Abstract
Due to the confinement imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic situation, companies adopted remote work more than ever. The rapid rise of remote work also affected local life and many employers introduced or extended their telework activities because of the associated advantages. However, despite the evident positive benefits, some employees were pressured to work remotely while ill. This evidence brought new challenges to the presenteeism literature. This article investigates how individual, economic/societal, and organizational/sectorial/supervisory-related variables can moderate the role of a contagious disease, such as the COVID-19, in explaining presenteeism behavior. Moreover, the current research presents a multi-level conceptual model (i.e., organizational, individual, supervisory factors) to describe how a new construct of remote-work presenteeism behavior mediates the relationship between different post pandemic health conditions (e.g., allergies, back pain, depression, anxiety) and future cumulative negative consequences. The authors suggested that the widespread pervasive adoption of remote work because of COVID-19 has important implications for the presenteeism literature and opens avenues for further research.
Highlights
COVID-19 has dramatically affected workers and organizations around the globe (c.f., Salem et al, 2021)
Our model considers that the relationship between acute health conditions related to pandemic outbreaks and presenteeism was affected by occupational/sectorial and supervision-related factors
Our model shows that remote-work presenteeism and cumulative negative consequences appear as a consequence of several supervisor and individual characteristics
Summary
COVID-19 has dramatically affected workers and organizations around the globe (c.f., Salem et al, 2021). Our model accounts for three types of factors: (1) individual (e.g., fear of contagion, personality traits, attitudes toward the media information, availability to use remote technology, and work-life balance); (2) economic/societal (e.g., employment rates, precarious work and immigration politics, political ideologies, health care protection, societal cultural values); and (3) occupational/sectorial/supervision-related factors (e.g., sector of activity, job crafting and flexibility, organizational financial status, organizational culture, organizational climate, HR practices, abusive and unethical leadership) These factors further influence the relationship between an acute and contagious health event such as COVID-19 and presenteeism (see Figure 1). In Model 2 (see Figure 2), we conceptualize a framework in which individuals with different health conditions (i.e., acute, episodic, or chronic) are “invited” to develop remote work presenteeism This behavior is influenced by several organizational variables (e.g., past positive experience with remote work, sector of activity, adoption of digital practices, cultures of being permanently available, and presenteeism climate).
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