Video Use in Virtual Meetings and Employee Job Satisfaction: The Moderating Role of Employee Perceived Leadership Style Among Knowledge Workers
The shift to remote and hybrid work environments, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, fundamentally altered how leaders interact through communication with their distributed teams. This quantitative correlational study examined the relationship between the use of video (camera on versus camera off) during virtual meetings with supervisors and reported employee job satisfaction among U.S.-based remote and hybrid knowledge workers. In addition, I investigated the moderating role of employee-perceived supervisor leadership style, as defined by the Full Range Leadership Theory (FRLT), on this relationship in remote and hybrid work environments. When cameras are on, participants gain access to nonverbal cues such as facial expressions and body language, situating the supervisor in a visible environment that more closely approximates face-to-face interaction. I collected data through a cross-sectional survey administered by Qualtrics Research Services (N = 291), pairing the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS; Spector, 1997) with supplemental items measuring video use, employee perceived leadership style, and work assignment. I tested two hypotheses using multiple linear regression: (1) consistent video use during virtual supervisor meetings was positively related to overall job satisfaction, and (2) employees who perceived their supervisors as transformational reported higher satisfaction under camera-on conditions than under camera-off conditions. Results supported Hypothesis 1: consistent video use was significantly and positively associated with overall job satisfaction (b = 0.31, p = .004). Hypothesis 2 received partial support. Perceived leadership style moderated the video–satisfaction relationship, but the significant interaction emerged on the laissez-faire versus transformational contrast rather than the transactional versus transformational contrast, with the positive association between video use and satisfaction substantially stronger under laissez-faire leadership than under transformational leadership (interaction, b = 0.82, p = .016). An unanticipated finding also emerged: fully remote workers reported significantly lower job satisfaction than hybrid workers on eight of the nine JSS subscales. Findings support policies that encourage consistent camera use during supervisor meetings, leadership development aimed at replacing passive with transformational behaviors in virtual settings and structured in-person touchpoints for fully remote staff. Keywords: leadership styles, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, Laissez-Faire leadership, job satisfaction, Full Range Leadership Model (FRLM), Full Range Leadership Theory (FRLT), communication technology, Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS), work-from-home, remote work
Job Satisfaction, Knowledge Workers, Leadership, Remote Work, Retention, Virtual Meetings
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