Do Workaholics Procrastinate? The Role of Psychological Detachment and Welfare Climate in the Association Between Workaholism and Procrastination

Background: Workaholism is a critical form of addiction within the modern workforce. Recently, this construct has been conceptualised as multidimensional, encompassing motivational (inner compulsion to work), cognitive (persistent thoughts about work), emotional (experiencing negative emotions when not working), and behavioural aspects (working excessively). Previous studies have clearly demonstrated that workaholism is strongly detrimental for employee wellbeing. However, a lack of consensus exists on how workaholism affects employee performance, despite workaholics are increasingly regarded as “hard workers” rather than “smart workers”. In the current study we extend existing literature on this topic by examining the association between workaholism and procrastination, and explore the mechanisms that may drive and mitigate this relationship. Procrastination at work is an indicator of poor performance that has received little attention, although it is recognised to be deleterious for later employee well-being and organizational productivity. Drawing on the Conservation of Resources theory and the Stressor-detachment model, we expect that workaholics may adopt procrastination as a defensive mode to preserve the self and to avoid excessive personal resource loss. Since workaholics generally fail to disconnect from work during off-job hours, thus not dedicating enough time to restoring their resources, we hypothesise that (lack of) psychological detachment may be the mechanism through which workaholism leads to procrastination. Furthermore, as individual behaviours do not occur in a vacuum, we hypothesise that an organizational climate based on respecting and valuing employees (“welfare climate”) may buffer the direct effect of workaholism on (lack of) psychological detachment, and, in turn, its indirect effect on procrastination. Method: We performed a longitudinal study with three measurement points involving a sample of 795 Italian employees (60.5% females). Participants completed a questionnaire which included the Clark and colleagues’ Multidimensional Workaholism Scale, the Steel’s scale on Procrastination, the Sonnentag and Fritz’s scale on Psychological Detachment, and the Patterson and colleagues’ Organizational Climate measure. We employed structural equation modelling to investigate our hypotheses. Results: Workaholism at T1 was positively associated with (lack of) detachment at T2, which in turn was positively associated with procrastination at T3. As hypothesised, workaholism at T1 was indirectly associated with procrastination at T3 through detachment at T2. Welfare climate at T1 moderated the relationship between workaholism at T1 and (lack of) detachment at T2, so that this association was not significant at higher levels of welfare climate. Finally, welfare climate at T1 buffered the indirect association between workaholism at T1 and procrastination at T3 through (lack of) detachment at T1. 439 Conclusion: Our research provides new evidence on the negative implications of workaholism for employee performance. To our knowledge, this is the first study which empirically tests the association between workaholism and procrastination. Our results suggest that organizations should be particularly attentive to employees displaying high levels of workaholism, since creating healthier work environments may reduce the detrimental effects of workaholism tendencies.