The Effect of Telecommuting on Employee Performance in Financial Institutions in Kericho Town, Kenya in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Telecommuting entails employees being allowed to work from their homes full time or even part time maintaining constant connection to the office through digitization. With regard to Job design, it is a well-thought-out as a suitable substitute of working from the normal offices in the modern world. With advancements in technology, wider operations competing with the need to cut down costs, organizations have increased their focus more on the components of teleworking. In the recent time of successive lockdown and imposed restrictions created by COVID pandemic intensified the use of telecommuting. The aim of the article is to analyze telecommuting implementation in face of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on employee performance in the financial institution in Kericho, Kenya. According to the literature, telecommuting had a moderate but positive effect on employee performance. Descriptive research design was used to survey a target population of 29 financial institutions. The study adopted stratified sampling approach to identify and classify the financial institutions into various categories. The key respondents within the different departments were identified using convenience and a study sample size of 116 respondents was obtained. Questionnaires were used as the main method to collect the data. The study findings p = .006 indicated that there was no significant relationship between telecommuting and employee performance in financial institutions in Kericho town. Relating the study findings