Managing job burnout from workplace telepressure: A three way interaction

represented by job burnout, because of the existence of workplace telepressure by considering contextual factors that individuals can use as resources to regulate the pressure they feel on having to respond to ICT continuously in their work.


Introduction
The massive development of information, communication and technology (ICT) in the last decade has motivated companies in various industrial sectors to adopt it in their business.On the one hand, this can increase flexibility while facilitating easy communication and coordination between individuals, so as to achieve organisational goals.But, on the other hand, the development of ICT also has its own paradox in the sense that this ease of communication makes it difficult for employees to leave their workplaces (Barber et al., 2019;Firoozabadi et al., 2018).Employees are expected to always be ready for doing their jobs because of the flexibility offered by ICT.As a result, there is a blur to their working time and working arrangement, as when they leave their workplace, employees still receive and need to reply to texts, e-mails or messages regarding their jobs.In addition, because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown, there is an increase in this connectivity as a result of remote work and flexible work arrangements.
This phenomenon has been addressed by a number of studies, such as Samaniego (2022) who conducted research on American workers and found that these conditions lead employees to experience increased levels of stress and burnout.In addition, Page et al. (2021) carried out two studies on working students and working individuals who are exposed with the same conditions and found that they have higher levels of burnout.This kind of work-related experience is called workplace telepressure.It is the tendency of employees to feel pressured to respond to work-related messages and communications (Barber & Santuzzi, 2015;Barber et al., 2019).

Managing job burnout from workplace telepressure:
A three way interaction

Read online:
Scan this QR code with your smart phone or mobile device to read online.
Because of the high connectivity with ICT, employees have this paradox of being constantly connected to work, but at the same time also experiencing negative consequences with regard to their physical and mental health as they cannot completely leave the work itself.
At the same time, the mental and physical state of employees currently become one of the organization's main concerns.
Organization now put more attention regarding their employees' welfare, and it includes their physical and mental health.The decline of this and other employee conditions, which are related to excessive workload, work pressure and work stress (Grau-Alberola et al., 2022;Johnson et al., 2018).
Long working hours also lead to fatigue and a reduction in the quality of work of employees (Eurofound, 2019;Gu et al., 2019;Oros et al., 2020).Job burnout is a sign of a decline in the quality of work that employees in various industries are prone to experience.There are three components of job burnout, as mentioned by Demerouti et al. (2021), namely emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment.Job burnout is a state of exhaustion felt by individuals, making them feel cynical about the value of the job and doubting their capacity to do work (Cheng & Yi, 2018;Page et al., 2021).
This issue regarding workplace telepressure and job burnout ultimately requires organisations to try to minimise these negative impacts.Regarding this, the leadership style adopted by superiors in the organisation can shape employees' perceptions of their condition (Gilbert et al., 2017;Mahmmud et al., 2020).Leaders with a transformational style tend to have foresight are able to respond to change effectively and develop the potential of all members in the organisation (Grau-Alberola et al., 2022).These abilities of transformational leaders enable them to face and overcome challenges in their jobs.So far, transformational leaders have been found to be able to influence employee welfare, productivity, satisfaction work quality and health (Akar & Ustuner, 2019;Chebon et al., 2019;Specchia et al., 2021).
In addition, the support provided by the organisation to employees will also determine their attitudes and behaviour.
In simple terms, perceived organisational support (POS) can be understood as a condition in which employees feel that the organisation appreciates their efforts and pays attention to their welfare (Imran et al., 2020;Wen et al., 2019).So far, the moderating role of POS has been found in several studies to enhance positive behavioural outcomes at workplace, such as lowering turnover intention, work meaningfulness, positive attitude and innovation capability (Le & Lei, 2019;Li et al., 2019;Wang & Xu, 2019) while also influencing employee burnout (Cheng & Yi, 2018;Le & Lei, 2019).
A number of scholars have confirmed a positive relationship between workplace telepressure and job burnout (Kao et al., 2020;Page et al., 2021;Santuzzi & Barber, 2018).However, this relationship still needs to be explored, in the sense that previous scholars have not taken into account how workplace telepressure can affect job burnout.Kao et al. (2020) mentioned the need to consider the moderating variables that underlie the strong or weak influence of workplace telepressure on job burnout.The role of workplace telepressure in influencing the condition of well-being, such as burnout itself also needs to be examined (Park et al., 2018;Santuzzi & Barber, 2018).In addition, the study conducted by Samaniego (2022) has demonstrated the important role of supervisor support in reducing the negative influence of workplace telepressure.He suggests testing other aspects of support, such as POS, and looking at its effectiveness as a contextual factor in moderating the influence of workplace telepressure on job burnout.
Based on the above explanation, there is a need to have a deeper understanding of the conditions under which workplace telepressure can have a stronger or weaker influence on employee job burnout.This study aims to fill the gap from previous studies by exploring the relationship between workplace telepressure and job burnout and to see how this relationship is moderated by contextual factors that exist in the organisation.Firstly, this study predicts that employees are more likely to experience job burnout when they perceive workplace telepressure.Secondly, the researcher expects that the social context in the organisation, which is represented by transformational leadership style and POS, will have a role in the influence of workplace telepressure on job burnout by enabling a conducive and supportive climate for employees.

Workplace telepressure and job burnout
Workplace telepressure is the compulsive motivation of individuals to respond to messages and communications.
The study conducted by Barber et al. (2019) and Samaniego (2022) shows that employees who experience telepressure feel that they have no control over their leisure time, because of the need to respond to unpredictable work-related messages.This, of course, can lead to boredom, as employees find it difficult to leave their workplaces (Mahmmud et al., 2020;Page et al., 2021).
Employees who feel excessive workload or pressure will experience a decrease in physical and psychological health conditions (Gonzales-Mulé & Cockburn, 2020).The ease and flexibility of ICT become a paradox for employees, which causes them to perceive pressure to always be connected to work (Kao et al., 2022).This condition can burden employees in carrying out their responsibilities regarding matters outside of work (Barber et al., 2019).Job burnout, one of the signs of the lack of employee welfare, is a growing issue.
Job burnout is a psychological and physical response to prolonged stress and frustration in the organisation (Cheng & Yi, 2018).Introduced by Herbert Freudenberger in 1970, job burnout has three components, namely emotional exhaustion, negative attitude towards others (depersonalisation) and reduced personal accomplishment (Demerouti et al., 2021).Emotional exhaustion is the feeling of an individual who is burdened with their work.Depersonalisation is an individual's impersonal feeling or reaction to another party.Meanwhile, reduced personal accomplishments are feelings of incompetence and a lack of achievement experienced by individuals (Santuzzi & Barber, 2018).During the initial development of the concept of burnout, Maslach et al. (1997) mentioned that burnout can be caused by the unfit between individuals and their work setting, which includes workload, control, reward, community, justice and value.
Burnout can arise from the presence of psychologically straining conditions.Employees who constantly feel the need to respond to work-related communications and messages, whether during working hours or outside of it, are likely to experience physical and mental fatigue (Barber & Santuzzi, 2015;Kao et al., 2020).This is because employees must continue to devote their attention to their work and make them lose the opportunity to recover from it (Pfaffinger et al., 2022).Based on this explanation, the hypothesis developed (Figure 1) is as follows: H1: Workplace telepressure is positively related to higher levels of job burnout.

The moderating role of transformational leadership
Introduced in around 1980s, transformational leadership refers to a leader who has several characteristics, namely idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualised consideration (Bass et al., 1987;Bass, 1985).In idealised influence, leaders show confidence in taking risks and building a core set of values, trust and increase their followers' commitment.In inspirational motivation, leaders articulate a vision for the future, provide challenges for employees, are optimistic and provide encouragement.When it comes to the third characteristic, that is, intellectual stimulation, leaders stimulate new perspectives and encourage individuals to express ideas.Finally, in individualised consideration, leaders listen and consider individual aspirations, needs and abilities (Nguyen et al., 2022;Terkamo-Moisio et al., 2022).This concept continues to receive attention from scholars regarding its impact on organisational culture (Bass & Avolio, 1994), organisational and personal outcomes (Givens, 2008), as well as how it affects human behaviour in organisations (Bakker et al., 2022;Scuotto et al., 2022).
This study considers the role of social context to buffer the influence of workplace telepressure on employee job burnout.
The researchers predict that the relationship between workplace telepressure and job burnout will change, along with the level of transformational leadership and POS in the organisation.When leaders with a transformational style are present in the organisation, they will influence employees' perceptions of their work by providing personal attention, consideration, intellectual stimulation and coaching (Hentrich et al., 2017;Sinclair et al., 2021).This will allow employees to be less engrossed in the telepressure they feel, thereby minimising burnout (Miao & Cao, 2019;Tafvelin et al., 2019).
Transformational leadership can help employees to manage the pressures faced by them, including workplace telepressure, and make the necessary changes to distribute the tasks at hand (St-Hilaire et al., 2018;Terkamo-Moisio et al., 2022).This will stimulate employees with the perception that workplace telepressure is something that can be managed and will not be a pressure that causes them to experience burnout at work.Conversely, when leaders do not use a transformational leadership style, this can actually make employees feel like they are in an unfavourable work environment and make them feel the need to respond to work-related messages quickly (Grau-Alberola et al., 2022;Miao & Cao, 2019;Tafvelin et al., 2019).If this happens continuously, the impact will be in the form of employees who will feel increased burnout.This condition is shown by the study by Spagnoli et al. (2020), which considers the moderating role of authoritarian leadership on the relationship between workaholism and technostress.Authoritarian leaders were found to strengthen the negative influence of workaholism because they did not help their employees to address the conditions they were experiencing, in this case the tendency to continue working (workaholism), thus leading to technostress.
In this study, when employees perceive the attitude of transformational leaders who empathise with their condition, pay attention to the condition of each member in the organisation and help employees to manage the pressure they feel, they will feel helped in managing the conditions of workplace telepressure they experience, thereby reducing the risk of burnout in employees.Based on this explanation, the hypothesis developed (Figure 1) is: H2: Workplace telepressure will have a weaker influence on job burnout when the leader practises transformational leadership style.

The moderating role of perceived organisational support
Perceived organisational support can be defined as a condition in which employees feel that the organisation appreciates contributions while paying attention to their welfare (Imran et al., 2020;Wen et al., 2019).The support and appreciation felt by employees from their organisation show that the organisation cares and pays attention to the welfare of employees.According to Cheng and Yi (2018), POS provides employees with emotional support, affiliation and increased self-esteem.Perceived organisational support represents the principle of positive reciprocity perceived by employees; that positive treatment from the organisation will be responded to by employee attitudes that also benefit the organisation itself (Eisenberger et al., 1986;Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002).
Social support is one aspect that can reduce the risk of burnout felt by individuals (Klaver et al., 2021).This is because employees with high POS will feel obliged to repay their organisation with positive work attitudes and behaviour.In this regard, several studies have shown that POS plays an important role in moderating relationships in organisations (Srivastava & Agrawal, 2020).Strong support from the organisation is indicated by the existence of socioemotional and physical assistance, so that employees have more abilities to achieve their goals.In addition, high organisational support was found to increase the effectiveness of individual communication and collaboration in the organisation (Giao et al., 2020;Le & Lei, 2019).Kao et al. (2020) mentioned that the situation in the employees' work environment, including social norms in it, has an important role in influencing workplace telepressure.When employees are in an environment that requires them to be accessible and respond quickly, there will be an increase in workplace telepressure that leads to burnout (Barber & Santuzzi, 2015;Hu et al., 2019;Santuzzi & Barber, 2018).In contrast, POS can facilitate the growth of a supportive climate while providing adequate resources for employees to do their jobs (Le & Lei, 2019;Suifan et al., 2018).
Related to this, the researcher predicts that POS is estimated to increase the moderating role of transformational leadership to weaken the effect of workplace telepressure on job burnout.This explanation shows that there is a three-way interaction between workplace telepressure, transformational leadership and POS.The effect of workplace telepressure on job burnout when transformational leadership is high will be weaker when employees feel the support from their organisation.Based on this explanation, the hypothesis formulated (Figure 1) is as follows: H3: The negative moderating influence of transformational leadership on the workplace telepressure-job burnout relationship will be stronger at a high level of POS.

Methodology and research design
This study was conducted quantitatively on employees working in manufacturing state-owned enteprises (SOEs) in three provinces in Indonesia, namely DKI Jakarta, West Java and Central Java.The population in this study were manufacturing SOEs employees who were selected by purposive sampling method, resulted in 388 respondents as the research sample.Manufacturing SOE employees are specifically chosen since during the COVID-19 pandemic, employees are required to carry out their jobs at home to prevent the spread of the virus.The data in this study were taken through the distribution of questionnaires to the respondents through online platforms using Google Forms for 2 months, starting from August to September 2022.The researchers shared the questionnaire links through social media.To ensure that this study has the right sample, the following criteria were set to select the participants: (1) employees who are working in manufacturing SOEs located in DKI Jakarta, West Java and/or Central Java, (2) have worked remotely for at least 3 months during their job at the organisation and (3) have been working in the organisation for at least 3 years.These criteria were purposively used to ensure that the respondents have experienced the conditions of remote working and to assess whether they have been led by transformational leaders.
In filling out the questionnaire, the respondents were first asked to state that they meet the criteria for the sample.
Respondents were then asked to fill out their characteristics such as gender, highest level of education and age.Furthermore, they were asked to rate the statement items according a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).The data obtained were then tested for validity and reliability.The criteria for validity are seen from the r-count value, which must be greater than r-table (0.500) for an item to be declared valid.The criteria for reliability in this study is seen from the value of Cronbach's Alpha, which must exceed 0.7 for a variable to be called reliable (Hair et al., 2019).Next, the researcher tested the hypothesis using the conditional process analysis method with SPSS Macro-PROCESS.
This study consists of four variables, with one independent variable (workplace telepressure), one dependent variable (job burnout) and two intervening variables (transformational leadership and POS).Workplace telepressure was assessed with a measurement item developed by Barber and Santuzzi (2015), which has eight items.Examples of items are 'I feel a strong need to respond to others immediately' and 'I can't stop thinking about a message until I've responded'.Job burnout in this study was assessed using the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory (CBI) consisting of seven items adopted from the study of Kristensen et al. (2005;Kao et al., 2020).
Examples of items are 'I feel worn out at the end of the working day' and 'I am exhausted in the morning at the thought of another day at work'.Transformational leadership is assessed with the Global Transformational Leadership Scale (Carless et al., 2000;Tafvelin et al., 2019), which has seven items.An example of an item is 'My leader gives encouragement and recognition to staff'.Finally, the POS variable was assessed with an eight-item measurement developed by Eisenberger et al. (1997)

Ethical considerations
The research has complied with the research code of ethics.
The study has been granted research permission from the institution and the respondents.There is no particular interest related to the research institution.

Respondents' characteristics
Most of the respondents in this study were male (72%); 55% of all respondents have bachelor's degree, with the majority of respondents in the age group of 26-33 years old (51%).
The majority of respondents have been working for 3-4 years (43%).More details about the respondents' characteristics are shown in Table 1.

Validity and reliability
All measurement variables show a reliable value for measuring the tested sample with Cronbach's alpha value on the Workplace Telepressure variable of 0.799, Job Burnout variable of 0.802, Transformational Leadership variable of 0.797 and POS variable of 0.788.The indicators used in the study showed valid results as a measuring instrument with a validity value exceeding 0.500.Furthermore, the correlation results from each variable all show a positive correlation, with a correlation between Workplace Telepressure and Job Burnout (r = 0.564; P < 0.01), Workplace Telepressure with Transformational Leadership (r = 0.560; P < 0.01) and the correlation of Workplace Telepressure with POS (r = 0.564; P < 0.01).More details on validity and reliability test are presented in Table 2 and Table 3.

Hypothesis test
To determine the effect of Transformational Leadership and POS (moderating variables) on the relationship between Workplace Telepressure and Job Burnout, the following data were obtained (see Table 4): • Workplace Telepressure variable has a direct positive effect on Job Burnout with a value of b of 0.559 with a P-value < 0.05.Hypothesis 1 (H1) is acceptable.

Discussion
The massive development of ICT is currently extensively utilised by organisations as a means to streamline and speed up information flow to serve business and customers' needs.This is because ICT improves business' efficiency, effectiveness and ability to react quickly to their surroundings, as it enables coordination between individuals and teams to occur without having to meet face to face.The use of ICT becomes more significant and is applied to various organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic, when employees are forced to work remotely because of the lockdown situation.However, this development of ICT and its adoption in work in organisations have an impact on the pressure on human resources that leads to job burnout (Caldara et al., 2022).During the pandemic, more and more people are working from home using information and communication technology.This condition makes it difficult for individuals to leave their workplace, and feel a situation called workplace telepressure (Jonas, 2022).This underlies the importance of looking at the possible relationship of information and communication to workplace telepressure and its impact on employee well-being (Derks et al., 2015).
In testing the first hypothesis, regarding the effect of workplace telepressure on job burnout, the findings of this study showed positive and significant results (H1 was accepted).This means that the presence of workplace telepressure felt by employees makes them experience one of the conditions of work stress, which is marked by job burnout.The higher the workplace telepressure felt by employees, the higher the job burnout they felt.The results of this study are in line with several previous studies that have been carried out by Barber and Santuzzi (2015;Kao et al., 2020).This is because employees who continuously feel the need to respond to work-related communications, even outside of working hours, will experience physical and mental fatigue, which in this case is seen from job burnout.In the long run, individual fatigue will make them less competent in completing tasks and less than optimal in pursuing their achievements.
In the last two decades, transformational leadership has become a concern for companies because this leadership style is considered to have a significant influence on employee work results.In addition, transformational leadership is also considered as a contextual factor that can relieve employee fatigue (Khan et al., 2020).The effects of fatigue and stress in the workplace have an impact on employee interpersonal relationships, so there needs to be a leadership style that can reduce the influence of workplace telepressure on job burnout.Transformational leadership is also relevant for this, considering that leaders with this leadership style are very concerned about employees (Jensen & Bro, 2018;Khan et al., 2020).The results of the second hypothesis test regarding the moderating role of transformational leadership in reducing the influence of workplace telepressure on job burnout showed a significant results (H2 is accepted).This study supports the findings of several previous studies (St-Hilaire et al., 2018;Terkamo-Moisio et al., 2022).The characteristics possessed by transformational leaders enable employees to manage workplace telepressure, thereby reducing its impact on job burnout.
Furthermore, in testing the third hypothesis, the researcher considers the moderating effect of POS in influencing the interactions between transformational leadership, workplace telepressure and job burnout.The results indicate that POS can help increase the role of transformational leadership in minimising the effect of workplace telepressure on job burnout (H3 is accepted).In this case, the support from the organisation through socio-emotional and physical assistance will make it easier for employees to complete their work, achieve goals and increase the effectiveness of communication and cooperation between individuals in the organisation.Perceived organisational support, along with transformational leadership, can influence the workplace telepressure relationship on job burnout.Employees are likely to experience less burnout when their organisation provides support and have transformational leader in their workplace.This is because POS and transformational leadership act as resources for employees to carry out their duties and work.

Conclusion
This study explored the relationship among workplace telepressure, job burnout, transformational leadership and POS in the context of employees in manufacturing companies in three provinces in Indonesia.According to the discussion and results of hypothesis testing, all hypotheses proposed in this study are accepted.Workplace telepressure is found to have positive influence on job burnout, as employees who feel telepressure will experience job burnout.Furthermore, this study also confirms the moderating role of transformational leadership and POS.These two variables can buffer the influence of workplace telepressure on job burnout.
This study has contributed to the literature, especially regarding organisational behaviour, how to manage stress and fatigue experienced by employees by looking at the role of transformational leadership style and POS.However, this study has some limitations that should be taken into consideration by future researchers.Firstly, the data in this study were taken by cross-sectional method.Future research needs to conduct deeper examination on the same topic using longitudinal method in order to obtain robust results.
Secondly, this study considers only contextual factors that can minimise the influence of workplace telepressure and job burnout.Future studies may consider involving internal factors from individuals to regulate pressures they may experience in their working conditions.
From the study conducted, there are several implications provided by this study.Firstly, regarding theoretical implication, this study builds a model of stress management, represented by job burnout, because of the existence of workplace telepressure.The researchers also consider contextual factors that individuals can use as resources to regulate the pressure they feel on having to respond to ICT continuously in their work.This allows researchers to be able to see the factors that underlie the reduced effect of workplace telepressure on job burnout.
Secondly, regarding managerial implications, this study can be a recommendation for managers or leaders in companies, especially those that require employees to communicate regarding their work, or who implement work-from-home (WFH) or work-from-anywhere (WFA) policies.To successfully manage this, leaders need to apply a transformational leadership style, and companies or organisations need to provide full support for employees in carrying out their duties or work.Senior leaders and line managers are suggested to practise this leadership style by providing clear instructions and expectations for the organisational members in order to establish effective and efficient workflow while also preventing unnecessary communication outside working hours.This will enable employees to feel less workplace telepressure, thus reducing their burnout.
In addition, to address the condition by which the employees are already experiencing telepressure and burnout, the organisation must be aware and realise that employees are vulnerable to workplace telepressure; thus they could deal with the problem.Organisations must create a positive culture that embraces all members of the organisation.It should be emphasised that carrying out a job or task remotely during working hours is employees' part of responsibility, and they should not feel burdened as the organisation has the willingness to help and assist them.As another form of support, organisations must promote a culture of open communication.It is also recommended for the organization to create policies and programs that allows employees to complain and convey their aspirations, such as through Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).

TABLE 2 :
Reliability and correlation coefficient results.

TABLE 3 :
Results of validity test.role in reducing the level of Job Burnout.Hypothesis 2 (H2) is acceptable.• Perceived Organisational Support variable has a negative or reverse relationship with Job Burnout with a value of b of −0.299 and a P-value < 0.05.This means that the higher the value of POS, the lower the level of Job Burnout.• The interaction between the Workplace Telepressure variable and POS on Job Burnout resulted in the value of b of −0.329 with a P-value < 0.05.This means that POS can reduce the level of Job Burnout.• The moderator role of Transformational Leadership and POS on the relationship between Workplace Telepressure and Job Burnout generates a value of b of −0.401 with a P value < 0.05.The resulting b value indicates that the role of POS can help increase the role of Transformational Leadership to reduce the level of Job Burnout.Hypothesis 3 (H3) is acceptable.