A Study on the Mental Wellbeing and Productivity of Remote Workers During COVID-19

A STUDY ON THE MENTAL WELLBEING AND PRODUCTIVITY OF REMOTE WORKERS DURING COVID-19
Abstract
The concept of remote working was already in practice, before COVID-19 in the developed nations such as UK, Germany, United States, which was popular in the name of work from home. For countries such as Arab nations, Asia/Pacific this term is relatively newer and required infrastructure upgradation to shift on new working style.
Due to this, it became important to study the scenario of remote working and its impact on employee wellbeing and productivity. The research paper discusses the advantages and the disadvantages of remote working in detail. It even addresses the issues of mental wellbeing of employees. The literature review has helped to explore the study from the different perspectives and the levels of employment, which also helped in providing the unseen patterns of remote working.
Findings presented a conflicting view because every perspective has two sides of opinion and experts have followed their preferred one in their work. The literature review highlights that remote working increased productivity of many employees, act as a resort to traditional working, provided flexibility and gave access to global talent.
It also reflects the disadvantages such as stress and anxiety being constant companion of employees, lack of resources, which guide them the ways to cope with stress and learning new skills under pressurized environment added to the problem. The research was concluded at the end by summarizing the findings and discussion so that readers can have better interpretation of the research. This will also make research useful for future reference on the same topic.
Table of Contents
Abstract    2
Chapter 1: Introduction    6
1.1 Background of the Research    6
1.2 Problem Identification    6
1.3 Definitions of the Key Concepts    7
1.3.1 Remote Work    7
1.3.2 Telework    8
1.3.3 Employee Engagement    8
1.3.4 Employee Wellbeing    8
1.3.5 Covid-19    9
1.3.6 Mental Wellbeing of Employees    9
1.3.7 Productivity of Remote Workers    10
1.4 Research Aim    10
1.5 Research Objectives    10
1.6 Research Questions with Brief Justification of Literature Review Question    11
1.7 Hypotheses    12
1.8 Other Sections of the Dissertation    12
Chapter 2: Methods    13
2.1 Outline of Research Methods    13
2.1.1 Research Philosophy:    13
2.1.1.1 Philosophy of Positivism:    13
2.1.1.2 Philosophy of Interpretivism:    13
2.1.2 Research Approach:    13
2.1.2.1 Deductive Approach:    14
2.1.2.2 Inductive Approach:    14
2.1.3 Secondary Research    14
2.1.3.1 Internal Sources:    14
2.1.3.2 External Sources:    15
2.2 Search Strategy    15
2.3 Research Tools (PRISMA) with Justification    16
2.4 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria    17
2.5 Reliability and Validity    17
2.6 Data Analysis Plan    18
2.7 Ethical Considerations    18
2.8 Accessibility Issues    19
2.9 Time Frame0    19
Chapter 3: Findings    20
3.1 Literature Review    20
3.1 Findings    33
Chapter 4: Discussion    39
4.2 Implication of Findings and Practical Application    41
4.3 Contribution to this Research to Enhance the Understanding of this Topic    42
4.4 Implications for Future Research by Conducting Primary Research    43
Chapter 5: Conclusion    44
5.1 Conclusion    44
5.2 Recommendations    45
Reference List    48
Appendices    52
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Background of the Research
Imposed travel restrictions, lockdowns forced people to change their working habits during COVID-19. The remote workers were not directly affected by the scenario but they had their own share of challenges. This was responsible for their mental wellbeing and productivity in work (Moretti et al., 2020).
Not only in the EU, but also around the world remote working become new norm, which enabled regular employees to take a sudden shift for remote work without any preliminary preparation. It was necessary to curb the spread of deadly virus and ensure the safety of workers. However, remote working has its own pros and cons (Hernandez, Fabio, Faghy, Roscoe & Maratos, 2021).
Shifting to remote work helped employees to gain better work life balance, learn new skills and live a less stressful life. On the other hand disadvantages of remote working includes distraction at home if family lives with employee, issues of cybersecurity as it is necessary for companies to ensure safe data interaction (Galanti, Guidetti, Mazzei, Zappala & Toscano, 2021).
The speed of internet also act as hurdle for smooth functioning, it may sound inconvenient to new recruits, as frequent need of video conferences is demanding. These occupations have their own demands, which were linked to resilience. All this is responsible for positive and negative impacts on mental wellbeing and the productivity of the employees during the COVID-19 crisis.
1.2 Problem Identification
COVID-19 was a lesson to humanity and the government of the nations, which forced them to take strict measures and implement complete lockdown. Pandemic threw sudden challenges on employees and organizations to adopt remote working. There were not prepared for it and post 2020 it became a necessity to train employees and upgrade the technological platforms for the organization so that remote working can be facilitated on a massive scale. This pushed employees to strike a balance between their family commitments and learning new tools by aligning their daily working hours and routines (Bergefurt et al., 2022). With a short span of time employees had to show their adaptability or else, there was a threat of being them fired.
This exaggerated the negative impact on mental wellbeing and affected their productivity to the greater extent. Employees were afraid about their job security stress, and anxiety taken all over their mental health. The lack of proper support, accessibility issues to talk about their emotions and feelings during this difficult time, isolation and ongoing crisis were added to their worry (Hernandez et al., 2021). This not only hampered there performance but also encouraged employees to explore other options as well. This was the serious concern, which is still being under extensive research.
1.3 Definitions of the Key Concepts
1.3.1 Remote Work
Remote work is a working style of completing tasks from location other than centralized office, which emerged as a new norm during pandemic. Remote work can be performed from places, which are comfortable to the employee such as employee’s home, co-working space or place other than traditional office.
As mentioned by Clancy (2020), while remote work employees need to have connected through high-speed internet service and need to own a personal computer or laptop. They report to their managers through mail, phone or online reporting format whichever is applicable to them by their companies. They have the flexibility to choose their working hours and they need not to commute their workplace on daily basis.
1.3.2 Telework
It allows employees to fulfil their responsibilities and duties using the information and communication technologies from a place other main office. Teleworker works in a close proximity with the main office, which means they are located in closer geographical locations. The areas, in which telework is mainly popular are research, data analytics, marketing and assistance computer work (de Macedo et al., 2020). It has been researched that it is not possible to shift all jobs to teleworking, as different levels of digitalization is required to align the job responsibilities with IT platform. Due to constraints at employee’s end, only few profiles are allowed under telework.
1.3.3 Employee Engagement
Employee engagement is about emotional connection between employees and the organization. It is a zeal to go extra mile and offer services so that organization can sail through difficult times. As believed by Motyka (2018), the enthusiasm enjoyed by the employees at their workplace and towards their work is defined with their performance, the innovation they bring to the table and the extent, to which they are ready to support their organization during difficult times. It is also, about how they relate their personality and identity with respect to their organization, how passionate they are which helps them to give their best each day at work.
1.3.4 Employee Wellbeing
Employee’s satisfaction with their work, with the work culture and with their employees helps to define their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. It helps to know the reasons behind their high or low performance. As indicated by Krekel, Ward and De Neve (2019), the motive behind the concept of employee wellbeing is to make employees innovative, productive and positive towards changes they are facing at the workplace. It reduces the healthcare costs of employees for the organization and helps in preventing burnout, stress, anxiety and other stress related disorders. The employees are useful resources when it comes to branding and employee wellbeing even results in retaining talent for higher positions as well.
1.3.5 Covid-19
COVID-19 is a term, which is embedded in the memory so deeply that the future years will be witnessing the stories of horror it spread worldwide. It is an infectious disease, which spread when a person comes in contact with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID & Post-Acute Care Study Group, 2020). With time, different variants have been found by the researchers such as Omicron, alpha, delta and beta. CDC is an organization, which monitors all variants in United States and helps in developing counter measures. The variants are developed when genetic coding occurs during replication of the genome. A variant might have different number of mutations, due to which different variants arise.
1.3.6 Mental Wellbeing of Employees
Mental wellbeing of employees indicates less absenteeism from work and high employee engagement. It ensures that the employees are happy and have accepted the work culture of the organization (Jnaneswar & Sulphey, 2021). Inadequate health and safety policies at work, lower support at employee level, ambiguity and duplicacy of work, which an employee has to perform.
No recognition or association in informal groups, not enough encouragement to participate in decision-making, poor management practices and ineffective communication are reasons due to which mental wellbeing of employee gets disturbed. Due to allocation on unsuitable tasks or challenges such as shifting to digital platform also causes negative impacts on wellbeing.
1.3.7 Productivity of Remote Workers
The employees who are working remotely are required to measure their performance. The productivity is measured by calculating output divided by total time taken for it. This given an hourly calculation about in how much time how productive work is delivered by the employee. According to Hernandez et al. (2021), the remote working has allowed workers to increase their productivity during COVID, as they were stress free. This is because of the fact that at home, they have better setting to work and they even spend less than 10 minutes as unproductive time. The time spent in daily commuting and office meetings is eliminated in remote working thus giving employees more freedom to work.
1.4 Research Aim
The research is aimed at studying the mental wellbeing and productivity of remote workers during the pandemic. It aims to investigate the effects of remote work on employee’s engagement and aspects of their mental wellbeing and devise a provisional finding to the research question. It will research on the aspects, which were responsible for ensuring mental wellbeing such as reduced stress, support from managers and peers, technological expertise and the tools, which were adopted to increase the productivity.
1.5 Research Objectives
· To critically evaluate the concepts of remote working, employee wellbeing and productivity
· To analyse how companies using instant provision of technological shift encouraged employees to align with it, which even includes the various methods they adopted to distribute the resources for training and coaching
· To recognise how stress, depression, anxiety took over the performance and affected the mental wellbeing and productivity of remote workers and the measures followed to cope with them
· To identify the areas, which posed a challenge on remote workers even though there were not daily commuters to the office and were having relaxed and flexible working norms
1.6 Research Questions with Brief Justification of Literature Review Question
· What are the concepts of remote working, employee wellbeing and productivity in context of remote working?
· What are the ways through which companies make remote working work for their businesses?
· How they planned the shift in the short period of government intervention of announcing complete lockdown?
· How were the remote workers affected, due to COVID-19 in terms of mental wellbeing and productivity and did it affect the other aspects of their professional life as well?
· How the issues of employee wellbeing and productivity were addressed during pandemic?
The primary question derived out of these secondary questions is as follows:
Does remote work during the pandemic have a more negative than positive effect on worker’s mental wellbeing and employee engagement?
The reason for the above question is that remote working posed a challenge on monitoring mental wellbeing of employees, as they are not watched physically. This requires developing a system so that through performance and assessments it can be judged how sound their mental wellbeing is to support high productivity.
1.7 Hypotheses
H1: COVID-19 had negative impact on employee wellbeing and productivity.
H0: COVID-19 did not had any negative impact on employee wellbeing and productivity.
1.8 Other Sections of the Dissertation
The present research will be followed by methodology, which is opted to carry out the research in a systematic manner. It will highlight the issues faced by the researcher such as ethical issues and accessibility issues, which are major factors to affect the quality of research. The findings section will be detailed literature review of various authors who contributed their work. This has helped the researcher to support the findings with evidences, which are impactful and indicates towards real causes. Discussion critically reviews the findings and reflects the contribution of the topic to the understanding of employee, their wellbeing and the factors, which influenced the productivity. Finally, the research was concluded to summarize the process.
Chapter 2: Methods
2.1 Outline of Research Methods
2.1.1 Research Philosophy:
There are two types of research philosophies, which are followed in research namely: Philosophy of positivism and Philosophy of Interpretivism.
2.1.1.1 Philosophy of Positivism:
This theory holds the view that all the genuine knowledge can be considered true based on positive meaning or its definition. The key focus of positivism is to present clear brief and concise discussion, which is not subjective and descriptive about the topic. Due to value-free reason, it is free from interpretation. For the current research the culture of remote working, the perception of employees towards it and the way organization deals with the norms of remote working are important aspects in understanding the employee and their relative importance to the organization.
2.1.1.2 Philosophy of Interpretivism:
It presents the interpretation of reality and experience presented by the authors in their work. Interpretation is helpful in the understanding of the perception and the cultural reality of the subject. It also implies the observation of people to examine the intensity of the problem, which is not possible for the current research.
2.1.2 Research Approach:
There are two types of approaches, which are crucial for researches, are— deductive approach and inductive approach.
2.1.2.1 Deductive Approach:
The deductive approach focuses on gathering knowledge, as dissertations are emphasis on vast information pool. It is a scientific investigation method, which stresses on existing theories and refer to the work of other researchers so that existing theory can be tested. It helped the researcher to sort the data and organize them into useful categories. It also helped to align the data with the research questions to give due meaning to the research. It also made it easier to apply the concepts and theories so that analysis can be effective.
2.1.2.2 Inductive Approach:
In research inductive approach, take a start from observations and theories, which are proposed by the researcher to derive the results out of it. It helps in developing empirical generalisations and establishes a relationship between them during the progress made in research. At this stage hypothesis at initial level are not created because the researcher is unsure of the findings that would be available until the completion of the research.
2.1.3 Secondary Research
The research was also hugely dependent on secondary research, which is also known as desk research. Secondary research helps to compile the data, which is collected form variety of sources such as internal and external sources. It helps to collect factual data from Internet and helps to stay updated with current market trends. The latest practices, views of experts and opinions of target audiences can also be included in the research to make it worthy. It is improves the quality of the research.
2.1.3.1 Internal Sources:
The database which are maintained by various business authorities, information available on websites of the organization and relevant mobile sites, experiences shared by workers who are working as remote workers, other supplemental researches available on Internet and any surveys conducted by companies to share statistics with the general public.
Internal sources are first point of collecting information, which contains detailed insights and knowledge about the subject of the research. It also gives competitive edge over other researches because it helps to use latest and verified data, which is made available by competent authorities.
2.1.3.2 External Sources:
Those sources, which help in filling the gaps in knowledge gained and information collected, are called external sources. Some companies prepare reports as a part of their social study, government, trade bodies and non-government agencies prepare statistics to understand employment, articles collected and preserved by public libraries, stories in newspapers and other journal and research sites, which are huge source of secondary data.
2.2 Search Strategy
The search strategy includes typing the keyword ‘remote working’ which helped to find 3,61,00,00,000 results (0.57 seconds) results which was further deducted to 1,90,00,000 results (0.53 seconds) by adding ‘employee wellbeing’. They keywords ‘productivity’ increased the outcome with 10,14,00,00,000 results (0.55 seconds) which was further deduced to 81000000 results (1.06 seconds) by adding ‘during COVID-19’.
Not all the results were useful except the articles referred in Google scholar, which helped to reach valid information on the topic. Out of this, only few articles were used for the purpose of research as some articles required paid access and due to limitation of funds, those were rejected.
In addition, the expert opinions shared on public platform were included to support the facts and evidences. However, this was time-consuming process but due to being a researcher, it was a satisfying experience too. It helped to understand the different dimensions of the remote working.
2.3 Research Tools (PRISMA) with Justification
PRISMA stands for Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. It is an evidence-based study, which uses minimum set of items for reporting in meta-analyses and systematic reviews. It helped in screening of articles based on biasness assessment and taking into consideration the characteristics of the study. It highlights the main findings and let readers know about the efficacy of those findings. It also optimize the reporting quality and the make the review process an efficient one. The PRISMA diagram was used as a reference to additional sources, which were also used as part of the study for the research.
2.4 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
Inclusion and exclusion criteria are high-end research protocols, which contributes in creating a standard design practice. Inclusion included the key questions, which were answered during the research. It included demographic and geographic considerations of remote employees as well.
Exclusion criteria helped to explore the potential of future study in the area and even provided scope to include additional characteristics to the research. It also contributed by the excluding the risk of unfavourable outcomes thus increasing the effectiveness of research.
Inclusion and exclusion criteria also affected the external validity of the research. It helped to detect any kind of biasness in the research and supported the judgments. These judgements are based on in-depth study, which carefully considered all the facts and statistics available. This was exhaustive and extensive study made by researcher to ensure common errors do not hinder the high quality research and is capable of defining the criteria clearly.
2.5 Reliability and Validity
Reliability is a measure of consistency. It is required to maintain the reliability throughout the research so that the efficient results can be generated from it. It should be helpful to other researchers as well to contribute in their study and purpose. The issue of subjectivity is common during research and researcher cannot ignore it as it compromises the quality of the research. This is due to the fact that researcher has no control over observer’s subjectivity.
Validity is often related to scientific measures, which were followed during research to generate finding of the research. For the purpose, a time span was selected to identify the data and data was segregated. This was done to ensure that the remote working practices before pandemic, during pandemic and post-pandemic were effectively studied to understand the impact on wellbeing and productivity of employees in a better manner. This helped in reducing the issues of reliability and validity.
2.6 Data Analysis Plan
The data will be analysed based on thematic literature study, which helped to divide the research into different heads. This gave research a direction, which was important to conduct the meaningful study. The data analysis process was in alignment with the objectives so that the research questions can be answered throughout research and due steps followed to ensure its alignment with the subject. The qualitative study explored every dimension of COVID-19 era, which raised the need of remote working and brought new challenges as a matter of change to the employees and organization.
2.7 Ethical Considerations
Ethical considerations in research are always a researcher’s concern because they influence research design and the practices. The main goal of this research is to understand the real-life scenario of remote working and the ways, in which it was affected during COVID-19. It is also about investigating employee behaviours, policies of the organizations regarding remote working and the drawbacks came into picture during pandemic. The research also worked on the principles of integrity, collaboration between society and science, dignity and human rights.
Before starting the current research due permissions have been taken from the professor and the university so that ethical codes of conduct, which are applicable to the research, are followed. The scholarly articles which were used to collect data and the opinions of the authors are referred with due respect and proper citations rules have been followed. Unacceptable acts of copying the work of others was not being entertained for the research.
2.8 Accessibility Issues
Digital technology has made research a lot easier as it has helped to widen the format of information and choice of location as a convenient theme. Despite this, the technology can be barrier at times. Due to lack of funds, the research cannot...