The Impact of Work from Home on Employee Job Satisfaction and Performance: A Study of a Selected IT Company in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The Sri Lankan government established the social distance policy and lockdown system as a remedial measure to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Therefore, the organisations decided to implement the work from home concept even though it is new to Sri Lankans. Hence, the present research was undertaken to examine the situation of work from home, to examine the impact of work from home on employee job satisfaction and performance, and to provide suggestions and recommendations to improve the employees’ outcomes during work from home. The study was conducted in an information technology service company in Colombo. The conceptual model of this study was tested mainly based on the primary data which were collected through a pre-tested structured questionnaire by online survey with a randomly selected sample of 100 information technology application support consultants. Standard statistical procedures such as reliability test, Wilcoxon-singed rank, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were used to analyse the data. The results revealed that the majority of the information technology application support consultants were male, single (living with family), educated up to bachelor degree level, and satisfied with work from home. The analysis has shown that organisational climate, technical support, financial support, task identity, dealing with others, and feedback from clients significantly affected the work from home (p = 0.000). Further, findings disclosed that work from home was positively correlated with employee job satisfaction (r = 0.638, p = 0.000) and employee job performance (r = 0.618, p = 0.000). This study could be concluded that work from home has a positive and significant impact on employee job satisfaction and performance of the selected information technology service company. Further, the outcomes of this study mainly recommended providing sufficient credit facilities such as: providing loans for a home-based office (Mean = 4.69, p = 0.000). The findings of this study provide significant insight to information technology service companies who implement and perform the work from home concept, to enhance the employees’ outcome during work from home situations.

Keywords: Employee Job Performance, Employee Job Satisfaction, Impact, Work from Home