffered within-person effects of telecommuting on home-to-work interference. Our findings add nuance to popular claims about the benefits of telecommuting for employee well-being and highlight the need to consider mindfulness as a multi-faceted construct.