Remote working during COVID-19 outbreak: workers' well-being and productivity

At the beginning of 2020 the outbreak of COVID-19 imposed social distancing and the transition to Remote Working (RW) all over the world. We investigate the multifaced implication of this massive change exploiting data collected by a large Italian public institute on its employees’ satisfaction and perceptions towards RW. The analysis is developed along three perspectives: general attitude toward RW; the impact of RW on productivity; the implications of RW on work-life balance, with a focus on gender differences. Results show that respondents have a positive attitude towards RW and would like to continue to adopt this working arrangement once the pandemic is over, the most of them expressing preference for a hybrid model, with RW combined to office work. Moreover, despite respondents largely report an increase in their productivity under RW, results show that for the period under investigation RW did not affect productivity. Finally, our results contain implications in terms of personal well-being differences among genders: the overlap of domestic and working spaces induced by RW seems to leave workers, especially women, struggling to reconcile between professional and personal needs.