You’ve got mail: does workplace telepressure relate to email communication?

Email is ubiquitous at the workplace. However, only few studies have empirically investigated the cognitive underpinning of computer-mediated business communication in general or work-related email behaviour in particular. In this paper, we further explored the relationship between workplace telepressure and two specific behavioural outcomes (i.e., email reply quantity and email response latency) by examining email traffic in a convenience sample of 55 employees who used their business email address daily during a typical workweek. Results of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that employees’ workplace telepressure was positively related to their email reply quantity and, surprisingly, unrelated to their email response latency. Altogether, our findings highlight the key role of individual cognitive characteristics, such as one’s workplace telepressure, in message-based computer-mediated communication.