From Stationary to Remote: Employee Risks at Pandemic Migration of Workplaces

Janusz Rymaniak, Katarzyna Lis, Vida Davidavičienė, Manuela Pérez-Pérez and Ángel Martínez-Sánchez
Additional contact information
Janusz Rymaniak: Department of Management, Faculty of Management and Finance, WSB University in Gdańsk, 80-266 Gdańsk, Poland
Katarzyna Lis: Department of Labour and Social Policy, Poznań University of Economics and Business, 61-875 Poznań, Poland
Vida Davidavičienė: Department of Business Technologies and Entrepreneurship, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, LT-10223 Vilnius, Lithuania
Manuela Pérez-Pérez: Department of Business Management and Organization, School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Zaragoza, 50015 Zaragoza, Spain
Ángel Martínez-Sánchez: Department of Business Management and Organization, School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Zaragoza, 50015 Zaragoza, Spain

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 13, 1-25

Abstract: The first lockdown due to COVID-19 in the year 2020 created a particular scenario that forced a change to telework among diverse professions and social groups. This article presents the results of research carried out among samples of Polish, Lithuanian and Spanish remote workers concerning working conditions in organizations and at home, and the potential impact of some professional hazards from home-based telework. On the contrary to earlier published papers on pandemic-induced telework that focused on how the limitations at home of first-time remote workers impacted on their well-being and work–family balance, our research contributes to a more recent endeavor that focuses the analysis on the work design perspective. The results of the survey indicate that employees felt more stressed and in conflict at their remote workstations when they had to telework during the lockdown, and that this negative output was significantly related to the deterioration of some working dimensions like space, quality and design but not to the perception of professional hazards from home-based telework. According to our research, the forced situation seemed not to be a favorable factor for implementing changes in light of the insufficient technical and organizational preparation of employers as well as the employees’ mental preparation. It should be necessary to update sequentially the results of the epidemic-induced telework and conduct research for various stages of the pandemic and the subsequent economic recovery. This could help popularize remote work as one of the tools of the labor market in the future and as a tool for treating labor resources as an element of sustainable development.

Keywords: remote work; telework; labor market; work design; workplace; pandemic crisis; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/13/7180/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/13/7180/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:13:p:7180-:d:582721

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().