The hidden costs of hybrid working: How daily work locations shape extra-role behaviours

Hybrid working has become the “new normal”, yet its consequences for employees’ day-to-day work behaviours remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on social psychological theories, and the emerging literature on hybrid working, we examined how working remotely (versus on-site) affects employees’ engagement in both in-role behaviours (such as task performance and withdrawal behaviour) and extra-role behaviours (such as helping and creative behaviour). We conducted a daily diary study among 112 hybrid workers in the U.K., capturing within-person variations in work locations and work behaviours across multiple days. As expected, our findings revealed that employees engaged less in extra-role behaviours on days working remotely (versus on-site), while in-role behaviours remained stable across work locations. We further showed that these reductions in helping behaviours were explained by employees feeling less engaged and less identified with their team on remote-working days, and that decreases in creative behaviour were accounted for by lower team identification alone. Contrary to our predictions, we found no evidence that identity leadership mitigated these effects. Our findings highlight the hidden costs of hybrid working for employees’ extra-role contributions, even when core job performance is unaffected. We discuss implications for the design of hybrid working to sustain positive work behaviours.