 Home sweet home: Working from home and employee performance during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UKSumit Deole, Max Deter and Yue Huang Labour Economics, 2023, vol. 80, issue C Abstract: In 2020, many governments responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by encouraging employees to work from home (WFH). Analyzing representative data from the UK, we find that the pandemic-led increases in WFH frequency are associated with a higher self-perceived hourly productivity among employed respondents. Interestingly, changes in WFH frequency are unrelated to the respondents’ weekly working hours and weekly wages during the same period. While the WFH-productivity association is more substantial in non-lockdown months, it is inexistent during the months with strict lockdowns, indicating that lockdown measures inhibited the baseline association. The WFH-productivity association is weaker among parents with increased homeschooling needs due to school closures implemented during lockdowns. In addition, the effect heterogeneity analysis identifies the role of crucial job-related characteristics in the baseline association. Finally, looking at the future of WFH, we show that employees’ recent WFH experiences and subsequent changes in hourly productivity are intimately associated with their desires to WFH in the future. Keywords: Working from home; Employee performance; Productivity; COVID-19 pandemic (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:80:y:2023:i:c:s0927537122001853 DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102295 Access Statistics for this article Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier |
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