Benefits of psychological detachment from work in a digital era: How do job stressors and personal strategies interplay with individual vulnerabilities?

This study examined how individual strategies (boundary creation around information and communication technology; ICT) and job stressors (work-related extended availability) relate to psychological detachment, and how the latter associates with employees' behaviors (presenteeism) and attitudes (family life satisfaction). This research also explored the moderating role of performance-based self-esteem in these relationships. Questionnaire surveys were collected among 321 teachers in Sample 1 and 283 workers in Sample 2. Results from Sample 1 revealed that boundary creation surrounding ICT was positively linked to psychological detachment but only among employees with low performance-based self-esteem. Results from Sample 2 indicated that work-related extended availability negatively related to psychological detachment but only among employees with high performance-based self-esteem. In addition, psychological detachment was associated with lower levels of presenteeism (Samples 1 and 2) and higher levels of family-life satisfaction (Sample 2). More generally, these results confirm performance-based self-esteem to be a maladaptive individual characteristic, adding up to a negative cycle of stressors to decrease psychological detachment, in turn leading to maladaptive functioning.