Happy workers perform better than unhappy workers. This is the idea behind the happy-productive worker thesis (Staw, 1986). However, as noted by Sender et al. (2020), the thesis is not precisely new, which also implies the existence of certain limitations (e.g., lack of consensus on the operationalization of the terms happiness and productivity, Sender et al., 2020). Moreover, despite the consensus on the positive (weak) relationship between happiness and productivity, some authors have revealed a non-linear relationship. In other words, not all happy workers are high performers (Baron et al., 2012; Grant and Schwartz, 2011), and sometimes even low levels of happiness can result in high performance (Silvestro, 2002). Recently, several proposals have emerged to address this issue. This is the case of the theory of Peiró et al. (2014), called the Sustainable Productivity and Wellbeing Synergy (SPWS). The SPWS is a heuristic approach to the happy-productive worker thesis, focused on the person, instead of on variables. SPWS is defined as the promotion and maintenance of the synergy of happy workers who show high levels of job performance and the search for a mutually reinforcing connection between wellbeing and productivity. Specifically, the SPWS (Peiró et al., 2014) could be described in three statements: (1) Happiness is understood as a fusion of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing; (2) Productivity considers variables such as in-role, ex-role, and creative performance; (3) four profiles result from the interaction between job wellbeing and job performance: happy-productive, unhappy-unproductive, happy-unproductive, and unhappy-productive. Several studies conducted following this approach have revealed promising results. Through the study of job satisfaction and innovation in a sample of young Spanish workers, Ayala et al. (2017) found that psychological contract, personal initiative, job self-efficacy, and over-qualification allowed to distinguish between the different happy-productive worker profiles. Furthermore, Tordera et al. (2020) studied the effects of human resource practices on the likelihood of belonging to each profile, considering factors such as employee age, the impact of i-deals (Latorre et al., 2021), and the influence of work design (Pérez-Nebra et al., 2022). Building on these results and the SPWS (Peiró et al., 2014), it has been found that different profiles can also be found at a group level (Peñalver et al., 2023), suggesting a possible homology process (i.e., equivalent structural relations across levels of analysis; Guenole, 2016).

Despite the progress made to understand the happy-productive worker thesis fully, there are still unanswered questions. First, our understanding of what defines workers within each profile is still in its early stages (i.e., Ayala et al., 2017; Abdi et al., 2019; Latorre et al., 2021; Peiró et al., 2019, 2021; Pérez-Nebra et al., 2022; Tordera et al., 2020). Although previous studies have proposed some personal and organizational characteristics, more job characteristics should be analyzed. In fact, recent events such as COVID-19 (Wong et al., 2020) may suggest variables about what employees consider relevant to explain the interaction between job wellbeing and job performance. Second, Pitesa and Gelfand (2023) noted that most organizational research has been conducted with Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic individuals, also called WEIRD samples. This implies a significant knowledge gap as it neglects emerging countries like those in the BRICS group. This fact also refers to the results based on SPWS (e.g., Tordera et al., 2020) mentioned before, given that the data are from a Spanish sample.

About Brazil, findings on the happy-productive worker are still ongoing. On the one hand, a systematic review made with Brazilian studies revealed that in-role and ex-role performance shows an unclear relationship with job wellbeing, particularly when wellbeing is operationalized as hedonic (e.g., financial job satisfaction; Pérez-Nebra A. et al., 2021). On the other hand, a previous study conducted with a sample of Brazilian educational workers revealed a 4-cluster/profile solution: happy-productive, happy-unproductive, unhappy-productive and unhappy-unproductive (Latorre et al., 2021; Pérez-Nebra et al., 2022). The authors pointed out that the specific combination of task, social, and contextual characteristics in the workplace was related to the likelihood of belonging to each of the different profiles. Considering these arguments, we propose:

As discussed above, many contexts and job characteristics may still affect workers’ wellbeing and performance. A recent development that has emerged is working remotely (Ng et al., 2022). Remote work or telework is defined as working outside of a conventional office setting, such as at home or in a remote office, using information communication technology for communication and work tasks (Beckel and Fisher, 2022). Given its direct impact on working conditions, teleworking has specific particularities that can change the relationship with work and make us (un)happier and more (or less) productive (Eurofound, 2022). In other words, although the relationships between remote work, job wellbeing, and job performance have been studied, contradictory results have been found.

In terms of job wellbeing, numerous articles suggest a positive relationship between telework and job wellbeing, in particular regarding health (Beckel and Fisher, 2022), affective wellbeing (Anderson et al., 2015), lower stress levels (Delanoeije and Verbruggen, 2020), or job satisfaction (Erro-Garcés et al., 2022). However, a positive relationship has also been found with professional isolation (Golden et al., 2008) and poorer mental health and quality of life (Mendonça et al., 2022). Regarding job performance, previous research has found that telework has an important and positive effect on performance (Vega et al., 2014). However, a meta-analysis by Martin and MacDonnell (2012) suggests that remote working has a positive (although small) relationship with different indicators of performance (like productivity or retention). For instance, telework positively affects employees’ turnover intentions (Nemțeanu and Dabija, 2023). In sum, these positive or negative relationships may depend on work-life balance, support from the organization/supervisor, or the perception of work control, home office constraints, work uncertainties, and inadequate tools (Ipsen et al., 2021). Also, full-time telework showed the lowest levels of employee wellbeing compared to partial telework, occasional telework and having some degree of telework ability, which reported the highest level of wellbeing (Eurofound, 2022).

Aligned with the results found, the advantages of remote work, such as work-life balance, work efficiency, and work control, as well as the disadvantages, such as home-office constraints, uncertainties and tools, are likely to emerge as variables that influence the job wellbeing and job performance relationship.

To further explore how such factors emerge in employees’ own words and to capture unanticipated dimensions, we adopted an innovative and inductive mixed-method approach, leading to the following exploratory hypothesis:

Although remote workers report advantages and disadvantages of working from home, they are different from each other. They have different perceptions and different needs. Thus, we focused on employee voice to compare the keywords that emerged within each profile. Existing literature indicates that clusters tend to be coherent with their discourse; in other words, qualitative and quantitative analyses tend to converge (e.g., Mishima-Santos et al., 2021). Therefore, the four clusters are expected to report different perceptions of advantages and disadvantages. We propose:

Using a snowball sampling technique, an online questionnaire was shared through organizations’ intranet and social media. A total of 566 valid questionnaires were collected from Brazilian workers. However, considering the remote working framework, only participants with any experience working from home were considered and answered the qualitative questionnaire. This means they work from home for at least 10% of the week. Thus, the final sample comprised 297 workers (59.2% females; mean age 42.5 years, SD = 9.6). The average tenure in the company was 13.6 years (SD = 8.35), and 66.0% had completed a master’s degree. Workers are white-collar, in the public sector, and mainly public servants (64.66%).

Semi-structured questions were added at the end of the questionnaire. The questions aimed to describe facilitators and barriers of wellbeing and performance in remote work. We asked two different questions to push both contents, one positive (“Describe the positive aspects of working from home”) and the other negative aspect (“Describe the negative aspects of working from home”). Answering the questions was optional. Most workers answered the open question (N = 271; 91.24%).

We controlled sex (0 = male, 1 = female, 2 = non-binary), age in years, the state of Brazil, educational level, telework time (the percentage of time working from home), and tenure in the organization.

To test the hypotheses, a two-step multi-method procedure was used.

The article presents some theoretical and practical implications worth mentioning. First, it advances the happy-productive worker thesis in several ways: (1) Applying the Sustainable Productivity and Wellbeing Synergy (SPWS, Peiró et al., 2014) to the happy-productive thesis (Staw, 1986) has allowed us to unravel relationships that are much more complex than theory would suggest. It is, therefore, confirmed that there may be a relationship beyond happy-productive (Sender et al., 2020), specifically for Brazilian workers. In fact, using the Brazilian sample has served to respond to the demands of previous research to use samples beyond WEIRD countries (Pitesa and Gelfand, 2023); (2) As noted by other authors (e.g., Ayala et al., 2017), more variables could play a significant role in the happy-productive worker thesis. For example, by considering the positive and negative emotions as wellbeing variables beyond job satisfaction, which implies a broader picture of job wellbeing conceptualization. Also, by adding telework issues as a job characteristic. Whether employees can telework may directly affect how wellbeing and performance relationships appear (Wong et al., 2020).

Second, thanks to the qualitative study, we were able to analyse in detail the reasons why teleworking places employees in each of the profiles, thus confirming previous research that suggests teleworking can have both positive (Erro-Garcés et al., 2022; Martin and MacDonnell, 2012) and negative (Mendonça et al., 2022; Nemțeanu and Dabija, 2023) relationships with the different outcomes. According to the TOE model, organizations must be able to provide a solid technology infrastructure for employees (Ng et al., 2022), they should also support and assist teleworkers to ensure their wellbeing or performance is not affected (Lamprinou et al., 2021), and the required country-level characteristics must be in place for everything else to function. In fact, some of these things have been found in the qualitative analysis: being able to have control or autonomy over the timetable and tasks, the lack of social contact, and how difficult it can be to adapt at the beginning. For instance, social-exchange, particularly some sort of recognition, emerges as an important variable and is new in this literature.

Concerning practical implications, first, a continuous psychosocial evaluation is crucial in organizations, to make decisions on time and create healthy job environments (Salanova et al., 2012). Second, the results guide companies in developing good teleworking practices to enhance wellbeing and sustainable performance. For example, support from the organization (Lamprinou et al., 2021) or manager (such as remote leadership, Ng et al., 2022) could be a key variable for teleworkers to be part of the happy-productive profile. Work-life balance practices could also be promoted, given that not only can teleworking help wellbeing and performance, but it is also important that workers can have autonomy over schedules, processes or management. For example, if remote working is not voluntary, it can be problematic for the employee. In addition, it is important to recognize the importance of organizations investing in good technology to facilitate access and daily work for employees who work remotely. This is necessary so that employees can telecommute effectively without reducing performance levels.

The present study has several limitations. A first limitation is that a non-probabilistic sample (i.e., snowball sampling) was used, which might restrict the generalizability of these findings. However, requirements were established to ensure the reliability of the responses through inclusion criteria (i.e., working remotely in Brazil). Also, the study used a heterogeneous sample because it includes different companies (i.e., public service institutions, bank trade unions, private companies), which allows us to obtain a comprehensive view of the work reality.

Second, data were obtained from self-report measures, which might have caused common method bias. However, different response scales were used (5-point, 7-point, open questions; Podsakoff et al., 2003) to solve this issue. On the other hand, given the nature of this study, which includes psychological experiences such as emotions and remote work, it is difficult to use objective data.

Finally, there is yet another methodological limitation to operationalising what teleworking means. The questions asked of participants in both, the description of time spent teleworking and in the qualitative question, generically said “teleworking.” It also has limitations in comparing working from home with a co-working space. However, in the Brazilian context, teleworking is fundamentally working from home. Few people have the option to telework from shared offices. While in Europe it is common to find co-working spaces, in Brazil this is not yet a reality.