Analysis of the impact of remote working on employee well-being and productivity

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 was a black swan event. Radical disruptions occurred in most spheres of life, including the workplace. Organizations, faced with challenges of maintaining business continuity amidst public health measures taken to combat the pandemic, were forced to shift a large proportion of their workforce to a work from home model. Several organizations have announced plans to make the transition from office-based work to work from home permanent as organizations and employees alike become accustomed to the new normal. However, the impact of such a long-term shift, especially on employee productivity and well-being, is unclear. Previous studies have found contradicting results and have reported both positive and negative changes to productivity and well-being. This project was undertaken to provide greater clarity on the impact of remote working on employee productivity and well-being and to identify the critical themes that organizations must keep in mind when designing an optimal work from home model. In-depth interviews were conducted with employees and human resource personnel of information technology (IT) and information technology-enabled services (ITeS) organizations in India. The interviews followed a semi-structured format and used a custom questionnaire developed for this purpose. Four key themes emerged from our analysis of the interviews – job interdependence and autonomy are important moderators of employee productivity; organizational support is needed to ensure availability of necessary physical and digital infrastructure as well as to combat social isolation; administrative policies must provide for soft-touch supervision and clear boundaries between work and personal life of employees; and, organizations and employees alike make temporal gains in productivity as they become used to the new working paradigm. As an outcome of this project, we have proposed critical factors that organizations must keep in mind while designing the optimal work from home model for their organization if they wish to obtain high employee productivity levels without hampering their well-being.