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Mid-March 2020 the current novel coronavirus outbreak, Covid-19, forced national governments across the world to order people to work from home (WFH), unless they had jobs of high necessity. Being in an unprecedented situation in Denmark and with our research interest in digital transformations, knowledge intensive work, management of distance work...
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... Cronbach's alpha to analyze the internal consistency shows that the 11 advantages (named proscore) and 16 disadvantages (named conscore) can be used to make reliable scale scores. Figure 2 shows a scatter-plot, where the middle point of the scales (neutral) lies at a score of three. Horizontally the disadvantages (conscore), vertically the advantages (proscore). ...
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As public sector work environments continue to embrace the digital governance revolution, questions of work surveillance practices and its relationship to performance management continue to evolve, but even more dramatically in the contemporary period of many public servants being forced to shift to remote working from home in response to the COVID...
Citations
... Using a sample of 10,000 skilled professionals at a large Asian IT services company, which all shifted to WFH during the pandemic, Gibbs et al. [20] found that total hours worked increased by roughly 30%, but the average output did not significantly change, leading to a productivity drop in total of about 20%. Ipsen et al. [21] have concluded that a majority of Danish WFH workers could complete the same amount of work or more than when working at a workplace, but still 40-45% of them were less productive. Equivalently indecisive results were found for advancing countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines [22,23]. ...
... The first is that productivity path out of investing in WFH has been recently shaped by the pandemic. The pandemic has indeed led to a urgent shift to WFH due to lockdown, which is not correlated to productivity, but rather to the simple ability to function [18,19,21]. If this overshooting takes time to absorb, it may weight on the positive dynamics of productivity gain post-COVID. ...
Remote work (“WFH”) was often the default mode of working during the recent pandemic, because of lockdown. But beyond this one-off effect, the question remains whether remote working will endure and become part of the “new normal”. We formalize a simple company-employee work-at-home decision model, which takes into account both worker preferences and the company’s strategic incentive to invest in supporting work-at-home practices. The model predictions are then tested on a large sample of global firms across the world, regarding their evolution in WFH intensity and how WFH changes correlate with labor productivity changes. We find that technologies facilitating WFH, and to a lesser extent, active human resources, are needed to make work from home more productive. Said otherwise, the future of WFH depends on how technology will be able to “augment” labor effectiveness.
... The COVID-19 pandemic is a hindrance stressor, rather than a challenge stressor, in that it has led to decreases in motivation and ability to complete work for both students (Usher et al., 2020) and employees (Ipsen et al., 2020). Therefore, negative appraisals (i.e., threat and harm) of the COVID-19 pandemic as a hindrance stressor are expected to exhibit a negative relationship with motivational outcomes (i.e., thriving at work and school) and a positive relationship with strain outcomes (i.e., job and school burnout). ...
... The hindrance demands that emerged in the workplace due to the COVID-19 pandemic depleted employees' personal resources such as motivation, time, and energy (Ipsen et al., 2020). The spillover model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2012) suggests that such a depletion of personal resources could affect other domains of life, and for working students the school domain is likely to be affected by this spillover effect. ...
... The results revealed that the thriving and well-being of working college students were adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic both at work and school. These findings clarify the role of the pandemic as a hindrance demand, rather than a challenge demand (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017), in the lives of working college students, extending previous findings that the pandemic created demands that were excessive and hindering in both the work (Ipsen et al., 2020) and school (Sahu, 2020) domains. Additionally, these results support the applicability of the transactional theory of stress and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1987) to the study of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the perception of the pandemic as threatening or harmful seems to be critical in how the pandemic affects thriving and well-being at work and school. ...
Following the declaration of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (2020), many colleges and universities across the United States responded by closing campuses, cancelling classes or moving classes online, and discontinuing many student support services. It remains unclear how working while in school may have presented unique challenges for college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. To address this gap, the current study examined whether negative appraisals of COVID-19 at work and school were related to less thriving and more burnout in the respective domains, and whether the predicted effects of negative appraisals of COVID-19 on thriving and burnout were stronger among those who reported more embeddedness in their job or major compared to those who were less embedded. Additionally, we investigated potential spillover effects of negative COVID-19 appraisals in one domain into the thriving and burnout in the other domain. Survey data from employed college students were used to test the hypotheses. We found support for the matching- and cross-domain hypotheses; negative appraisals of COVID-19 at work and school showed negative relationships with thriving and positive relationships with burnout in both domains. However, the moderating effects of major embeddedness were not significant, and the moderating effect of job embeddedness on thriving at work was positive rather than negative, as hypothesized. This suggests that the association between negative appraisals of COVID-19 and thriving at work was strengthened by job embeddedness.
... Studies have found links between high job demands/workload during the pandemic and work efficiency/ productivity perceptions, or higher work engagement (Da et al., 2022). In these pandemic studies, links are mostly found when home environments had minimal distractions/interruptions and were workconducive (Baert et al., 2020;Ipsen et al., 2020;YouGov, 2020). Presumably, in a pandemic context high job demand can also act as a motivational driving force under the right circumstances, as shown in pre-pandemic research (van den Broeck et al., 2010;Bakker and Sanz-Vergel, 2013). ...
... Home office characteristics as predictors of privacy fit: Pandemic research indicates drastic differences in home office environments supporting or hindering privacy across samples. Some experienced privacy-related advantages, such as less distractions/interruptions, that were related to increases in concentration and productivity (Ipsen et al., 2020(Ipsen et al., , 2021Pfnür et al., 2021). Others reported Frontiers in Psychology 05 frontiersin.org ...
... Others reported Frontiers in Psychology 05 frontiersin.org problems with privacy, distraction, or interruptions since pandemic teleworking (Ipsen et al., 2020;Bergefurt et al., 2021;Ipsen et al., 2021;Leroy et al., 2021;Xiao et al., 2021;Bergefurt et al., 2022;Wütschert et al., 2022;Park et al., 2023). Considering the acknowledged impact of privacy fit on occupational health, likely predictors of privacy fit ought to be explored. ...
Background
During national lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, previously office-based workers who transitioned to home-based teleworking faced additional demands (e.g., childcare, inadequate homeworking spaces) likely resulting in poor work privacy fit. Previous office research suggests poor work privacy fit is associated with lower wellbeing and higher work fatigue. Emerging evidence suggests a relationship between childcare duties during pandemic teleworking and work fatigue. In addition to psychosocial working conditions (job demand, job control, and job change management), which are acknowledged predictors of work fatigue, this poses a significant threat to occupational health during pandemic teleworking. However, the relative effects of aspects of the psychosocial environment (job demands and resources), the home office environment (including privacy fit), and the social environment (childcare) on work fatigue as well as their interactions are under-explored.
Objective
This study examined the relationships between the psychosocial, environmental, and social working conditions of teleworking during the first COVID-19 lockdown and work fatigue. Specifically, the study examined teleworkers’ physical work environment (e.g., if and how home office space is shared, crowding, and noise perceptions) as predictors of privacy fit and the relationship between privacy fit, childcare, psychosocial working conditions (job demand, job control, and job change management), and work fatigue. Work privacy fit was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between childcare and work fatigue.
Methods
An online cross-sectional survey was conducted with teleworkers (n = 300) during the first COVID-19 lockdown in April and May 2020; most participants were in Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Results
Path analysis was used to examine the hypothesized relationships. Privacy fit was lower for those reporting greater levels of noise in home-working spaces and those feeling crowded at home. Work fatigue was lower amongst those with greater privacy fit and higher amongst those with high levels of job demand. An indirect relationship was observed between childcare and work fatigue with privacy fit mediating this relationship.
Conclusion
The influence of privacy fit has so far been largely neglected in research on teleworking, especially during the pandemic. However, its contribution to workers’ wellbeing should be acknowledged in occupational health strategies.
... The pandemic and the consequent worldwide use of the WFH as a containment measure, have introduced a new and disruptive element in this investigation process. The focus has shifted more often to the assessment of the impact on workers' health and wellbeing, mainly in association with the first periods of lockdown (e.g., (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)). This approach, often based on preliminary or partial analyses of large data collections, contributed to the important purpose of providing recommendations and guidelines to both workers and employers to better and timely address the emergency situation (7, 13). ...
Objective
The study aimed to investigate perceptions and determinants of the overall impact on life and work domains among a community of knowledge workers after 18 months of forced work from home due to the pandemic.
Methods
A cross-sectional study with a retrospective assessment was conducted early in 2022 at the National Research Council of Italy. Five single-item questions explored the perceived impact on life domain while a 7-item scale the impact on the work domain. Bivariate analyses and multivariate regressions were used to evaluate the associations between impacts and some key factors defined by 29 ad hoc closed questions.
Results
More than 95% of the 748 respondents reported a perceived change in at least one item of the life domain. For each of these items, although a large group of subjects has reported that working from home had no impact (from 27 to 55%), in the rest of the sample the positive evaluation (from 30 to 60%) clearly prevailed over the negative one. Overall, most of the subjects (64%) rated the impact on the work experience positively. Relationship with colleagues and participation in the work context were the items where the greatest number of negative rates was concentrated (27 and 25%, respectively). On the other hand, positive perceptions prevailed over both negative perceptions and lack of impact perceptions on the subjects of organizational flexibility and quality of work. The frequency of work-room sharing, home-work commute time and changes in sedentary lifestyle, have been identified as common explanatory factors of perceived impacts on both domains.
Conclusion
Overall, respondents reported positive rather than negative perceived impacts of forced work from home in both their lives and work. The obtained results suggest that policies to promote the physical and mental health of employees, strengthen inclusion and maintain a sense of community are necessary to improve workers' health and prevent the effects of perceived isolation on research activities.
... We developed a survey with 23 questions to collect data, asking about perceived advantages and disadvantages when working from home, using communication tools and demographic information. The complete survey is published in (Ipsen et al., 2020). Most questions used a Likert scale (1 strongly disagree to 5 strongly agree). ...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, knowledge workers worked from home (WFH) and had to share knowledge mainly online. Studies show that remote work influence knowledge sharing. Beyond the pandemic, several studies report that companies expect more people to work partly or fully from home or anywhere. Therefore, we investigate how knowledge workers experience working from home (WFH), full or part-time, and how it affects their work and knowledge sharing. We conducted an online survey at six different time points between May 2020 and November 2021, allowing us to analyse different working from home situations for the first time. Our survey included 23 questions covering positive and negative experiences from WFH and demographics. Data was collected from 3406 knowledge workers in Denmark working fully or partly from home. The answers were analysed by fitting proportional odds logistic regressions. During the lockdown around February 2021, when Danish restrictions were high, knowledge workers reported that they could focus less on their work at home than at other points of time when they were allowed back in the office. Furthermore, they missed seeing their colleagues more during the lockdown period than at times when the society was completely open again, as they felt a lack of discussion and creative problem-solving. Despite using software solutions for collaboration and communication, knowledge workers missed opportunities for knowledge sharing when WFH. In general, during the whole period, female respondents reported that they got more time to focus on their work when WFH than males did. Finally, older respondents experienced more time to focus on work than the young respondents did when WFH. The results show the differences in the situation of knowledge workers, whether it is enforced or flexible/voluntary to work from home. Thus, this study contributes to a better understanding of the challenges when knowledge workers WFH, which groups of knowledge workers can gain from WFH regarding efficiency and knowledge sharing needs. Beyond the pandemic, when companies want to offer more flexibility to WFH, this study provides conclusions on which conditions to be aware of to ensure efficient knowledge sharing.
... Consequently, the challenges for managers in Sweden have presumably been different from countries where lockdown has simply prevented workplaces from maintaining their business (e.g. Appelgren, 2021;Ipsen et al., 2020). ...
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to investigate managers' experiences of managing work environment and risks during the Covid-19 pandemic and to explore how managers might use these experiences to develop future risk management.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 18 Swedish managers at different hierarchical levels working in 11 different organizations. A directed content analysis was carried out, informed by theory on risk management.
Findings
The results point to the pandemic as a societal crisis which workplaces needed to manage through large means of improvisation. Regular work environment routines were put to the test, and several deficiencies in the work environment and risk management were identified. Organizations that handle occupational safety and risks on a daily basis through established routines were less affected and could easier adjust work environment and risk management, compared to organizations prioritizing the social and organizational work environment, which had to re-prioritize and start paying more attention to the physical work environment and to bring risk management into their daily routines.
Originality/value
The study offers an account of how managers in different labor market sectors in Sweden have acted in the midst of the pandemic by handling real-time crises, how these experiences can be used for engaging in retrospective learning and how this may imply changes to their prospective risk management.
... Indexes of performance and productivity, as well as the amount of time spent working from home in line with contractual or informal agreements (e.g., flexibility), only provide a partial picture of the impact of WFH modalities. Indeed, monitoring in an efficient way workers' perceived quality in performing their work and their overall experience when at home is considered a key aspect for improving the success of this work modality, as perceived by workers (Aczel et al., 2021;Ipsen et al., 2020Ipsen et al., , 2021van der Lippe & Lippényi, 2020). ...
... It pertains to the explicit assessment of satisfaction as an individual's overall sense of satisfaction with their work, or their satisfaction with its position and modality. 9. Subjective gain (SUBJ): This includes aspects measured in 9 records (Bolisani et al., 2020;Ipsen et al., 2020Ipsen et al., , 2021Malik et al., 2016;Mazzucchelli, 2017;Moretti et al., 2020;Nakrošienė et al., 2019;Schade et al., 2021;Tustin, 2014). It pertains to the assessment of (economic) value, forms of personal gain (also caused by external factors) that may stimulate workers to carry out their work in a certain modality, including (perceived) improvements in the flow and quality of the work done, and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of the WFH modality. ...
... About 41% (14 out of 34) of the studies aimed at establishing the quality of the workers' experience by comparing different modalities, e.g., WFH versus working at the office (Aczel et al., 2021;Ali et al., 2021;Angelici & Profeta, 2020;Bellmann & Hübler, 2020;Bloom et al., 2015;Davidescu et al., 2020;Ipsen et al., 2020Ipsen et al., , 2021Mazzucchelli, 2017;Molino et al., 2020;Schade et al., 2021;Troup & Rose, 2012;Tustin, 2014;van der Lippe & Lippényi, 2020). While the remaining studies mainly focused on exploring specific aspects of WFH to model the experience of the workers without comparing it with office work. ...
Working from home (WFH) remotely is a modality of working that requires the careful design of systems of rules and tools to enable people to exchange information and perform actions. WFH is expected to expand after the COVID-19 pandemic. How to assess and compare in a reliable way the experience of workers with different (sociotechnical) systems of WFH is a central point to supporting the diffusion of acceptable modalities of working. However, the concept of experience and how it can be measured in the domain in WFH is yet to be clearly characterized. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology for scoping reviews, we systematically map the approaches used by researchers to assess WFH, identify which aspects are usually investigated, and examine how such aspects are usually measured in terms of questions and tools. Literature is collected using Scopus and Web of Science. Thirty-four records out of 323 focusing either on validating a scale, presenting theoretically the experience of workers or testing this empirically are included in the qualitative synthesis. The results highlight a lack of unified terminology and tools, with assessments of workers' experience mainly characterized by survey approaches and qualitative questions. Clustering together the most investigated aspects in the literature and reviewing how these aspects are assessed, we propose a list of 10 relevant overarching dimensions and attempt to define workers' experience in the domain of WFH remotely. This definition can be used as a tool by researchers aiming to assess the experience of workers in order to inform the design or redesign of the sociotechnical systems that enable WFH.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41347-022-00264-4.
... For a developing country like Pakistan where digita l technology is emerging, the sector still faces numerous challenges. Among these challenges, the most prominent ones are unavailability of the internet, inadequate capacity, lack of intellectual property protection, absence of a legal framework for e-commerce, and low innovative research and development (Ipsen et al., 2020). Therefore, this challenging situation in the pandemic time presents a unique opportunity to investigate the questions about experiences of remote working for the Pakistani population. ...
... Data collection with a convenience sampling technique was adopted mainly from the population working remote due to COVID-19. The questionnaire used in this survey is partially adapted from the study of Ipsen et al. (2020). A few questions were dropped out and a few were restructured owing to been confusing and double-barreled. ...
... The highest percentage of respondents working remotely after the incidence of the pandemic indicates that the WFH is a new and uncommon working strategy in Pakistan. This indication can be made in comparison with WFH experiences survey by Ipsen et al. (2020) conducted in European countries. The study reported 81% of respondents to have experience of WFH at least for a day even before the pandemic crisis. ...
COVID-19 has restricted a large population of the workforce to conventional work owing to mitigate the spread of the virus. This restriction resulted in the adaptation of remote work setting all around the globe. Work from home presents unique challenges especially to Pakistan being a developing country where online work requisites are not yet established, this new work arrangement needs to be explained and explored. Most of the workers in the country are experiencing work from home shift. This study utilized both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The findings of the study show that employees perceive work from home as challenging as they do otherwise with a lower risk of getting infected. Set of challenges of remote working include a lack of coordination, rapport building, communication, and a clear understanding of expectations related to each task completed. For coordination among employees, a frequently used tool is messaging applications such as WhatsApp rather than professional video applications.
... Findings from early teleworking research during the pandemic are equivocal on how job factors have impacted workers overall teleworking experience. Some teleworkers experienced reduced strain from job demands, better work outcomes (e.g., productivity), and more job resources (e.g., increased job control, Ipsen et al., 2020), while others experienced increased demands and reduced resources (e.g., decreased job control) in comparison to office working pre-pandemic (Chong et al., 2020). Hence, FIGURE 1 | Ecological model adapted for teleworking (Sallis et al., 2015;Munir et al., 2021). ...
... Some studies indicate that pandemic teleworking led to new pandemic-specific job demands (e.g., new teleworking-specific tasks or disruptive teleworking management tasks) associated with negative pandemic teleworking experiences (Chong et al., 2020). In contrast, other pandemic research suggests that teleworking during the pandemic is associated with increased efficiency due to a better work-environment fit in the home office (fewer distractions or interruptions), particularly for those who reported high job demand (Baert et al., 2020;Ipsen et al., 2020;YouGov, 2020). Considering that job demand is often the most important predictor for work experiences, and that little is known on if and how job demands and teleworking inclinations/FTI relate, we propose: H1.a: Individuals reporting higher (vs. ...
... Similarly, some teleworking inclination studies indicate that teleworking dis/advantages relating to home/work interface are associated with teleworking attitudes (Yap and Tng, 1990), and possibly teleworking inclinations (Lim and Teo, 2000). Since the home/work interface in the home office appears to have an important influence on pandemic teleworking experiences (Baert et al., 2020;Ipsen et al., 2020;YouGov, 2020), it may be associated with FTI. Specifically, this study explored two environmental factors: home office adequacy and work privacy fit. ...
Organisations have implemented intensive home-based teleworking in response to global COVID-19 lockdowns and other pandemic-related restrictions. Financial pressures are driving organisations to continue intensive teleworking after the pandemic. Understanding employees’ teleworking inclinations post COVID-19, and how these inclinations are influenced by different factors, is important to ensure any future, more permanent changes to teleworking policies are sustainable for both employees and organisations. This study, therefore, investigated the relationships between the context of home-based teleworking during the pandemic (pandemic-teleworking conditions), productivity perceptions during home-based teleworking, and employees’ future teleworking inclinations (FTI) beyond the pandemic. Specifically, the study examined whether pandemic-teleworking conditions related to the job, and the physical and social environments at home, influenced employees’ FTI, and if perceptions of improved or reduced productivity mediated these relationships. Data were collected during April and May 2020 with a cross-sectional online survey of teleworkers (n = 184) in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and other countries during the first COVID-19 lockdowns. Reported FTI were mixed. Most participants (61%) reported wanting to telework more post-pandemic compared to before the pandemic; however, 18% wanted to telework less. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that some teleworking conditions (job demands and work privacy fit) were positively associated with FTI. Other teleworking conditions (specifically, job change, job control, home office adequacy, and childcare) were not associated with FTI. Perceived changes in productivity mediated the relationship between work privacy fit and FTI. Findings highlight the role of work privacy fit and job demands in influencing pandemic productivity perceptions and teleworking inclinations post-pandemic. Results raise questions about the suitability and sustainability of home-based teleworking for all staff. As organisations plan to increase the proportion of teleworking post-pandemic, this study suggests there is a need to support employees who perceived their productivity to be poor while home-working during the pandemic.
... Over the past year, the epidemic has stimulated extensive research of work at home and work from home [55][56][57]. Once again, we are on the verge of prognostic predictions of redefining the location and the scope of the workplace. ...
Work at home and work from home are becoming the subject of interdisciplinary research in the current social conditions. Slovenia, as a post-transition country, has specific experience in terms of its regulation, as the former socialist and later transition period were relatively tolerant of various forms of work at home. The article presents the results of research aimed at studying current normative provisions for the organization of work at home, its actual spatial and program scope, and its correlation with building typology and morphology. Using a descriptive research method and by analyzing existing databases in the GIS environment, we found that work at home is a very extensive phenomenon in Slovenia. Despite the effective instruments in the fields of spatial planning, public administration, tax system, and employment legal relationships, its scope is mainly a consequence of historical tolerance, as this form of work has been legally organized and desirable for decades. We found that various urban characteristics did not significantly affect its occurrence in the past. The differences are reflected only in the extent of business activities that can be carried out in residential areas and differ according to the distance from urban centers. In order for the regulation of work at home to become even more efficient in the future, it is necessary to define more detailed criteria, especially in terms of its program regulation and monitoring of the spatial situation.
