ICT Revolution from Traditional Office to Virtual Office: A Study on Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The biggest challenge of today's world is to adjust to the rapidly changing environment brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, where uncertainty and unpredictability have become the norm. The advanced technological tools used during the pandemic have altered communication, employee motivation, and the employees` desire for personal connectivity. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the effect of professional isolation on the teleworker's job performance, motivation, and turnover intention. This study also considers the moderating role of the access to information and communications technology. In this context, a survey was carried out among the employees from the telecommunications/ IT sector in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, Pakistan and 478 complete/usable responses were received and analysed. In this paper, the MACRO PROCESS computational procedure was employed. A confirmatory factor analysis was carried out, along with an analysis on Pearson correlation, internal consistency reliability, discriminant validity of the variables employed in this study, and hierarchical moderated regression analysis with the purpose of testing six hypotheses. The obtained results show that there is a negative relationship between professional isolation and the employees` job performance and motivation. On the other hand, professional isolation is positively associated with turnover intention. To that, professional isolation and the access to communication-enhancing technology (ACET) significantly affect employee job motivation.