WORKING FROM HOME – A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN THE BEGINNING OF THE PANDEMIC PERIOD AND A YEAR LATER

The study on working from home has received growing interest from researchers over the last year, when the coronavirus pandemic turned many people into remote workers overnight. Romanians used teleworking much less than other Europeans before the pandemic, but now that they have been forced to work from home, their numbers have increased. Nevertheless, the crisis caused by the pandemic accelerates teleworking and reduces the digital differences between European countries. In Romania, many of the employees who work from home today have never had this experience before. They started this way of working without any prior training or preparation. The current study aims to find how working from home has evolved in terms of productivity in the last year, how employees’ perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages have changed, but also which are the long-term consequences of working from home. For this purpose, we analyzed the answers received after administering a questionnaire to the employees from three private companies in Bihor county at the beginning of the pandemic and a year later. The final results indicate a significant difference in how employees perceive this way of working after a year. If at the beginning of the pandemic the results indicated a negative effect of working from home on productivity, now, after a year, the results indicated a positive effect. Their answers referring to the advantages and challenges of working from home have changed after a year’s experience of working from home. While the main benefits have remained the same, the biggest challenges have changed.