The Covid-19 Pandemic Response: A Study of Teleworking During the Malaysian MCO: What Penang Employees Had to Say

Abstract

One of the main effects of the Covid-19 pandemic is the working arrangement of many employees to work from home across occupations. It is understood that when unplanned change needs to be implemented, employees from some employment groups who had very little experience with working from home have to embrace the new arrangement while employees across employment who preferred to work from home, are now able to jump into such working arrangements. Consequently, the blanket arrangement to work from home may affect the employees differently. Determining the conditions that positively support teleworking will ensure companies to be more prepared if the needs arise in the future or even to continuously implement such arrangement in relation to the current situation. A descriptive qualitative study was conducted in Penang and a total of sixteen employees were approached for the study. The participants in the study were purposively selected to ensure best contribution to the issues highlighted in the study. In general, many of the participants have mixed feelings towards teleworking and some of them had no intention of continuing with teleworking in the future. Based on the thematic analysis, results showed that three themes emerged from the data and they are: conflict of commitment, context, and proficiencies.