23632: Is WFH Better for Males or Females? Deciphering the Linkage Between Fairness, Deprivation & Burnout (session 25912)

Burnout persists to be a prevalent issue experienced by the workforce across the world, including those who work from home. Drawing upon the tenets of relative deprivation theory, the present article assesses the role of relative deprivation as a facilitator of burnout in the work-from-home context. Our first two-wave quantitative study (Study-1) examines this linkage and investigates if it varies with employees’ gender. Building on the findings of Study-1, our second qualitative study (Study-2) aims to understand why the impact of relative deprivation is greater for female employees than their male counterparts, i.e., why female employees get more burned out than males. Study-2 further aims to shine a light on the mechanism that helps in reducing employees’ feelings of relative deprivation while working from home and, in turn, prevent them from getting burnout. A novel insight that emerged from Study-2 is that females experience more burnout than male employees due to the hindrance they face in developing and sustaining informal connections while working from home. Moreover, our findings revealed that employees’ perceptions of fairness can help them in countering their feelings of relative deprivation while working from home. We tested the latter finding in our third study (Study-3) following a three-wave quantitative design. The results show that perceived fairness decreases relative deprivation while working from home, and this relationship is also moderated by employees’ gender such that perceived fairness is more beneficial for females than male employees. The present research contributes significantly to theory and practice.

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