Organizational climate, opportunities, challences and psychological wellbeing of remote working emplyees during covid 19

Available online athttp://www.iaeme.com/IJARET/issues.asp?JType=IJARET&VType=11&IType=4 ISSN Print: 0976-6480 and ISSN Online: 0976-6499 © IAEME Publication Scopus Indexed ORGANIZATION

Available online athttp://www.iaeme.com/IJARET/issues.asp?JType=IJARET&VType=11&IType=4

ISSN Print: 0976-6480 and ISSN Online: 0976-6499

© IAEME Publication Scopus Indexed

ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE, OPPORTUNITIES, CHALLENGES AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING OF THE REMOTE WORKING EMPLOYEES DURING

COVID-19 PANDEMIC: A GENERAL LINEAR

MODEL APPROACH WITH REFERENCE TO

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY IN

HYDERABAD

Dr KDV Prasad

International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)

Telangana, India

Dr Mruthyanjaya Rao Mangipudi

Karvy Stock Broking Limited, Financial District, Gachibowli, Hyderabad, India

Dr Rajesh W Vaidya

Assistant Professor, Faculty In-charge Training and Placement, (DMT) Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering & Management, Nagpur, India

Budumuru Muralidhar

International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)

Telangana, India

ABSTRACT

In this empirical study we are presenting the results of our survey research on remote working by employees of IT and E-Commerce industry employees during the

Coronavirus (Covid-19) Pandemic with reference to Hyderabad Metro An empirical

survey was carried out during the lockdown period, 25 March 2020 - 20 April 2020

using research survey instrument, an undisguised questionnaire The eight independent

factors Team work, Communication, Peer, Job related factors, Organization Policies,

Organization Climate, Job Satisfaction, Psychological factors dependent factor

psychological wellbeing of the employees The Psychological wellbeing was measured

using the modified and shortened version of 18-item version scale of Ryff and Keyes

using six factors - Self-acceptance, Personal growth, Purpose in life, Environmental

mastery, Autonomy and Positive relations with others The survey instrument validity

Preprint not peer reviewed

and reliability was assessed using Cronbach alpha (overall C-alpha measured at 0.92)

for all the items and Split-Half (odd-even) Correlation 0.82 whereas Split-Half with

Spearman-Brown Adjustment at 0.94 The results from the General Linear Model

Multivariate analysis indicate Communication, Organization climate, Organization

Policies, Job Satisfaction and Psychological factors significantly influencing the

psychological wellbeing of employees in information technology sector during the

survey period of Covid-19 pandemic

Keywords: COVID-19, psychological wellbeing, Cronbach alpha, Remote working,

Autonomy

Cite this Article: Dr KDV Prasad, Dr Mruthyanjaya Rao Mangipudi, Dr Rajesh W

Vaidya, Budumuru Muralidhar, Organizational Climate, Opportunities, Challenges and

Psychological Wellbeing of the Remote Working Employees during Covid-19

Pandemic: A General Linear Model Approach with Reference to Information

Technology Industry in Hyderabad, International Journal of Advanced Research in

Engineering and Technology (IJARET), 11(4), 2020, pp 372-389

http://www.iaeme.com/IJARET/issues.asp?JType=IJARET&VType=11&IType=4

1 INTRODUCTION

The recent Covid-19 outbreak changed working landscape to a great extent The institutions

and organizations of both public and private sector should reflect on their learnings from

employees working remotely and its arrangements The institutions and the organizations to

give more liberty to the employees to adjust their working schedules to suit to their well-being

It is not only for the employee, individually, but to every organization and the society, and the

world as a whole to get tuned to this new situation The working class slowly emerges and tries

to adjust and deliver its best as responsible members of a natural ecosystem Every human

resource within a working landscape attempts to balance his/her own needs with the needs of

the environment

The work from home has become a buzz phrase, in particular with the Information

Technology (IT) and the IT enabled Sector, mainly to ensure engaging the workforce, to reach

out to the internal and the external stakeholders, to retain the talent and maintain attrition rate

to its low on one hand The situation throws down challenges for many of the people to either

up-skilling or re-skilling on a war-foot basis without giving any time, else they may become

vulnerable to the exercise of trimming the team size by the companies Remote working has

become an essential work-practice It saves the commuting time, the overheads and the

resources associated with physical office management The work practice in all the sectors,

where the productivity, services and solutions can be managed without the necessity of being

physically present, such as information technology, pharma, healthcare, research and

development, eCommerce, etc., However, it is not possible to manage the workforce belong to

unskilled and unorganized sector, which constitute a considerable number of total workforce

As far as information technology sector is concerned, they are finding the ways and means

to figure out the activities that can be accomplished remotely using latest communication

technologies like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp, bluejeans, Webex, Hangouts etc

Several organizations irrespective of the sector convenes virtual meetings/conferences/

workshops/seminars via the above mentioned communication tools It is expected that some of

the people would suffer from post-pandemic stress and some of the people might realize their

inner strengths and display a great amount of gratitude with what they have This would mean

the employees would go through a lot of emotional journey, and their psychological well-being Preprint not peer reviewed

would have its own impacts, which will be revealed, studied and understood only by

undertaking another research post-pandemic and compare the situation

1.1 What is Remote Work?

Remote work is a working practice that encourages professionals to work beyond the

conventional office setting This is based on the idea that there is no need for work to be

performed in a particular location When compared of commuting to workplace every day and

work from a fixed desk, remotely working by the people carrying out their activities and tasks,

and achieve their goals anywhere they opt yields much more productivity The employees have

reasonable control to plan their days to see that their professional and personal lives can be

existed to their fullest potential and satisfaction and coexist peacefully (Remote year, 2020)

This is a conceptual shift and remote work has capitalized on that independence The beauty

of remote work is the fact that an employee can choose to work in a way that makes work-life

balance perfect However, some employees need to visit to the office monthly/fortnight to have

face to face peer meetings with an opportunity to work remotely for the majority of the working

week, but have to commute to in-person meetings at the office one day a week Another concept

co working spaces and sharing economies are on rise where an organization or an employee

The co working spaces are hubs of productivity, community, and technology, offering great

scope for network connectivity to get the work done The co working spaces fall between full

traditional workplace and remote work or work from home

The benefits and advantages of remote work increase productivity, work-life balance,

saving the commuting time and office resources, and provide more flexible lifestyle This helps

women to overcome genetic/gynecology challenges so she can attend the office tasks at her

comfort An employee also could pursue his/her long standing hobbies, professional pursuits

etc., which could not be fulfilled due to time constraints or due to lack of freedom at workplace

to pursue them Remote employees are less stressed compared to in-office counter parts with

decreased absenteeism and better health and well ness (Royal Society for Public Health in the

UK, 2014, PGi 2014) It was also observed a renewed passion for their with motivation in the

employees working remotely

As part of benefits to the employer higher productivity as the employee puts more effort,

increased cost savings as the decrease in office rent, infrastructure and maintenance costs, and

higher employee engagement One study report that the employees are ready to quit the present

job one that offer remote working (in a survey by TINYpulse)

3 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A remote employee who is hired by a company but operates beyond the conventional office

environment-working from a nearby coworking room, from home, in any city around the globe

This idea requires a lot of consideration about a competent, working style employee with a

meaningful discussion with the boss Employees can create a remote work case to get peer

acceptance (Remote work 2020) Several remote work challenges like different time zones,

over working, bead health habits, distractions in the home,

The world has turned into remote working or work from home concept wherever possible

due to Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) an infectious disease caused by a severe acute

respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) a mutated virus which is less virulent in

India The disease was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China and spread globally,

resulting into pandemic The availability of tools like team viewer, splashtop, Microsoft remote

desktop, zoom, Microsoft teams, and owl are some of the communication tools essential for

remote working, work prioritization are reported and solutions were provide by (Melanie Preprint not peer reviewed

Pinola, 2020.) The SCIKEY MindMatch stud reported that 99.8% workforce in IT sector

incapable of remote working as reported in Economic Times Felstead and Henseke (2017)

critically assessed the win-win situation when more and more work is being detached from

place for both employers and employees The results were reported analyzing labour market

data, based on the factors knowledge economy, the growth in flexible employment and

organizational responses

Daniel Wheatley (2017) reported the positive impact of of flexible working arrangements

(FWAs), and positive effects for men and women on job satisfaction using the British

Household Panel Survey and Understanding Society, 2001–10/11 Standy Stples (2001)

reported the differences remote working employees and non-remote workers, and mentioned

that Interpersonal trust of the employee in the peer is strongly associated with higher

self-perceptions of performance, higher job satisfaction and lower job stress and weak support of

physical connectivity and its impact (i e., the availability of IT) on job satisfaction, supporting

the enabling role of IT The remote workers and peer of higher level of interpersonal trust due

to frequent communications The remote working can improve employee improve employee

productivity, creativity and morale when it right done and perfectly planned Zara Greenbaum

(2019) Kristen Senz 2019 reported the benefits of the remote working to the companies the

gain could add $1.3 billion in each year Based on a patent's average value, this productivity

gain could add $1.3 billion of value to the US economy in an year based on the patent average

Adam Hickman and Jennifer Robison (2020) reported from Gallup Research data that

remote work improves business outcomes, attracts talent and an engaged workforce has the best

financial outcomes Hickman A reported the how the workplace isolation will influence a

remote worker because of lack of management acumen, organizational expertise, to

development implement strategies on remote work policies and procedures Based on the above

literature survey the following research gap is identified

What are the common understandings about how workplace isolation may influence a

remote employee’s performance in a customer service organization in the United States?the

Social Exchange Theory (Emerson 1976), which is dependent on mutually agreement and

gratifying among both the sides involving communication is the basis of this theory Emerson’s

(1976) theory, explains that a social exchange is needed among remote workers and their

employer to preserve a remote employee from experiencing workplace isolation This

conceptual framework is essential for employee psychological wellbeing and remote worker

experience stress because the absence of social exchange with in-office worker) The free access

to technology, peers, and more free communication can avoid the risk of remote working

challenges (Greer and Payne, 2014) Therefore, psychological wellbeing of a remote worker

depends human interaction, a social aspect and missing elements remote working Therefore,

the outcome variable psychological wellbeing also included

4 RESEARCH QUESTION

There is any correlation between the organisational and individual factors psychological

well-being of remote working employees during Covid19-Pandemic?

Is there are any challenges and opportunities of the employees working remotely and

psychological well-being during Covid-19 lockdown?

4.1 Research Gap

The Government of Indian announced a three-week lock during 24 March to 14 April and

extended till 3 May 2020 The idea behind the lock down is to contain the spread of the virus Preprint not peer reviewed

maintaining social distance among the human beings Therefore, several organisations decided

wherever possible, that their employees will be allowed to work remotely The remote working

options was followed almost all sectors of employees As the Covid-19 Pandemic was reported

during December 2019, there no specific research articles, reviews of reports available in

particular, related to remote working during Covid-19 or any similar situation in the past

Further, there is not a single article reported on the psychological wellbeing of the remote

working employees during any pandemic time in the past Therefore, the authors considered to

carry out this study surveying the remote working employees during March 24 to 20 April 2020

and reported the results

5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Theoretical Framework: The author followed the modified version of the model proposed by

Anderson et al (2015) with challenges and opportunities as predictors of the Psychological

wellbeing of Remote worker

Figure 1 This diagram depicts how an employee is subjected to his/her well-being and the factors that

affect the ecosystem within and outside the organization

Hypotheses

After reviewing the research an identifying the problem the following hypotheses were framed

H o1 : Employee individual, organisational, and external factors significantly influence the

psychological well-being of an employee during Covid-19 Pandemic

H 11 : Employee individual, organisational, and external factors does not significantly influence

the psychological well-being of an employee during Covid-19 Pandemic Preprint not peer reviewed

H 02 :There are significant gender and age differences on factors effecting the psychological

wellbeing of the employees in IT sector

H 12 : There are no significant gender and age differences on factors effecting the psychological

wellbeing of the employees in IT sector

Estimation of sample size: As the population size is unknown the researchers used Cochran

(1977) formula to estimate the sample size for this empirical study Cochran (1977) developed

a formula to calculate a representative sample for proportion as

z 2 pq

no= -

e 2

where no is the sample size, z is the selected critical value of desired confidence level, p is

the estimated proportion of an attribute that is present in the population, q 1 p and e is the desired

level of precision and this formula was used as IT sector where population is unknown assuming

the maximum variability which is equal to 50% (p=0.5) and taking 95% confidence level with

±5% precision, the required sample size is

p = 0.5 and hence q = 1-0.5 = 0.5; e = 0.05 and z = 1.96

(1.96)2(0.5)(0.5)

no = - = 384.16 = 384

(0.05)2

Therefore, we have chosen a sample size of > 384 i.e 400

The sample demography and description are presented in Tables 1 and 2 and the study

variables both dependent and independent are presented in Table 3

Table 1 Demography of the sample

Source: Primary data

Table 2 Sample description

Source: Primary data

Table 3 Independent factors that measured dependent factor psychological wellbeing

Preprint not peer reviewed

Factor Description No items

Dependent factors - psychological wellbeing

Based on shortened version psychological wellbeing scale Ryff and Keyes (1995)

6 RESEARCH INSTRUMENT

Measurement of internal, external, and organization factors: A standardized, undisguised

research instrument based on five point Likert Type scale, with rating scale of Strongly agree

=5; Agree = 4; Neutral =3; Disagree =2; Strongly disagree 2 were used to measured Team work,

Peer, Organizational climate, Organizational policies, Job related factors Communication, Job

satisfaction and Psychological factors following the model of Prasad et al (206, 2017, 2018)

The total items measured are 37

Measurement of psychological wellbeing based factors: A shortened version of 18-point scaler

developed by Ryff and Keyes (1995) was used This is a 7-point rating scale with Strongly

agree = 7, Somewhat agree = 6, A little agree = 5, Neither agree nor disagree = 4, A little

disagree = 3, Somewhat disagree = 2, Strongly disagree =1 and the factors measured are

Autonomy, Environmental Mastery, Personal Growth, Positive Relations, Purpose in Life and

the Self-Acceptance with 3 items for each factors

There are some items worded in the opposite way on measurement scale Reverse-scored

measured using the following method

((Number of points on the scale) + 1) - (Answer from the respondent)

For example, if Question 1 is a 7-point scale and the respondent answered 3 on Question 1,

the recoded answer was: (7 + 1) - 3 = 5, therefore 5 was entered for this response

As we have used to types of Likert scales one with 5 point and other with 7-point scale For

easy analysis we have transformed the two Likert scales used into one 5-point common scale

of Likert type The linear transformation procedure was used to convert the 7 point scale to a

5-point scale In the 7-point liker type scale minimum is 1 and maximum is 7 and using a two

stage calculation 1) first finding linear transformation to make the new scale 0 as minimum and

1 as maximum, and following this method transformation was made to make 7-point scale to

a five-point scale using the following formula

X = (x - a) / (b - a)

Just substitute a for x to make the result as 0, and then substitute b for x to see that the result

is 1 This will be continued in the stage two using new minimum to be A and the new maximum

to be B The transformation will be:

Y = (B - A) * X + A

Substitute 0 for X to see that the result is A, and 1 for X to see that the result is B

Combining all whole first transformation in place of X in the second:

Y = (B - A) * (x - a) / (b - a) + A

Preprint not peer reviewed

For converting 7-point scale to be converted to a 5-point scale Since the minimum of the

7-point scale is 1, we have a=1, b=7 in the first transformation Similarly, for the second

transformation, we have A=1, B=5 Putting them together we get:

x1 x2

1 1.0 Strongly agree

2 2.5 (average of 2+3) = somewhat agree and A little agree

3 4.0 Neither Agree and Nor disagree

4 5.5 Somewhat disagree and A little disagree

5 7.0 Strongly disagree

In particular, notice that 1 is sent to 1, and 7 to 5

7 DATA ANALYSIS

We have applied statistical techniques that suits for the study to draw the inferences and

conclusions from primary data We used descriptive statistics, standard deviation and dispersion

methods Psychological wellbeing was categorized as low, medium and high level All the data

analysis was carried out using statistical package for social sciences ver 26

7.1 Reliability Methods

The internal consistency, reliability of the questionnaire was measured estimating Cronbach

alpha values, Split-Half (odd-even) Correlation, Split-Half with Spearman-Brown Adjustment

The values in the Table 4 indicate the survey instrument is reliable and consistent

Table 4 Independent and dependent factors of the study

Correlation

Split-Half with Spearman-Brown Adjustment

Psychological wellbeing (Dependent factors) Factor Description

Overall C-alpha :0.93

Preprint not peer reviewed

8 RESULTS

General Linear Model (GLM) Multivariate analysis: In our empirical study the dependent

variable psychological wellbeing an outcome variable is measured with six subscales,

Environment Mastery, Personal Growth, Positive Relations

Self-Acceptance, Autonomy and Purpose of Life against 8 independent variables Team

Work

Communication, Peer, Job related factors, Organization Policies, Organization climate, Job

Satisfaction, Psychological factors that effecting the psychological wellbeing of the employees

in Information Technology Sector

The General Liner Model multivariate analysis was carried as we are interested to measure

effect of independent variable on each of the psychological wellbeing factors as described

earlier In GLM model more than one dependent variable can be predicted using independent

variables, and we also studied to observe if there are any significant age group and gender

differences that effect the psychological wellbeing of the employees The detailed results are

presented below

Test of Homogeneity of Variances

Table 5 Box's Test of Equality of Covariance Matricea

a Tests the null hypothesis that the observed covariance matrices of the dependent variables are equal across groups

a Design: Intercept + Team Work + Communication + Peer + Job Related + Organisation Policy + Organization Climate + Psychological + Job Satisfaction + Gender

The null hypothesis for this test is that the observed covariance matrices for the dependent

variables are equal across groups As the result for the test is non-significant test result (i.e one

with a large p-value) indicates that the covariance matrices are equal (Table 5)

We have used the Bartlett's test (Snedecor and Cochran, 1989) to test all the samples have

equal homogeneity of variances to carry out the GLM analysis The results indicate Bartlett’s

test of Sphericity significant (0.00) indicates the matrices for all the three variables are not

identity matrix (Table 6), so the null hypothesis is rejected The data generated through the

responses are fit for carrying our further analysis

Table 6 KMO and Bartlett's Test statistic of independent factors

Bartlett’s test pf Sphericitya

Tests the null hypothesis that the residual covariance matrix is proportional to an identity matrix

a Design: Intercept + Team Work + Communication + Peer + Job Related + organization Policy + Organization Climate + Psychological + Job Satisfaction + Gender

Preprint not peer reviewed

The homogeneity of variance in the same is measured using Leven’s test of equality of error

variances The significance of Levene's test is > 0.05, which suggests that the equal variances

assumption is not violated (Table 7)

Table 7 Levene's Test of Equality of Error Variancesa

Tests the null hypothesis that the error variance of the dependent variable is equal across groups

a Design: Intercept + Team Work + Communication + Peer + Job Related + Organisation Policy + Organization Climate + Psychological + Job Satisfaction + Gender

Table 8 General Linear Model: Multivariate testsa

Squared

Trace

Root

Trace

Root

Communication Pillai's Trace 0.077 2.449 b 6.000 375.000 0.027 0.077

Trace

Root

Trace

Root

Trace

Root

Organisation

Policy

Pillai's Trace 0.097 3.141 b 6.000 375.000 0.006 0.097 Preprint not peer reviewedWilks' Lambda 0.903 3.141 b 6.000 375.000 0.006 0.097