Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Business and Policy Studies
Series Vol. 67 , 05 January 2024
Open
Access | Article
Impact of Work from Home on Employee Work and Life
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Work from Home has become an increasingly common working mode in the modern working environment. The COVID-19 pandemic moved a significant shift to working from home (WFH), and it has become the only option for many industries to keep their business running. This sudden shift makes us wonder whether home working is a positive or negative change. However, many studies have analyzed the economic benefits and productivity impacts of telecommuting. There is still a limited exploration of how it affects employees' quality of life, work-life balance, family relationships, and mental health. The research aims to examine the impact of home from work on employees' quality of life and its acceptance. First, I explored employees' acceptance of telecommuting and its possible implications for work-personal life balance. Then, I examined whether prolonged time spent with family in a home-based work environment strengthened parent-child and couple bonds or increased relationship friction and tension. Ultimately, this study assessed home-based work's positive and negative effects on employee mental health and identified key factors that may increase or decrease psychological stress. While the economic and productivity benefits of telecommuting have received extensive research attention, there is a gap in how it affects employee quality of life. This research provides novel and in-depth analyses in this area. It suggests strategies for companies, policymakers, and other stakeholders to meet employees' needs better and, in turn, enhance their job satisfaction and productivity. Given that home-based work is becoming an ongoing work pattern, a deeper understanding of its long-term impact on employees' quality of life will provide valuable insights for society to help them adapt more smoothly to this work pattern.
Keywords
Work from Home, work-life balance, productivity, mental health, relationship
References
1. Chong, S., Huang, Y. & Chang, C.-H. (2020) Supporting Interdependent Telework Employees: A Moderated-Mediation Model Linking Daily COVID-19 Task Setbacks to Next-Day Work Withdrawal.
2. Barrero, J.M., Bloom, N. & Davis, S.J. (2021) Why Working from Home Will Stick. NBER Working Paper No. 28731. Available at: National Bureau of Economic Research.
3. Kahn, M.E. (2022) Going Remote: How the Flexible Work Economy Can Improve Our Lives and Our Cities. University of California Press.
4. Bloom, N., Liang, J., Roberts, J. & Ying, Z.J. (2015) Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(1), 165-218.
5. Aksoy, C.G., Barrero, J.M., Bloom, N., Davis, S.J., Dolls, M., & Zarate, P. (2023) Time Savings When Working from Home. NBER Working Papers, No. 30866.
6. Santiago-Torner, C., Tarrats-Pons, E., & Corral-Marfil, J.-A. (2023) Effects of Intensity of Teleworking and Creative Demands on the Cynicism Dimension of Job Burnout. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal.
7. Barrero, J.M., Bloom, N., & Davis, S.J. (2022) Long Social Distancing. NBER Working Papers, No. 30568.
8. Barrero, J.M., Bloom, N., Buckman, S., & Davis, S.J. (2023) SWAA February 2023 Updates
9. Zhirui Zhang. (2023). Analyze the impact of working from home on employees’ quality of life [Data set]. Sojump. https://www.wjx.cn/vm/QLtBD3d.aspx#
10. Barrero, J.M., Bloom, N., & Davis, S.J. (2023) The Evolution of Work from Home. Prepared for the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Authors who publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See Open Access Instruction).
- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Business and Policy Studies
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-83558-265-7
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-83558-266-4
- Published Date
- 05 January 2024
- Series
- Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences
- ISSN (Print)
- 2754-1169
- ISSN (Online)
- 2754-1177
- DOI
- 10.54254/2754-1169/67/20241271
- Copyright
- 05 January 2024
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited