Family Responsibility and Satisfaction with Teleworking in the United States Federal Government

Beyond the context of a teleworker’s overall job satisfaction, very few studies have focused particularly on a teleworker’s satisfaction with teleworking arrangement itself. As a result, public managers, practitioners and public administration scholars do not have data regarding the factors that may be associated with federal teleworkers’ satisfaction levels with teleworking. To address, the main purpose of this study is to empirically examine the association of federal government teleworkers’ family responsibilities (i.e., child and elder care obligations) and satisfaction levels with the dependent care programs provided by their organizations with their teleworking satisfaction levels. The empirical analysis of this study demonstrates that federal teleworkers who have child and elder care obligations exhibited lower levels of teleworking satisfaction than did the teleworkers who do not have such obligations. The study also supports that federal teleworkers with higher levels of satisfaction with their child and elder care programs reported higher levels of teleworking satisfaction. The empirical findings, theoretical and managerial implications, and limitations of this research with suggestions for future teleworking research are thoroughly discussed in this article.