My home is my new office: The relationship between environmental comfort, workplace attachment, and psychological needs in the context of remote working

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more organizations have implemented remote working, and more and more workers have experienced an overlap between home and work environments. Home environments, therefore, had to be readjusted in their spatial configurations to meet and satisfy the needs of workers. Through the lens of Self-Determination Theory, the study aims to investigate how perceived remote workplace environment quality indicators (PRWEQIs) can contribute to greater home working engagement through the satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs and attachment to the home workplace. The research consists of two cross-sectional studies. The first one examines how the place-related needs of autonomy, competence, and relationship, satisfied by the home working place features, can mediate the effect of perceived comfort on home workplace attachment. The second study analyzes how comfort and workplace attachment can contribute to satisfying the same needs referred to the job activities, thus generating greater engagement in the home worker. The research provides supportive empirical evidence that workplace attachment can also be developed under home working conditions.