As Bierema ( 2020) argues, the disruptions brought about by the pandemic present unprecedented opportunities to HRD scholars and practitioners to re-imagine the organizational, developmental, and leadership solutions and voice remote employees’ concerns and needs. Scholars have called for more inclusive research acknowledging the challenges and experiences that potentially impact remote workers’ work-life balance, well-being, and work outcomes (Bolino, Kelemen, and Matthews 2021). 2021) and their work performance (Burk, Pechenik Mausolf, and Oakleaf 2021). As many scholars have argued, the shifts in work and nonwork patterns during this time have influenced employees’ work-family balance, which, in turn, impacted employees’ adjustment to and satisfaction with remote work (Carillo et al. While managing these changes, employees were constantly worried about the well-being and health of themselves and their family members (Fogarty et al. Many employees had to spend time learning new technologies to complete their work and to adjust to repeated changes in work procedures.
The situation was complicated further by the fact that many workers simultaneously had to undertake care responsibilities and to facilitate home learning (Vaziri et al. The COVID-19 pandemic and stay-home orders created an uncharted territory for remote work, where many workers had to switch to a new mode of work with minimum preparation (Bin et al. Above all, workplaces support remote work as a family-friendly option offered to enhance work-life balance (Hyland, Rowsome, and Rowsome 2005). It may also be perceived by employees as reflecting or allowing a better fit between themselves and their job, which is an aspect of positive work role adjustment (Shockley and Allen 2010). Providing remote work arrangements could symbolize an employer’s willingness to alter the work environment in response to employees’ needs (Shockley and Allen 2012). Organizational leaders that endorse remote work acknowledge its role in strengthening the psychological contract between employees and organizations, and employees who use remote work perceive their employers as supportive of employee well-being (Danna and Landry 2011). We highlight the important role HRD practitioners can play in assisting employees to achieve a fit between their expectations and experiences of remote work.įirms have been providing remote work options as a competitive edge to attract and maintain talent for many years (Eversole, Venneberg, and Crowder 2012 Morgan 2014) and to enhance their employees’ work-life balance (Felstead and Henseke 2017). technostress and isolation, and (4) family-friendly work arrangement vs. space limitation, (3) technologically-feasible work arrangementvs. We found four themes representing misfits between desirable expectations and the undesirable realities of remote work: (1) flextime vs. Our analysis was informed by the person-environment fit theory and complemented by literature reviews on remote work conducted prior to the pandemic. Have the images of remote working as a desirable work arrangement been challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic? What have we learned from the widespread involuntary remote work imposed on many employees during this time? To answer these questions, we analysed 40 recent empirical studies that examined work-life balance while working from home during the pandemic. Popular representations of remote work often depict it as a flexible, technologically feasible, and family-friendly work arrangement.
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