Intended work from home frequency after the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of socio-demographic, psychological, disability, and work-related factors

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has allowed many workers to experience working from home. While in most cases, the transition to work from home was not voluntary, it forced many employees to experiment with new work schedules and new ways of communication. The current paper uses 3057 responses from a national survey to study the reported intended frequency of work from home after the pandemic. A mixed logit model with heterogeneity in the means of random parameters is estimated to gain more insights into the employees’ work from home frequency categories. The model estimation results indicate that in addition to the typical socio-demographic factors such as gender, age, education, income, race and ethnicity, factors such as environmental friendliness, life satisfaction, together with other work-related experiences will determine how often employees will intend to work from home after the pandemic. The model also includes factors relating to workers’ disability and therefore the findings paint an interesting and comprehensive picture about the work from home paradigm in the post pandemic world. Lastly, the study suggests numerous policy implications and recommendations that could leverage the experience with telework brought by the pandemic to formulate inclusive, equitable, and environmentally friendly strategies.