Working at home during Covid-19: Are extent and/or flexibility important for job satisfaction, social support, commitment and work interruptions?

ABSTRACT

The debate on the advantages and disadvantages of teleworking (i.e., working from home) has gained momentum during the Covid-19 pandemic Even public authorities have given their employees the opportunity to switch to teleworking. Many studies on teleworking have been carried out with employees who have been teleworking for years. However, it is unclear which consequences a sudden shift to teleworking has. This article examines to what extent the use of teleworking and the possibility of its flexible usage are associated with work-related variables such as job satisfaction, social support, affective commitment and work interruptions. A total of 477 employees of a medium sized public agency took part in the online survey. Our analyses show that more teleworking is associated with fewer work interruptions. We did not find any significant association between the extent of teleworking and job satisfaction, affective commitment and social support. However, there were positive relationships between the perceived flexibility of the place of work with all outcomes with the exception of work interruptions. The findings provide evidence of the importance of the flexible use of teleworking and thus the perceived opportunity to decide for oneself whether to work from home. This implies that organizations-including public agencies-need employee-oriented flexibility, that is, they should give employees the greatest possible decision latitude on the individual use of flexible work options.