Establishing digital presence: How occupational status, job insecurity and job dissatisfaction shape digital availability, visibility and faking behaviours among home-based workers

This study examines digital presence behaviour among home-based workers encompassing three facets: digital availability, digital visibility of work achievements and digital faking of omnipresence. Digital availability is conceptualised as a reactive response to exaggerated ideal worker norm expectations in the digital workspace. In contrast, digital visibility and faking are understood as proactive impression-management behaviours aimed at maintaining or improving the image of an ideal worker while working from home. Seemingly unrelated regression analyses based on a representative sample of home-based workers in Germany show a relatively high prevalence of digital availability and visibility behaviour. Moreover, high-status employees were more likely to be digitally available, job insecurity increased engagement in all three facets, while job dissatisfaction encouraged digital faking and discouraged digital visibility behaviours. We conclude that digital presence behaviour reflects an exaggeration of the ideal worker norm and unequal job situations among home-based workers.