Examining the Substantive Effects of Remote Work on the Advancement of Employee Flourishing within Professional Environments

A national lockdown was declared in Ghana on 12 March 2020, and since then, working from home has been the main policy of many organizations. West African countries, such as Ghana, have dealt with the COVID-19 crisis more efficiently than most other countries due to the ease with which citizens maintain social distance and thus prevent spreading the virus. As a result, Covid-19 changed the work environment for individuals around the world in early 2020. Research concerning remote working and employee well-being is scarce. Researchers have studied the relationship between remote work and the well-being of employees during the pandemic but there is no study on the effect remote work had on lecturers. Accordingly, this study aims to address this gap by examining remote working, and in particular, how it affected lecturers’ flourishing (socially, psychologically and physically) during the Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, this study used a quantitative method to explore the effect remote work had on employee flourishing during the COVID-19 pandemic among university lecturers in Kumasi Metropolitan, Ghana. The study used the quantitative approach, respondents were selected based on the simple random sampling technique. One hundred and fifty (150) questionnaires were distributed to university lecturers in the Kumasi metropolis. The data was analysed using the SPSS. The results showed that remote working had a positive effect on employee flourishing. However, it is equally evident from the findings that the social well-being of remote workers was negatively affected due to isolation. This study recommends that university lecturers adopt the remote working system to maximize their level of flourishing