Psychological Impacts of Remote Working Under Social Distancing Restrictions

Introduction

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has forced a swift and dramatic shift in the way we work (Carnevale & Hatak, 2020) as organizations around the world have implemented working from home arrangements to allow continuity of service, while conforming with social distancing requirements. Remote work, which has previously been available to a limited group of employees (Allen et al., 2015), or as the privilege of the self-employed, has therefore become the new norm for many. Moreover, the uncertainty regarding the duration and impact of the pandemic (Altig et al. 2020) means that many organizations are considering longer-term working from home arrangements. Finally, greater availability of technology to support remote working, combined with substantial reductions in direct costs for organizations (Manocheri & Pinkerton, 2003) suggest that work-from-home (or blended working) is likely to become much more common.

Work environments present both benefits and risks for mental health, and traditional work arrangements have been the centre of extensive investigations over the last century (Bliese et al., 2017; Cooper, 1976; Stansfeld & Candy, 2006; Thayer et al., 2010;). There is much less data, however, on the psychological impacts of remote work arrangements. A recent meta-analysis of the literature on home offices and telecommuters has identified a range of topics and issues that are at the centre of current research (de Macêdo, et al. 2020). Broadly, the dominant themes in the reviewed literature highlighted advantages of increased productivity, increased employee flexibility and reduced stress, and potential disadvantages of increased isolation, intensified work, and family-work conflicts. More research, however, is necessary, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of work-from-arrangements across a broad range of industries and employee demographics.

As a result of COVID-19, the number of employees working from home has increased dramatically around the world. For instance, in May 2020, 35% of the US workforce worked entirely from home, compared to just 8% in February 2020 (Bick et al., 2020). Even industries that traditionally do not rely much on work-from-home arrangements were forced to introduce them (Banerjee et al., 2020). The COVID-19 scenario presents a unique opportunity to evaluate the positive and negative psychological impacts of working from home on a large scale. Better knowledge about the psychological impacts of working from home will allow for informed decision-making and proactive interventions to ensure that work arrangements enhance well-being and performance, rather than impeding them. As mentioned above, there are several key outcome variables at the focus of research on work at-home-environments. However, rather than exploring those outcome measures in a bottom-up fashion, in this chapter we focus on the mediating inner mechanisms, namely motivation and the fulfilment of basic psychological needs, to provide structure for future research. We begin by presenting a model of how work arrangements might act via motivation and need satisfaction to influence performance and well-being utilising self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Subsequently, we assess the literature on remote work arrangements within this framework and outline suggestions for future research on the psychological impacts of remote work under social distancing restrictions.