We Know More Than We Can Zoom: Challenges for Young Professionals During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction

In the early 2020s, the global COVID-19 pandemic changed the work practices for large groups of workers within the Western world and beyond. Where millions of people set their alarms in the early mornings, ran their errands, and commuted to work almost synchronously, the measures to halt the pandemic also halted their collective behaviour in offices, classrooms, and workplaces. Instead, they mutually attuned to each other using digital means, working from their home offices, kitchens or even bedrooms, switching from cacophonous Zoom meetings to stifled solitude in seconds. The measures to stop the COVID-19 virus from spreading have harmed mental well-being and increased feelings of loneliness globally (Hu & Qian, 2021). Forced working from home affects workers’ personhood and household dynamics. For instance, people can experience stress from the collapsing of boundaries between private and professional contexts, or, in other words, their home and work (Schieman et al., 2021). Moreover, enforced working from home can reduce productivity and cause feelings of isolation (Waizenegger et al., 2020). And how do people find the essential inspiration and motivation for their work when there is little to see beyond their houses’ walls?

While researchers have studied the implications of working from home in times of COVID-19 for mothers or caregivers (Hjálmsdóttir & Bjarnadóttir, 2021), couples (Qian & Hu, 2021), students (Elmer et al., 2020), and precarious workers (Han & Hart, 2021), other groups have received less academic interest. One of these groups is young professionals. Young professionals are usually not burdened by demanding family responsibilities, child rearing or assisting in their childrens’ online education. Yet, considering their budding careers and often relatively small-scale way of living (in solitary apartments or shared environments), they face challenges of their own. Their position in the labour market transformed from being a starting professional as part of a physical workplace to being an individual in a makeshift work environment as part of a digital team.

This transformation brings insecurity, alienation from the organisation, a dependence on digital communication platforms, a lack of inspiration and motivation to build a career, and halts interpersonal connections and opportunities. Moreover, the alienation from collective spheres caused by social distancing accelerates a trend of individualisation which is characterised by a decreasing sense of community (Faludi & Crosby, 2021). To study the precarious and challenging situation for young professionals who are forced to work remotely, this chapter poses the question: How does working from home in times of COVID-19 affect the whole personhood of young knowledge workers? Looking at the whole personhood means taking not only work and private contexts into account, but all spheres of life, and how these interact and intertwine. Specifically, this chapter poses three sub questions: 1) how do young professionals sculpt the boundaries between their private and professional spheres, 2) how do they seek to connect with their professional contacts from their – lockdown induced – private spheres, and 3) how do they cope with the lack of other spheres (e.g. the public realm) when working from home?

This chapter focuses specifically on the tensions that emerge out of the enforced working from home in times of COVID-19 which blurs the boundary between personal and professional contexts (Clark, 2000; Mols & Pridmore, 2021; Nippert-Eng, 1996), impedes the exchange of (tacit) knowledge (M. Polanyi, 2009 [1966]), and requires young professionals to retain the energy and inspiration to build and sustain a career without being able to draw upon connections to others (cf. Bhansing et al., 2018; Collins, 2020). This research takes the socio-economic context of working from home into account and follows Wood et al.’s (2019) integrated approach to K. Polanyi’s notion of embeddedness by zooming in on interpersonal relations and experiences while considering how platform economies thrive on the commodification of labour and data (Grabher & König, 2020).