The Ideal Worker Revisited

1 Office Work in the Digital Age: What Does the New (Ab-)Normal Look Like?

Work in today’s offices is typically characterized by the integration of digital technologies into everyday work practices. Digital technologies offer a wide range of possibilities, such as remote working, virtual collaboration, or the sharing of knowledge and ideas (Butollo et al., 2021). On the one hand, this can lead to a greater degree of flexibility and control over work places and times (Chesley, 2014; Gschwind & Vargas, 2019). While flexibility in the workplace is not necessarily a new concept, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about significant changes in the organization of work by increasing the prevalence of remote and hybrid working (Karjalainen, 2023). Greater flexibility in the workplace also affects the temporal organization of work (Chesley, 2006) and might result in a better work–life balance for some (Eurofound & The International Labour Office, 2017). On the other hand, employees have to be available for multiple communication channels and respond (or at least react) to a myriad of electronic messages (Barley et al., 2011), face interruptions (Karlsen & Ytre-Arne, 2022), and are increasingly confronted with an intensification of work (Korunka, 2020). These technologies also serve as a means of control and corporate governance, making the work increasingly subject to abstraction and extraction (Moore et al., 2018). The implementation and use of digital technologies may lead to technology-related stress, often referred to as “technostress” (Marsh et al., 2022; Tarafdar et al., 2019).

For mothers with small children, flexible work can lead to increased time spent on housework and childcare while trying to complete the same amount of paid work. According to Heejung Chung (2022), this work pattern allows for a more contemporary enactment of traditional gender roles. By simultaneously performing paid work and unpaid care work, the norm of the person responsible for housework and the norm of the ideal worker remain untouched. However, how digital technologies are ultimately used and how they are implemented in an existing work organization also depends on a negotiation process between workers and management (Wajcman, 2006). Drawing on the theoretical concept of the “Social Shaping of Technology” (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999; Williams & Edge, 1996), we take this negotiation process as a starting point for our analysis and discuss the issues and challenges of modern digital office work. We particularly analyze the demands that employees face as well as their approaches (i.e., non-mandatory extra hours, expansion of unpaid work, cutback on leisure activities) developed to alleviate the pressures and challenges of this digitally enabled work organization.

Our arguments are based on two in-depth empirical case studies in two different areas of office work. The first explores skilled office work in a higher education institution in Austria. Skilled office work can be characterized by a high degree of worker autonomy and independence in decision-making (Alvesson, 2004; Costas & Kärreman, 2016). Employees have some level of control over how they complete their work and tasks, set deadlines, and where or when to work. This work can be highly creative, aimed at solving complex tasks. The second case study examines customer service employees in a large Austrian transportation company. The employees’ work is mostly comprised of routine tasks, often conducted with Enterprise-Resource-Planning systems and other professional software applications. This type of work is typically prone to tighter digital management and control (Kellogg et al., 2020). The day-to-day work is defined using a range of digital tools, and the office workers in this second case study have significantly less job autonomy. However, similar to Case Study 1 (CS1), they have some degree of flexibility to work from home.

Since much of the economics, labor studies, computer science, and technology research on digitalization in the world of work and its consequences (e.g., Rosenblat & Stark, 2016; Vallas & Kovalainen, 2019) has tended to be gender-blind, we pay particular focus on the gendered and gendering aspects of technology-driven work requirements and patterns within contemporary office work. We draw on feminist organization studies (e.g., Acker, 1990, 2006; Cockburn, 1991; Kalev & Deutsch, 2018; Pringle, 1989), which have demonstrated how “most organizations are saturated with masculine values” (Burton, 1991, p. 3). Moreover, while many organizations of work have introduced gender equality and diversity measures, deeply rooted masculine structures not only persist but are sometimes even reinforced through digital work practices (Carstensen & Prietl, 2021; Kohlrausch & Weber, 2021). Our analysis is guided by the argument that digitalization enables a new work organization. This, in turn, is part of the process of “doing gender while doing work” (Gottschall, 1998); the new work organization may well be associated with masculinity, or with femininity. To this end, our paper is structured as follows: We discuss our theoretical framework encompassing central theories on technostress and gendered organizations of work in the following section. We then turn to our methodological approach and the collected data. This is followed by an empirical section on our two company case studies. We then discuss our results in relation to the central theoretical frameworks that informed our study and link them to relevant findings from the existing literature. The article concludes with a synthesis of the key results. We also address the limitations of the research and highlight potential areas for further investigation. Additionally, leveraging the rich empirical data gathered, we aim to move beyond a purely analytical approach by proposing actionable recommendations for organizational policies and practices.

2 Theoretical Framework and State of the Art:Technostress and Gender at Work

Both high-autonomy work involving task variety and routine work characterized by high levels of standardization can impact employees’ mental health and stress levels. The increasing dependence on information and communication technologies (ICTs), alongside the growing complexity of digital tools and ICT-driven changes in work processes, has been linked to the emergence of technostress (Atanasoff & Venable, 2017). The concept of technostress is frequently used in research to describe the negative psychological outcomes associated with technology use (Borle et al., 2021).

Several aspects of digital work environments are potential sources of elevated stress levels, including performance monitoring, interruptions, high technological complexity, and a perceived need for constant connectivity (Gimpel et al., 2019), such as the need for workers to respond promptly to work-related messages from co-workers, clients or managers, thereby affecting their health and well-being (Barber & Santuzzi, 2015). Negative consequences associated with the use of digital tools include techno-overload, techno-invasion, techno-complexity, techno-insecurity, and techno-uncertainty (Borle et al., 2021; Tarafdar et al., 2019).

According to Tarafdar et al. (2007), technostress is defined as individuals’ cognitive responses to their inability to meet the perceived demands of a given technological context. This imbalance between demands and perceived ability to cope can potentially result in stress. As such, technostress should be understood as a processual concept arising from the interaction between environmental stimuli and individual responses, rather than being solely attributable to the individual or the environment (Tarafdar et al., 2019). Tarafdar et al. (2007) argued that technostress can lead to dissatisfaction, fatigue, anxiety, overwork, and reduced productivity. However, it remains unclear whether technostress stems primarily from the use of technology, employees’ inability to respond, or the (unrealistic) demands that organizations place on workers (Marsh et al., 2022). Organizational norms are also important for technostress and workers’ ability to respond to digital technologies, such as expected response times or (non-existent) work boundaries (Marsh et al., 2022).

To this day, both work and technology are still highly gendered. Judy Wajcman (2006) pointed out how every new technology can also be an opportunity to question power relations and to challenge and renegotiate gender-specific role attributions and the traditional divisions of labor between reproduction and production (Carstensen, 2020; Carstensen & Prietl, 2021; Kutzner, 2018). Consequently, and drawing on Orlikowski’s (2007) practice-based approach, (digital) technologies should not be viewed as exogenous and separate from everyday work practices. Rather, technologies are implemented, used, and shaped in specific organizational contexts, and enable or facilitate certain new work practices and reconfigure old ones. Hence, the specific use of and response to technologies in the workplace is not exclusively determined by the technologies themselves but is the result of socio-technical negotiation processes. New technologies in the workplace may transform tasks and enable a reorganization of work. While technological determinism (Smith & Marx, 1994) takes the view that technological developments determine the social structures and cultural values of a society, socio-technical approaches (Jörg, 1985; Emery & Trist, 1969) emphasize that technologies are embedded and shaped within a certain context. In companies, this context includes legal framework conditions, organizational norms, working conditions, and lived practices. In this view, various actors are involved in the development, design, and application of technologies and thus influence them. These diverse actors are represented by, for example, management and employees, who influence digital transformation processes differently. The actors’ decisions are gendered and have gendering effects. For example, management is often responsible for the company’s digital work equipment as well as the processes that are digitized or automated. Employees, on the other hand, influence technologies primarily through their individual and group-related use. This perspective of the social shaping of technology emphasizes the (potential) agency of actors who are involved in the development and introduction process of technologies, but also of those actors who use technologies daily (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999; Williams & Edge, 1996).

To analyze the effects of digital technologies at work, we deemed it useful to refer to traditions that deal with the gender of organizations (Acker, 1990; Leidner, 1991; Simpson, 2005) and research focusing on the impact of digital tools on the separation of productive and reproductive, and paid and unpaid, labor (Carstensen, 2020; Huws, 2013, 2014; Oliveira, 2017; Staab, 2016). Joan Acker (1990) conceptualized organizations of work as institutionalized forms of hegemonic masculinities “patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine” (p. 146). The concept of the “ideal worker” (p. 146) aligns with the idea of a “gendered organization,” highlighting how white-collar workplaces are designed for full-time employees free from social reproduction duties. The ideal worker is situated within organizations that can be described as “inequality regimes.” In these organizations, “loosely interrelated practices, processes, actions, and meanings” (Acker, 2006, p. 443) reproduce complex inequalities. Although the “ideal worker norm” does not fully reflect today’s world of work, some aspects are still highly relevant, and the concept helps one reflect on the gendered, racialized, and classed division of labor (Acker, 1990; Davies & Frink, 2014). In the context of digitalization, where new technologies are a vital part of contemporary workplaces and everyday working life, the ideal worker norm is influenced by different working practices (Aroles et al., 2021; Bailey et al., 2022; Chesley, 2014; Wajcman & Rose, 2011). Or, as Debra Howcroft et al. (2024) put it, “certain attributes become valorized over time and an unofficial ideal worker norm emerges, creating expectations that become implicit in organizational practices, operating as a type of ‘unobtrusive control’” (p. 4). This prompts us to question whether the changing work practices of increased spatial and temporal flexibility resulting from digitalization and the respective work organization challenge ideal work norms, resulting in a better reconciliation of private and professional life, especially for working mothers (Jürgens, 2019; Wischermann & Kirschenbauer, 2015), or will this instead lead to a reinforcement or a “reconfiguration” (Weeks, 2007, p. 238f.) of the gender order, which perpetuates the gender-specific division of labor?

3 Research Design and Methods: Description of Contrasting Case Studies

This article is based on data from the research project ShapeTech – Shaping Technology for the Humanization of Work. 1 In this study, we aimed to explore the potential for humanizing digitalized office work. Employing a convergent mixed-methods design (Creswell & Creswell, 2023), we collected empirical data from two company case studies. Our methodology included problem-centered interviews with employees, self-reported daily work activity logs, and focus group discussions. We also recorded biometric stress and concentration data using a wristband (Empatica E4) and a headband (BrainLink Pro). A key objective of this data triangulation was to provide a comprehensive understanding of technostress in the workplace. Technostress is predominantly measured with quantitative surveys (Crosswell & Lockwood, 2020). Such quantitative stress measuring techniques are both common in scientific research and for workplace evaluation. In recent years, biometric data has also been employed to measure technostress (for a comprehensive overview, see Mishra & Rašticová, 2024). While stress surveys can be administered in both occupational and non-occupational settings, the collection of biometric data is typically confined to laboratory environments with controlled conditions.

3.1 Participant Recruitment

Recruiting companies for participation proved challenging. The research team pursued several strategies to engage organizations, including leveraging workplace health and safety networks, collaborating with work councils, and directly approaching companies. One successful recruitment effort involved calling for participation through a workplace health and safety newsletter distributed to numerous Austrian companies. In another case, after extensive negotiations spanning several months, a company initially committed to participation ultimately withdrew. Due to this delay, a third company was successfully recruited through a consortium member who had previously conducted research within the organization. We identified two primary barriers to company participation. First, the collection of biometric data in the workplace is subject to regulatory constraints, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as limitations on tracking individual employees. To address these concerns, we developed a comprehensive consent form, ensuring compliance with relevant legal and privacy requirements. Second, participation demanded a substantial (and discouraging) time commitment from employees during working hours.

3.2 Sample

In terms of the sample selection, our only requirement was for potential participants to be required to use digital technologies extensively in their work. Study participation was voluntary, and the participants received 200 EUR at the end of the data collection. The selection process of participants differed between the two case studies. In CS1, the head of the department for organizational health and safety conducted a closed call within selected departments, although specific details regarding the selection process were not disclosed. In CS2, an open call was issued in three departments by management and the works council. This was followed by an online information session, during which the study’s requirements were presented to over 30 interested employees. Of these, 12 employees remained interested, with the first 10 selected for participation and two designated as replacements. The research team maintained no prior personal connections with any participants.

Ten employees, working in different departments, participated in each case study. CS1 involved a tertiary education institution in an urban center in Austria. The sample (CS1) consisted of eight women and two men. Seven participants in CS1 were in their 20s to 30s, and three between the ages of 48–55. The participants were coded as CS1_01 to CS1_10. Although the participating employees differed in terms of their area of responsibility and in their extent of work autonomy, the extensive integration of digital technologies in daily work characterized all of the employees. The sample for CS2 comprised seven women and three men. These participants were younger than those of CS1, with some under the age of 20 and others in their 20s to low 30s. They were coded as CS2_30 to CS2_39. The employees in CS2 all worked in customer service for a large Austrian company responding to customer requests and complaints, with their work being heavily dependent on and structured by digital technologies.

All participants provided informed consent at the start of each case study. Data collection and processing were conducted in accordance with the GDPR, with particular attention to the handling of biometric data. To ensure privacy, both participant and company identities were pseudonymized at the transcription stage. No individual-level data were shared with company management. Aggregated and interpreted findings were drafted as a short company briefing. To avoid unintentional deanonymization, we first sent the briefing to the participants, requesting release, and then communicated the adjusted briefing to the organizations.

3.3 Interviews and Data Analysis

To learn more about the workers’ daily work practices and the embeddedness of digital technologies, we undertook problem-centered interviews (Witzel, 2000) at the beginning of the data collection. The 20 interviews were conducted at the respective workplace and lasted between 30 and 60 minutes. The main goal of these interviews was to acquire insights into the participants’ daily work routines. The semi-structured interview guidelines focused on questions about the employees’ labor processes and work requirements, about how they use and evaluate digital technologies, and which aspects of their work they perceive as stressful and challenging. The interviews were conducted in German, transcribed verbatim, and translated into English for analysis. Moreover, the employees kept a daily log of their work activities and the use of technologies over a period of 10 working days. In a subsequent step, we analyzed and coded the qualitative data using qualitative content analysis (Mayring & Fenzl, 2019). Codes, such as Ragu-Nathan et al.’s (2008) concept of “technostress creators,” (gendered) strategies to alleviate technostress, or attempts to influence the use of certain digital technologies, were derived both from our theoretical perspectives and directly from the data. In regular meetings, we shared and discussed the relevance of each code as well as possible theoretical integrations. This gave us an overview and a more accurate sense of our empirical material and the key themes in relation to our main research questions. Most importantly, these analytical steps helped us identify key themes to discuss in the subsequent focus group discussions.

We employed two distinct self-tracking devices – a headband and a smartwatch – to collect biometric data used to assess stress and concentration levels (for more details on the data interpretation, see Jahanjoo et al., 2024). The data were collected at 64Hz sampling rate and averaged over 30-minute intervals. However, these data are not here discussed in detail due to several issues. The main challenges for the biometric data collection were influencing factors on the sensor readings (noise) in non-laboratory environments, as well as the instability of the sensors used. The interpretation of the biometric data also proved to be challenging, including different time frames for the neurophysiological data (measurements at 64Hz) and the qualitative data derived from the daily logs (longer intervals of tasks, as chosen by the participants), making it difficult to interpret and triangulate biometric and qualitative data. 2 Some of these issues are discussed in more detail in Gerdenitsch et al. (2023). While the biometric data on stress and concentration collected in the “ShapeTech”-study is not discussed separately in this article, it may have influenced certain aspects of the interpretation and set the stage for the focus group discussions.

We condensed the collected data (problem-centered interviews, daily logs, and stress and concentration levels based on biometric data, as far as was possible within the limitations described above) in individual reports for each participant. Prior to the subsequent focus group discussions, every individual report was sent to the respective participant for evaluation and feedback, as well as to prepare for the focus group discussion. As such, the reports were used to consolidate the data and provide a point of engagement with the participants prior to the focus group discussions.

3.4 Focus Groups

In the final step, the study participants discussed these findings in focus groups (Tausch & Menold, 2015), mirroring health circles (Krämer & Berssem, 2010). We held a total of six focus groups (four in CS1 and 2 in CS2). The number of focus group discussions conducted in each case study varied due to organizational considerations. In CS1, nine out of ten participants attended at least one focus group, while in CS2, all ten participants attended one of the two focus groups. These discussions allowed for a unique and valuable research interaction with the participants. Indeed, equipped with their own knowledge and experiences of their labor processes, as well as our interpretation in the individual reports, we jointly reflected on the mostly unquestioned use of digital technologies within everyday work practices, on job situations, and potential occupational stress. This allowed us to explore the gendered practices and attributions in relation to the technology-enabled work practices. The discussions provided us with highly dense empirical material and with valuable insights into how the office workers negotiate (among each other) spatial, temporal, and technological conditions, as well as the somewhat conflicted norms activated in these negotiation processes. Thus, these discussions gave us the opportunity to look beyond the experiences and strategies of the individual worker.

4 Results

We begin the empirical section of our paper with a description of the work organization and working conditions of our participants in both case studies. The challenges of everyday technology-enabled office work are structured along the three dimensions of technostress, which, somewhat inevitably, overlap given the embeddedness of digitalization of the company case studies. Our participants especially reported having to deal with techno-overload, techno-invasion, and techno-uncertainty, which include fast-changing technologies and not being involved in decisions pertaining to them (Ragu-Nathan et al., 2008; Tarafdar et al., 2019). They also highlighted some key strategies developed by employees to deal with these stressors, particularly in the focus group discussions. Throughout this chapter, we examine the stressors and strategies from a gender-sensitive perspective.

4.1 Work Organization in the Two Case Studies

Most of the work tasks examined in each case study require some software applications, such as special workflow systems or software for personnel administration or regular office applications. Indeed, the CS1 participants reported being required to use certain software applications, such as Teams or Slack, for communication, to jointly work on documents, and to organize and record their work. Although both case studies are rooted in the field of office work, the daily tasks of the participating employees varied significantly. The CS1 participants would perform a variety of tasks, including administrative duties, project work, teaching positions, and roles supporting other professionals within the organization. Most of the participants reported having high levels of discretionary autonomy. They had their own (sometimes shared) office at the company’s premises, but they also had the option to work from home on several days per week. Apart from the lack of office infrastructure in their homes (the company provides no office furniture or other work materials), the employees all had remote access to the required work software. It was also common for the participants to have regular (team)meetings that influenced where and with whom work was performed (i.e., in the office or their homes) and structured their workday. The CS1 participants talked of an “extensive meeting culture” (focus group, CS1_03) in which meetings became ends to themselves, and their content and objectives would often remain unspecified. Additionally, in CS1, meetings and other tasks were sometimes scheduled late in the afternoon or at weekends, or would exceed their specified durations, thereby contributing to long working days (often beyond the regular working hours). Expectations, such as constant connectivity for meetings and overtime, align with the ideal worker norm of constant accessibility. These demands are not only reinforced by the use of digital tools for work organization but also perpetuate a broader gender order that privileges men – and, to some extent, women with minimal family responsibilities – within the company. These examples illustrate a work organization structured around masculine norms.

The levels of autonomy regarding organizing a workday varied between the CS1 participants. Administrative staff had lower autonomy in organizing and structuring their workdays compared to teaching staff. Nonetheless, all CS1 participants had some autonomy concerning how and when to perform their work tasks, irrespective of job description and department. Between regular (team)meetings, where tasks and work packages are coordinated, teaching responsibilities and assignments by supervisors, as well as important deadlines, autonomy in organizing the workday was found to be limited across all participants.

The participants of CS2 worked in different customer service departments and were all directly involved in customer support. The scope of activities itself was clearly organized. They worked in an open-plan office with the option to work remotely (although far more limited compared to CS1). Typically, employees are granted one to two days of remote work per week. Informally, those who meet performance targets may receive an additional remote workday as an incentive.

The workday typically begins just before 7 a.m. and ends just before 4 p.m. During this time, employees read and send e-mails, categorize and process inquiries (referred to as “cases” by employees), and gather information from various digital channels, such as MS Teams, public company websites, personal notes, and support from other organizational departments. The complexity and duration of tasks vary significantly, with some inquiries resolved within minutes and others taking an hour or more. The activity logs kept by the participants reveal a pattern of recurring, routine-based tasks. On certain days, participants likened their work to assembly line labor, as reflected in such statements as “We are an assembly line” (Focus Group, CS2_36). However, it would be an oversimplification to categorize the work as purely routine. In practice, cases differ widely in complexity, often requiring information from multiple sources, professional expertise, and, crucially, high levels of empathy, stress resilience, and emotional management skills during customer interactions.

This complexity was particularly evident in the focus group discussions, where employees described their work as alternating between monotonous, cognitively demanding, and emotionally exhausting – yet also satisfying when problems and inquiries are successfully resolved. CS2 employees reported being expected to meet specific response rate targets. One participant, for instance, reported a performance expectation of approximately 40 cases per hour. Compared to CS1, the tasks in CS2 appear more clearly defined, and digital tools enable continuous monitoring of work progress.

4.2 Techno-Overload and Work Organization

Digital work was found to be problematic and to potentially lead to technostress in several aspects in both case studies. Technology often enables and supports flexible work patterns and high work engagement. Indeed, workers in CS1 reported using several additional channels of digital communication, including such instant messaging technologies as WhatsApp and Signal, on their private smartphones. These applications serve at least two purposes: First and foremost, they are used to communicate within the core team to self-manage, plan, and organize work. Second, these digital channels are also used for private communication in the team. Digital communication can be a central source of technostress, and the participants viewed the multi-channel communication of e-mails, telephone, and PC and smartphone apps as problematic, predominantly due to interruptions, the expectation to handle multiple client requests simultaneously, and the demand to engage in work in off-hours (further explained in the next section). Administrative staff in CS1 had fewer communication channels to tend to and primarily worked with e-mails. They would receive, read, and respond to hundreds of e-mails per day during work-intensive periods. The simultaneous use of multiple digital applications can especially cause anger and frustration. For the participants, the use of several communication programs (MS Teams, Zoom, Signal, Slack) was reported as exhausting, and they further described how they would prefer a single application for communication at work. The many different applications make it difficult to concentrate on work tasks, and, despite their IT literacy, they reported feeling occasionally overwhelmed by the large number of applications. Participant CS1_10 referred to an increased “mental load” created by the various ICTs in use:

In the past, you would just sort out issues when you saw each other, and now you’re always sorting out issues. I’m sorting out issues for my children’s education, for my job, I’m sorting out issues on the train, I’m sorting out something quickly somewhere. And it’s tempting because we believe that we are getting rid of our mental load, but in reality, it creates it as well. (CS1_10, interview)

This statement, referring to an increased mental load, clearly shows how office workers experience these technologies as both helpful and hindering. Such an ambivalence – labelled as the “connectivity paradox” (Fonner & Roloff, 2012) – was widespread among our participants. Moreover, we observed that the workers had developed various strategies to negotiate norms and conditions to enable focused work (see Section 4.4).

4.3 Techno-Invasion and the Ambivalence of Working from Home

A recurring theme with our study participants is reflected in participant CS1_06’s work routine, who had management responsibilities: She would typically begin work in the morning while drinking her coffee before commuting to work by checking e-mails or messages on WhatsApp. Similarly, she would do the same in the evenings after regular working hours have ended. In the late evenings, she would usually not respond to incoming e-mails and messages immediately, leaving them for the following morning. It was common for the CS1 participants to find it challenging to fit work into the available working hours, leading them to work in off-hours and weekends during more stressful periods. Participant CS1_04 described this as a balancing act between successfully completing work tasks and not amassing too many extra hours. In her case – she had teaching responsibilities and project work with external funding – working hours would easily get out of hand and cross the line between work and personal life:

Ultimately, you end up turning on the laptop at home to check your emails. And then you answer another email, and that is how extra hours accumulate. This need to balance my working time is causing me stress. (CS1_04, interview)

This is exacerbated when colleagues or superiors engage with co-workers outside regular working hours. In the case of participant CS1_03, his boss would send messages (via WhatsApp or Signal) to the employees outside the regular working hours:

Our boss is kind of a specialist in this regard. I earlier talked to a colleague, and she said that she had received a message at 6:25 this morning. And the message wasn’t even that important. But the technology allows you to send the message, and then someone else can worry about it. (CS1_03, interview)

Thus, communication via instant messaging systems is generally seen as a legitimate channel for communication between colleagues and between managers and employees outside of working hours. This type of communication has the potential to recalibrate established norms of work communication, thereby influencing professional relationships and workplace dynamics.

In CS2, employees reported working while on sick leave or through breaks to meet performance targets – especially when working from home. Nevertheless, employees greatly appreciate the opportunity to work from home, as it makes handling different commitments easier: For employees with caregiving responsibilities, working from home is a crucial factor in balancing work and private life. Additionally, some of the employees found it easier to concentrate at home due to there being fewer interruptions from colleagues, not having to deal with interpersonal tensions, and being able to work more hours, thus making them feel more invested in their professional advancement.

Awareness of the difficulties of managing care and work responsibilities when working from home was reinforced in the focus group discussions. During a lively exchange between the participants in one of the focus groups, it became evident that this is particularly the case and experienced as most challenging during the early hours, when children are not yet in school or kindergarten. A participant argued that she works most efficiently “when all the others are asleep” (CS2_30 focus group). Moreover, and this was mostly the case for mothers of young children, they felt the need to be even more present and reachable when working from home. It was also repeatedly mentioned that working from home is a tremendous relief when a child is unwell. This flexibility of work location means that they can continue to work and be available despite caring for an unwell child.

Yesterday, the little one was suddenly feverish, then I was just in bed with her and checked e-mails on the side, and she was just lying there. You’re much more flexible working from home, yes. (CS1_07, focus group)

In the discussions, the participants suggested that work conducted within the private and largely invisible realm of their homes is often devalued. Crucially, in exchange for the trust and perceived privilege granted by their superiors, employees feel compelled to work more intensively, take fewer breaks, and remain available beyond regular office hours. A striking example of this dynamic is the case of the above-quoted participant, who continued working while tending to an unwell child, striving to meet the expectations of the ideal worker norm despite pressing family responsibilities. In order to “pass” as an ideal worker, she hid her caring responsibility so that it would not interfere with her work. This is further reinforced by the fact that working from home is sometimes used by management as a reward for meeting target case numbers.

This behavior reflects a contemporary adaptation of traditional gender roles, wherein flexible work arrangements allow women to balance paid and unpaid labor without challenging the prevailing norms regarding household and childcare responsibilities or the expectation of constant workplace connectivity. This gendered organizational culture also contributes to the delegation of work–life balance issues to individual employees:

In our team, you can’t argue emotionally with, “But I have a family,” can you? The truth is that you have to [perform], and there’s a lot of appreciative communication, but that doesn’t change the fact of what’s really required and what the attitude is toward you personally. (CS1_10, focus group)

Typically, the CS1 participants experienced this “constant connectivity” (Wajcman & Rose, 2011). For some, this led to extra stress and the feeling of being pressured to stay connected to the work and/or to their colleagues. The “always-on culture” (Chung, 2022b) particularly carries risks for women and mothers of young children: Since they are mostly responsible for the household and childcare, women are unable to “self-exploit” themselves in the formal labor market and adhere to the ideal worker norm as much as their male colleagues when working flexibly. Consequently, these younger women with caring responsibilities fear being labelled as less capable and excluded from important career advancement opportunities. One CS1 participant (CS1_04) exerted greater effort after her maternity leave to combat this fear and to prove to her superior that she was willing to put in extra hours despite her new role as a mother.

4.4 Techno-Uncertainty – Vague Digital Control and Efficiency Demands

In CS2, work and (especially) working hours were clearly limited, and overtime was the exception rather than the rule. However, there were other stressors that the employees had to cope with that are closely tied to technology use. In particular, the performance and time pressure at work were highlighted in the discussions of the two focus groups in CS2. These pressures result from the daily case processing targets, which are generally perceived as high. These performance targets are not documented in writing and are typically regulated through loose agreements between departments or teams and their supervisors. However, the participants suspected that their performance targets were deposited in the workflow application and could be reviewed by the supervisors. How the application accounts for the cases exactly, what is displayed on the workers’ dashboards, and what superiors have access to (individual, team, or department level) was discussed in the two focus groups: “It is not transparent how much we work” (CS2_36, focus group). As such, the participants reported being left in the dark about their performance. This lack of clarity on how cases are accounted for, and how the performance is reviewed, contributes to general uncertainty, increases work pressure (“Above all, I am afraid that my performance is not good enough” CS2_33, focus group), and may well be a deliberate strategy through which to obfuscate performance control. This uncertainty has led some employees to keep individual lists of the cases on which they have worked. These personal records served to demonstrate discrepancies between their own performance data and the numbers generated by the management system, providing a form of resistance to rigid digital control. However, the case number targets alone are not solely responsible for the high demands. Rather, it is the combination of rapid processing to meet the daily targets of processed cases, the necessity of working accurately, and the need to review e-mails before sending them to the customers. Moreover, digital control leads to an additional stressor: When working from home, physical presenteeism is replaced by online accessibility and visibility. A young woman participating in CS2 mentioned being afraid that the software would show her as absent (“away”), leading her to regularly move her mouse regardless of her actual work tasks to make sure she always appears available during the workday. This pronounced willingness to perform can occasionally lead to overload and emotional exhaustion.

In both case studies, the participants reported dealing with technical instability on a regular basis, which they described as a source of stress. As the stress caused by these technical issues is an everyday occurrence, it is somewhat “incorporated,” and employees typically avoid these issues by scheduling extra time in the morning. Participants CS1_07 and CS1_10 highlighted this, discussing the remote connection to a workflow program, which is also used for recording worktime:

I think some stressful situations have become so normal to us that we don’t even recognize them as stress because we don’t know any better. The best example is the remote connection. When I log in at home, I know that 80% of the time it might not work. That’s stressful, but it’s normal for me because I don’t know any other way. (CS1_07)

I don’t use [the software application] at all because it stresses me out. I track my time when I’m here, but I don’t use it for anything else. (CS1_10)

4.5 Individual and Collective Responses: From Internalization of Demands to Frustration and Refusal

As the results so far have shown, there are various stressors and challenges in the two company case studies. The participating employees responded very differently to these challenges and burdens. Some have completely internalized the (new) work demands and impositions, and seemed (at least on first glance) to not question ways of working that have a significant impact on their private and family life. Others could draw some boundaries toward the use of digital technologies and the consequential spatial and temporal flexibility. Others – especially employees in CS2 – failed to find adequate responses to reduce stress, both as individuals and as a collective workforce.

Participant CS1_01 described her counter-intuitive individual strategy to relieve workload stress, explaining in a focus group discussion how she decided to perceive work as not bound to an eight-hour office day, but rather as an around-the-clock occupation – a strategy only made possible by her remote access to her work materials.

I have now decided for myself as a relief that I don’t see my working days as from 7.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m., but simply 24 hours a day. And I do the work when it needs to be done and then I often do a few hours on Saturday or on Sunday in the evening, because it relaxes me emotionally to know that it’s done. (CS1_01, focus group)

Later, in the same focus group discussion, when discussing self-care strategies and health-preserving measures pursued by the employees, this participant admitted that, during stressful times, she is most likely to cancel her private sports and health classes. Similar approaches could be identified for other CS1 participants: Rather than failing to meet work demands, they are more likely to endure conflicts in their personal lives and accept personal losses, as illustrated in the following excerpt:

Well, I think this round-the-clock thing is somehow an illusion that you’ll get it back [in exchange for a long summer break], because the truth is that you won’t get back everything you’ve missed, where you didn’t go to the barbecue, where you didn’t go to yoga, what it might do to your health at some point. (CS1_10, focus group)

Such “toxic work efforts” (CS1_01), as one participant aptly described them, emerged as recurring themes among our participants. This pattern underscores the blurring of boundaries between work and personal life, with employees taking on the responsibility of managing both.

Flexible work also takes the pressure off me. Because in the past, if I couldn’t finish something, I used to stress myself out. I didn’t have a child then either, before the pandemic, so I would just stay until 5, 6, 7 p.m. and finish it. I have different priorities, now. I must leave at 2 p.m. because the kindergarten closes at 3 p.m., I must leave on time because there can be traffic jams. But that doesn’t stress me out because I can log in in the evening when the kid is asleep and get it done. (CS1_07, focus group)

Individual efforts also include meticulous time planning to structure the workday more effectively, using specific technologies or apps to allow focused work or blocking communication applications from their digital devices to minimize the risk of being regularly distracted. However, without being able to manage the workload itself, workers have few strategies left to reduce workload stress. The ones highlighted here are to extend the working day on their own accord or to share and manage workload with coworkers.

Importantly, not all of the participants fully succumbed to their work life and rather aimed to hedge the extent of their work. Some rejected installing communication applications on their private phones and deployed a more rigorous boundary management. Participant CS1_05 regularly received messages from a coworker in the evenings, leading him to uninstall the application. He considered it essential to shield himself from this constant connectivity – a challenge, given that colleagues frequently send texts or emails outside regular working hours. He aimed to find strategies to better limit his work and felt annoyed by colleagues who would not respect standard office hours. We observed another form of boundary management when dealing with client requests received on weekends, which participant CS1_03 consistently processed on the following Monday mornings.

On the one hand, I usually have Outlook open during the day, but then requests come in overnight. Because that’s when the [the students] do their work. But then I don’t read it until Monday morning. It’s just a case of prioritizing these things. (CS1_03, focus group)

This practice reflects a deliberate effort to maintain clear boundaries between work and personal time, ensuring that weekends are protected from work-related demands.

Our data suggest a gender bias in how participants (are able to) deal with digital technologies, working time, workplace flexibility, and technostress. One reason for this might be that problems of reconciling private and professional life are predominantly considered to be the responsibility of women (see also Carstensen, 2019). In this context, the design and use of technology play a crucial role in how employees perceive work-related technologies and their impact on stress and well-being. In the absence of organizational guidelines, some teams explicitly discussed how digital communication technologies should be used:

We’ve had team meetings about what messaging app to use. We always try to find solutions in a very democratic way, and we’ve now moved to Teams […] You can also set Teams on your phone to stop sending notifications after 5 p.m., for example. In other words, everyone has the ability to do that: “When do I want to receive messages and when do I not.” […] We also have two channels, we have a “spam” channel where people send each other vacation photos and so on, more of a social exchange, and then we have the “work” channel. (CS1_01_focus group)

Despite this team-level negotiation process, individual employees still bear the responsibility of self-managing the use of technology.

In CS2, responses to techno stressors presented a different picture due to the much tighter work organization and stricter digital performance controls. Issues related to techno-invasion, such as constant connectivity, were less pronounced because work was more clearly defined and strictly confined to working hours, thereby reducing the potential for boundary blurring. On the one hand, lower work autonomy resulted in less techno-invasion. On the other, the participants’ limited autonomy and lack of influence over work technologies meant they had little leverage to mitigate their workplace stressors. For example, when confronted with digital performance control through the workflow application, CS2 participants felt powerless to change either the management practices or the workflow application itself.

5 Discussion: Gendered Strategies Navigating Technostress

While gender did not appear to significantly affect how participants experienced technostress, the study uncovered distinct gendered and gendering strategies in response to work demands in contemporary office work. One prominent strategy mostly observed in CS1 was constant engagement with e-mails and work-related communications during off-hours. This strategy highlights the extent to which the responsibility for optimizing one’s own labor output is put on the workers. In CS2, gender appeared to have a less significant impact on the shaping of work practices. Based on existing research (e.g., Ewers & Kangmennaan, 2022), one potential explanation for this difference is the status and level of autonomy and skills of the workers. However, it is not only status and professional class that influence the need for advanced boundary management; the types of work arrangements available to workers in different occupational classes are also salient in shaping these demands (Gerstel & Clawson, 2014; Kumar, 2024). This aligns with the observations of CS2, wherein the participants’ work requirements and their responses to (techno)stressors were more closely associated with their professional roles and the corresponding managerial control, rather than gendered influences. This suggests that, within this specific setting, the structure and organization of the work itself – rather than gender – had a greater influence on how performance expectations and (techno)stress were internalized and managed.

Another strategy in navigating technostress is related to managing working time flexibility. Constant connectivity was particularly pronounced among employees working from home, especially for younger workers with less secure positions (e.g., temporary contracts) and those with caregiving responsibilities for dependent children. Mothers with caregiving duties expressed a preference for self-managing their working hours to accommodate the fluctuating demands of domestic life. For these individuals, flexibility – rather than rigid temporal or spatial boundaries – emerged as a crucial mechanism for achieving more equitable participation in their paid jobs. As such, this “embedded nature of connectedness in work practices” (Howcroft et al., 2024, p. 3), or what Mazmanian and colleagues (2013, p. 1138) described as “continuous and compulsive connectivity,” represents a new feature of the ideal worker model – something we observed predominantly in CS1, where it played a key role in reshaping work organization. However, while being constantly connected and self-managing one’s working time and location can enable more equitable participation in the workplace, our empirical findings also reveal significant trade-offs for the individual employees: increased stress due to techno-invasion, prolonged working hours, and potential conflicts over time and resources in both professional and personal domains, including the sacrifice of sports and leisure activities. This supports earlier research describing the resulting invisible labor as being “never truly off” (Beckman & Mazmanian, 2020, p. 100), a condition that amplifies the risk of overload and diminished recovery.

The need for individual strategies to manage technostress highlights a broader organizational issue: The burden of coping with poorly structured digital work environments is often left to the employees themselves. Consequently, managing technostress becomes a matter of personal action and (in)ability, rather than a shared organizational responsibility. Guidelines concerning expected response times to e-mails and instant messages, appropriate boundaries for out-of-hours communication, and recommendations for taking breaks while working from home can help employees manage their digital workload more effectively. These policies should be developed in consultation with a broad range of stakeholders – including employees, management, workplace health professionals, and representatives from workers’ councils – to ensure that both implicit and explicit norms surrounding technology use are equitably addressed (for more on the prevention of work-related technostress, see Rohwer et al., 2022).

Beyond the implementation of such guidelines, it is crucial to actively involve employees in the design, implementation, and ongoing evaluation of digital technologies in the workplace. Here, inclusive design processes are key. Rather than assuming digital tools are neutral, inclusive approaches recognize that technologies are embedded in social contexts and can reinforce existing inequalities if not carefully considered. By involving a diverse range of employees – particularly women, caregivers, and other marginalized groups –throughout the design and decision-making stages, organizations can better ensure that digital systems and flexible work practices reflect the different needs and lived realities of their workforce. This approach can help challenge ideal worker norms and promote a more equitable distribution of technological (dis-)advantages.

Ultimately, each new technological development and organizational change presents an opportunity to challenge existing structures and routines. Drawing on Wajcman’s (1991, p. 34) seminal insight that “technology is not an independent force; the way in which it affects the nature of work is conditioned by existing relationships,” it becomes clear that critical reflection and participatory approaches are essential. Only by actively involving workers and critically examining workplace transformations can digital advancements serve to promote, rather than hinder, gender equality and inclusion (for more on this subject, see Gerdenitsch et al., 2024).

6 Conclusion and Further Directions: Toward the Ideal Worker-Mother?

Drawing on our explorative methodology, we sought to integrate gender-blind technostress theories with gender-sensitive approaches from organizational and work studies. We demonstrated that digitalization – partly driven by remote work and a lack of clear organizational guidelines – induces stress through techno-overload, techno-invasion, and techno-uncertainty. However, employees rarely attribute their stress directly to technology. Instead, they emphasize such factors as the organization of work, excessive workloads, the mismatch between available and required time, and management or control practices.

Although the number of case studies may limit our study, its unique design has allowed us to show how (office) work, digital technologies, and gender are intertwined. The study design also informed participants about their personal use and stressors related to digital tools at work. The focus group discussions enabled them to collectively reflect on their work practices, technology use, and strategies, as well as to discuss (technological) inadequacies of their work realities on a less individualized level – an area of research that remains underdeveloped.

Our findings also reveal that work-time flexibility remains a deviation from the norm. In CS2, it was even explicitly associated with high performance, leaving “organizational discourses of time as representing productivity, commitment and value” (Lewis, 1997, p. 13) largely unchallenged. Yet, a closer examination shows that the boundaries between paid and unpaid work, as well as between gainful employment and care work, do not dissolve – they shift and become increasingly complex and ambiguous.

Similarly, we found that working mothers often internalize ideal worker norms within their own self-expectations. Despite the considerable demands associated with caregiving responsibilities, many mothers continue to strive toward fulfilling the traditional characteristics of the ideal worker –demonstrating unwavering commitment, constant connectivity, and a focused dedication to work that aligns with prevailing organizational expectations. These norms typically prioritize efficiency, uninterrupted productivity, and the subordination of personal obligations to professional responsibilities. Consequently, we observe a reconfiguration of the traditional gender order, which perpetuates the gender-specific division of labor. For mothers, flexible working arrangements are mostly used to meet the demands of work and family, aspiring to an updated version of the ideal worker norm while simultaneously conforming to the traditional image of motherhood and femininity.

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Date received: 9 January 2025Date accepted: 9 September 2025

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1. 1 The project has been funded by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) [10.47379/ICT20034].

2. 2 As an example, for participant CS2_32, we recorded a higher stress measurement (relative to their own average) for the first half-hour interval on the morning of Day 4. For the corresponding one-hour time frame in the daily log, we can find the entries “starting applications,” “filling out questionnaire,” and “drafting e-mails.” The individual assessment for these tasks was 3 (out of a 5-point scale with 1 being “not satisfied with the task” and 5 being “very satisfied with the task”) for “starting applications,” 5 for “filling out questionnaire,” and 3, again, for “drafting e-mails.” Based on this, it remains unclear which of the tasks were stressful, whether individual tasks contributed to stress while others did not, or whether there were distinct stress peaks versus an overall elevated stress level.