Job Performance, Productivity, and the Roles of Employee Motivation and Wellbeing in Employees' Work Arrangement Choices

Abstract

Productivity has been the focus of recent debates on work location, especially when working from home. This research investigates the framework and latent constructs of what productivity represents for job performance, covering task and contextual performance and counterproductive work behaviour. The research establishes the structural connections between employee motivation factors such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and work-related wellbeing factors, covering job competence and aspiration and their impact on job performance. Using a national survey of nearly 1,000 Australian workers, the research uses a structural equation model (SEM), segment profiling, and a hybrid logit choice model to achieve several research objectives. These objectives achieved include: 1) Testing the measurement models of job performance, employee motivation, and work-related wellbeing, then revealing their structural relationships and their impact on subjective productivity and job satisfaction; 2) Profiling three distinct workforce segments of main office only workers, hybrid workers, and working from home and other places only workers by their working patterns, hours, productivity, job satisfaction and levels of job performance, motivation and wellbeing; and 3) Embedding latent motivation and wellbeing into the hybrid choice model on workplace choices to directly show the effects of latent variables on workplace choices. The research identifies the importance of maintaining a high level of motivation in a task and continuous performance and the importance of work-related wellbeing in preventing counterproductive behaviour. The findings suggest shifting the focus from workplace choice to maintaining the status of work-related wellbeing, especially among hybrid workers who typically have relatively heavy workloads and work long hours.