Effects of work from home on employees during COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

Purpose – COVID-19 has rendered a large proportion of the workforce unable to commute to
work in order to contain the virus's spread. In a largely populated country like India, this has
resulted in both employers and employees seeking alternative work arrangements. Most, if
not all, workers were forced to work from home due to the pandemic (WFH). The paper aims
to underline different aspects of working from home for employees like increased workload
on employees, increased daily expenses, productivity, communication efficiency, salary,
changes in working hours, and impact of work from home on different industries like IT
Hospitality.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper opted for an exploratory study using the open-
ended approach of grounded theory, including 79 depth interviews through the questionnaire
method. The sample includes employees from different age groups, gender, designation, and
country, working across various domains like IT, Consulting, Healthcare, Architecture,
Insurance, etc., to gain a broad prospect for the topic. The data were complemented by
documentary analysis, opinions, group discussions & expert views, etc. The data were
analyzed using various tools like Excel, SPSS and inferences were made with the help of the
knowledge gained by literature reviews.
Findings – The paper provides empirical insights about how change is brought into the
working environment by this lockdown induced by the pandemic. It highlights the challenges
faced and benefits gained through work from home. It also shows how industries like
Software development and hospitality have found new opportunities in disguise.
Research limitations/implications – Because of the small sample size, the research results
may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed
propositions further with a larger sample.
Originality/value – This paper fulfils an identified need to study how a change in working
approach has increased or decree employees' productivity.

Keywords: Work From Home, Efficiency, Online Office Management, Lockdown, Home
Office, Technology Disruption.
1. Introduction

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has had a wide-ranging impact on the business
ecosystem. Numerous organizations worldwide, particularly those focused on information
technology (IT), have been forced to adopt flexible work arrangements such as working from
home (WFH). Numerous business leaders view WFH as a permanent feature and have begun
analyzing its benefits and drawbacks. Recent advancements in information and
communication technologies have simplified the process of performing tasks outside of the
workplace. Professionals from various industries can work from home with adequate internet
connectivity and user-friendly machines. However, the impact of this work-model transition
on employees and their respective stakeholders warrants further investigation. This Work
from Home model has advantages and disadvantages. Although COVID-19 has a negative
effect on business organizations and the economy, it has also driven businesses to search for
new ways to operate operations via remote connections and the introduction of digital
technologies. Many individuals have benefited from WFH because it makes workers
productive, although assisting in maintaining a work-life balance.
This paper will highlight the impact of work from home on the employee's efficiency. It will
also discuss whether there is any change in the salary structure and workload due to increased
household chores in the daily routine, impacting the consumers' daily expenses. Work from
home has also increased electricity expenses, technological expenses, food expenses, etc. It
will further discuss whether there is an increase in the working hours and productivity of the
employee. Work from home has boosted various industries like the IT sector by introducing
new technologies to facilitate the smooth functioning of work from home. It has also
increased the hospitality industry by providing remote working locations where a person can
stay for longer durations and break the usual routine of staying in the confinement of home.
Organizations like Hindustan Uniliver, Coca-Cola Beverages, Coca-Cola India's largest
bottling partner with 6,500 direct employees, had allowed a significant chunk of its
workforce to work from home permanently. This has raised concern in finding out the
efficiency of this working model and health issues that can cause an individual.
2. Need for the study

When the COVID-19 outbreak began spreading globally, thousands of people began
experiencing severe health problems. The only way to halt the pandemic's spread was to
suspend all social and economic activities and follow social distancing norms. It resulted in
the concept of "working from home (WFH)" for corporations to maintain the working spirit
of their employees. Individuals can work from home (WFH) by utilizing various platforms
like Zoom, Google Meet, Office Team, Go-to-meeting, etc. Following the pandemic,
business trends shifted dramatically, with most business activities now conducted via mobile
or other digital platforms. To stay afloat during the current COVID-19 pandemic, businesses
are being forced to implement work-from-home policies for their employees wherever
possible. Each action has several advantages and disadvantages; the same is true of the Work
from home concept. There is a need to focus on achieving a better work-life balance by
balancing personal and professional lives by considering the following issues. We need to
carefully analyze the effect of Work from home on productivity, the employee's health, and
several other factors as this are becoming a common practice and may continue after the
pandemic.

3. Objective

3.1. To ascertain implications of work from home on employees. Following criteria’s will be
covered under this:
3.1.1. Productivity
3.1.2. Work Load
3.1.3. Salary
3.1.4. Daily expenses
3.1.5. Communication efficiency

3.2. To study the impact of work from home on other industries.

3.3. To study the merits and demerits of work from home

4. Literature review

Thorstensson, E. (2020) describes The Influence of Working from Home on Employees'

Productivity and did a Comparative document analysis between 2000 and 2019-2020.
Working from home (WFH) has both advantages and drawbacks for the personnel compared
to office work. While some researchers, such as Shafizadeh et al. (2000), declare that
working from domestic increases the productiveness of the employees, other researchers,
such as Monteiro et al. (2019), claim the opposite. This study analyzed five research articles
published in the year 2000 and 5 lookup articles published in years 2019 and 2020 to discover
the factors influencing the employees' productivity who work from home. The study results
indicate that working from home influences the productivity of the employees. While some of
the factors are either positive or negative, some of the elements depend on the characteristics
and attitude of the employees and the circumstances.

Pandey, Meenakshi. (2020) has analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the work-from-
home concept in light of the COVID-19 crisis. This research paper will also shed light on
several critical issues, including the adoption of a system for training, re-training, up-skilling,
and multi-skilling people in areas such as technology, design thinking, storytelling, analytics,
and artificial intelligence, to prepare our workforce to become more competent and talented
through skill enhancement.

Reshma, P. S., Aithal, P. S., & Acharya, S. (2015) explains the concept of "Working from
Home," which describes its advantages of working from home, constraints of working from
home, and disadvantages of working from home towards its employees. Moreover, Working
from Home" is analyzed using the 'ABCD Analysis Technique,' which helps identify and
analyze various factors and critical constituent elements, which helps in better understanding
the business model effectively. It also seeks to explain the different working methods from
home, which includes call centers, consultancy, etc. It defines the model of various factors
affecting under organizational objectives, employers' point of view, and employees'
perspective.
Akanksha Jaiswal (2020) classifies COVID-19 as an intractable crisis that compelled nations
to implement lockdowns. This investigation assisted in gaining a better understanding of the
nature and quality of work in the current situation. This was accomplished by conducting in-
depth interviews with 24 middle and senior-level managers in India's manufacturing and
technology-enabled service sectors and analyzing the data using MAXQDA software.
Employees reported increased work hours, significant changes in their roles, decreased
productivity and increased stress. Apart from these findings, it was observed sparks of
creativity among employees during this period of isolation. It highlights the theoretical
contributions and discusses future research directions.

Singh, M. K., & Kumar, V. (2020), states that there is a dire need to consistently engage,
monitor and promote an inclusive, collaborative growth culture for employees supported by
robust digital infrastructure to enable work from anywhere. In the present research paper,
researcher tried to explore the emerging trends and impact of pandemic caused by novel
coronavirus on working professional of IT sector in Bengaluru, Karnataka (India).

5. Research Methodology

5.1. Sample - The target population was employees across different domains and different
countries. To guarantee greater representation of the data, all the employees were
selected as a sample, using the census method. Out of the overall population, 79 was the
sample size chosen for this research. The sample consisted of 41 females (51.90%) and
38 males (48.10%)
5.2. Data Collection - Data were collected by questionnaire method, which was divided into
two parts. The first part included questions on age, gender, country, Industry, Job
designation. The second part was directed towards finding out various aspects of work
from home like productivity, salary changes, impact on other industries, communication
efficiency, etc. The Questionnaire consists of 10 multiple choice questions and two
descriptive. The students can select multiple-choice, based on the sensory Modalities
 which they prefer. All the participants were briefed as to the study's objectives and
confidentiality of responses as ensured by maintaining the anonymity of responders.
5.3. Analysis - Each response was noted according to protocols developed by the developers.
A detailed evaluation was done for the data using different analytical tools. Bar graphs
and pie charts were formulated showing employees' responses on productivity, salary,
industry impact, communication efficiency, etc. Ten random employees were
interviewed to find out in detail about their experience with work from home.

6. Analysis

Working from home became an unwelcome phenomenon for billions of employees after the
pandemic, and although many want their jobs to be permanently focused on where they live,
obstacles exist. The abrupt transition to working from home has been positive for several, but
the results have been mixed. The research discovered a variety of advantages and drawbacks
when it came to operating from home. These are analyzed below:

Increase In work load Inc r e a se I n Wo r k L o a d

68
61

35%
YES FEMALE
39

NO MALE
32

65%

Yes No

Employees who worked from home due to the pandemic faced increased work pressure,
stress and loss of personal time during the work from home arrangement. From the above
graph it can be seen that 65% people believe that working from home has increased their
work load. It can also be inferred that gender doesn’t plays a major role here. People from
both the gender have almost same response when asked about the increase in workload. It
was seen that employees were getting calls past their working hours. Moreover, they have to
manage household chores which lead to increase in the workload.
 Inc r e a se I n Da i l y E x pe nse s Increase In Daily Expenses

81.58%
68.29%

25%

No Yes
31.71%

Yes No

18.42%
75%

F em a l e M ale

Employees who worked from home due to the pandemic face a change in their community
expenses during home management, like their electricity bill. From the total sample, only
25% of people experienced an increase in their daily expenses, of which 31.71% are females,
and 18.42% are males. Also, among the rest of 75% of people who did not experience an
increase in their daily expenses, 68.29% are females, and 81.68% are males. Therefore it is
analyzed that compared to males, females increase their daily expenses.

Producti vity

19%
27%

54%

Less Productive Equally Productive

More Productive

As per the research, it is concluded that working from home impacts the productivity of
employees. While some of the factors of working from home have a positive effect on
productivity, some other factors have a negative impact, and in some cases, productivity
remains the same. Moreover, other factors that impact work productivity from home depend
on the employees' attitude and the circumstances. It can be shown in the graph above that
19% are less productive, 54% are more productive, 27% are more productive. In graph II,
industries like IT, FMCG, Media, Banking Sector, and Fintech employees are equally
productive. In contrast, in insurance and other industries, employees are less productive, and
only in the Management Consultant industry are employees more productive.

Done WFH Before Pandemic Productivity

80% 74%
70% 67%
62%
60%
50%
0.3670886075 No 38%
94937 40% 33%
Yes 30% 26%
0.6329113924 20%
05063
10%
0%
Equally productive Less productive More productive

No WFH Before Done WFH Before

Working from home not only benefits employees by eliminating their daily commutes, it also
increases productivity and leads to healthier lifestyles. From the above data it can be seen that
majority of the people (63.29%) are new to work from home model. It can be inferred that
productivity depends on the adaptability of the employees. The employees who have done
WFH before the pandemic are now more productive as they have already adapted to this
model and know all the ups and downs and how they maintain the productivity level while
employees who are new to this model are comparatively less productive.

Availing Homestay In cr e ase i n w o r klo ad

45.57%

35%
Yes
No
18.99%

18.99%

No
16.46%

Yes

65%

Not a v a i l i ng H ome st a y A v a i l i ng Homest a y

According to research, working from home affected the workload of both males and females.
Among other factors, homestay is a crucial factor that has increased the workload. As shown
in the pie chart, among the total populations, there are 35% of people availing of the
homestay facility from the company, and the remaining 65% do not. In the above chart we
can see that the probability of increased workload is more on the employees who are not
availing homestay services as they have to do other household work. While in homestay this
work decreases significantly.

Decrease In Salary Decrease in Salary

120%
100% 100% 100%
100%
80% 70% 67%
33% Yes 60% 57%
60% 50%
50% 50%
50%
No 40% 43%
40% 30% 33%

20%
67% 0%
0% 0% 0%

Banking Sector Fintech FMCG Insurance IT Management Media NGO other

Consulting

No Yes

As per the study, we can conclude, salary gets affected directly or indirectly while working
from home. But this should not imply that employers pay their employees less than their
expected salary. According to the survey conducted, it can be concluded that there has been a
reduction in employees' salary. As shown, 67% of employees agreed that there had been a
reduction in the expected salary whereas 33% agreed that no significant change in the salary.
Employees in Industry like Insurance agreed that there had been a reduction in the expected
salary. In other industries like Fintech and media employees, there was no change in the
salary.

Total Communi cati on

Dissatisfied Highly Dissatisfied Highly Satisfied Neutral Satisfied
0.0886075949
67.44%

367089
0.0126582278 Dissatisfied
481013
Highly Dissat -
isfied
0.1645569620
38.10%

25316
28.57%
28.57%

Highly Satisfied
26.67%
26.67%
26.67%

0.5189873417
20.00%

72152
16.28%

Neutral
9.30%

6.98%

4.76%

0.2151898734 Satisfied
0.00%

0.00%

0.00%

17721

E q u a l l y p r o d u c ti v e L e s s p r o d u c ti v e M o r e p r o d u c ti v e

Communication with managers and teammates while working from home has impacted the
employees' productivity. It can be observed from the graph that 51.90% of employees are
satisfied with the level of interaction with their leaders and co-workers, 21.52% are neutral,
16.46% are highly satisfied, and 8.86% are dissatisfied.
 Working Hours Ge nde r

60.53%
1%

56.10%

41.46%

39.47%
41% Female
Male
58%

2.44%

0.00%
Same Increase Decrease D e cr e a se d I ncr ea se d S a me

Remote employees are working longer, spending time in more meetings, and keeping up with
more communication channels. As per the graph, most of the employees' (58%) working
hours are increased, 41% of the employees have the same working hour, and only 1% of the
employees have decreased in their working hours. It can also be seen that gender has no
significant effect on the working hour of males and females. Both have experienced the same
increase ad decrease in the working hours.

7. Hypothesis Testing

We have assumed that 60% of employees will claimed that working hours will increased after
work from home. In a sample of 79 employees, 46 claims that working hours have increased
because of work from home. We need to find whether we can accept the claim or not.

Null hypothesis (H0): π = 0.60

Alternate hypothesis (H1): π < 0.60
α = 5%
Z – Test One Tail

p−π
Z=

√ p ( 1−p )
n

o .58−0.60
Z=

√ 0.58 ( 1−0.58 )
79
Z = -0.36

The Z statistics is in the acceptance area. Hence, we do not reject the null hypothesis. This
means that our claim 60% of employees working hours will increase because of work from
home is acceptable.

8. Conclusion
Pandemic induced lockdown has changed the way people work. Social distancing has
become an important norm in fighting the spread of virus. More public and private
organizations offer working from home as an alternative way of working for their employees.
Working from home (WFH) has both benefits and drawbacks for the employees when it is
compared to the office working. Some parts of the business are not suitable to be performed
from home and it decreases the productivity of the employees.

This study analyzed the impact of changes in working conditions of an individual. It

highlights the impact on productivity, communication, work life balance, salary etc. on an
employee. For this a questionnaire was designed to gather information about the experience
of employee in this new work setup. Responses were analyzed to understand how efficient
this work from home model is. The need to analyse this is because many organizations are
offering permanent work from home to their employees. This will have a major impact on the
productivity, health and quality of life of an employee.

The study results indicate that working from home has an influence on productivity of the
employees. The individuals with profession which requires face to face interaction,
communication, are less productive than the ones who has their sitting job. In their attempt to
maintain desired levels of productivity and efficiency, employees are expected to overwork.
There is a very blur line between daily working hours of an employee. More working hours
has resulted in less efficiency. The stress of balancing work and domestic chores decreases
the productivity indirectly, through decreasing the life satisfaction. This research has showed
increase in the workload of employees as they are responsible for every home activity along
with the office work. Also, a fluctuation in salaries has been found. High rate of individuals
faced decrease in the salary due to the economic crisis. Our survey also showed that there is
an increase in daily expenses of individuals as they are responsible to pay additional
electricity bills, grocery bills etc.

While there are advantages like flexibility in working hours, less travelling cost, spending
quality time with family as you can do the work from your proffered location, there are also
some drawbacks in this model. It varies from organization to organization. To facilitate a
smooth functioning of work from home model certain framework should be set to reduce
negative impact of this model and boost productivity.

9. References

1. Thorstensson, E. (2020). The Influence of Working from Home on Employees'

Productivity: Comparative document analysis between the years 2000 and 2019-2020.
2. Monteiro, NP, Straume, OR and Valente, M (2019), ‘Does remote work improve or
impair firm labour productivity? Longitudinal evidence from Portugal’, NIPE Working
Papers 14/2019, NIPE - Universidade do Minho
3. Shafizadeh, KR, Mokhtarian, PL, Niemeier, DA and Salomon, I (2000), ‘The Costs and
Benefits of Home-Based Telecommuting’, UC Berkeley: California Partners for
Advanced Transportation Technology.
4. Reshma, P. S., Aithal, P. S., & Acharya, S. (2015). An empirical study on Working from
Home: A popular e-business model. International Journal of Advance and Innovative
Research, 2(2).
5. Pandey, Meenakshi. (2020). The Impact of Pandemic COVID -19 in Workplace. 12. 10.
10.7176/EJBM/12-15-02.
6. Jaiswal, Akanksha & Arun, C.. (2020). Unlocking the COVID-19 Lockdown: Work from
Home and Its Impact on Employees. 10.21203/rs.3.rs-34556/v1.
7. Singh, M. K., & Kumar, V. (2020). Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Working
Culture: An Exploratory Research Among Information Technology (IT)
Professionals in Bengaluru, Karnataka (India). Journal of Xi'an University of
Architecture & Technology with ISSN 1006-7930, 12 (5), pp3176, 3184.