WORK PERFORMANCE AND WORK FROM HOME: THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Employee job performance has been associated with management since its inception as a scientific discipline. The goal of proper management of human activity is to achieve higher job performance. In its current form, job performance is not only associated with quantity, but quality as well. From the point of view of an organization's leadership, managers or supervisors within the work environment, in the past, leading their employees to better job performance was relatively easy. With the progress of science and technology, a gradual change connected with the introduction of information and communication technology can be seen and certain types of work started to shift significantly to the home environment. This trend was greatly accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic when, as part of interventions to prevent the spread of the virus, organisations had to react by introducing work from home wherever possible. Working from home is gradually becoming a working standard that is being used by more and more employers and employees. Many employers, also thanks to the pandemic period, have found that several kinds of costs can be saved by introducing work-from-home. On the other hand, working from home has become equally convenient for employees, bringing many advantages, but on the other hand also disadvantages, such as loss of social contact or more complicated teamwork. Of course, working from home brings other aspects, such as changing factors and the environment where work is realised, which is also connected to work performance. The aim of this paper is to identify, based on a literature review, key research themes related to work performance and working from home. To identify relevant literature, Web of Science database was selected while this research focuses on peer-reviewed publications published in English language up to April 2023. The total scope of the selected publications analysed based on the Prisma methodology is 14 research articles between 2008 and 2023. The published studies includes the following research directions: 1. Change in work performance in the context of the implementation of Covid-19 interventions, 2. Gender roles and their impact on work from home and work performance, 3. Mental and emotional aspects at home and the allocation of time for work, 4. The use of modern telecommunication technologies their impact on teamwork in the context of work from home. These 14 studies are found in several journals (n-11). The first study in the final set is from 2008. Based on a dataset taken from Web of Science (the keyword string "work performance and work from home"), a map of the keywords and the most cited authors extracted from that string was created. These maps are created using the analytical tool VOSviewer. Based on the publications analysed, the most frequently cited author was identified (Bakker A.B.) The findings of this study contribute to the literature related to work performance and working from home.