Work-From-Home Adjustment in the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Psychological Climate for Face Time

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many organizations to mandate large-scale full-time work-from-home (WFH), shattering the dichotomy between remote workers and those who are physically in the office. Emerging findings on full-time WFH have not yet brought clarity on the causes and mechanisms of employees’ well-being and productivity in this context that contrasts with prior-pandemic work. Drawing on the transactional theory of stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), we argue that employees who perceive their organization’s psychological climate as emphasizing face time may appraise full-time WFH as a threat and, as a result, perceive higher availability expectations on the part of their organization. We further argue that this relationship will be stronger in the US than in Europe, where emploment protection is higher. In turn, perceived expectations of extended availability predict WFH adjustment, a multi-dimensional affective, behavioral, and cognitive construct we borrow from expatriate adjustment’s literature to guide future research on WFH. In a two-wave study on an organizational sample of 532 employees working in the US and in Europe, we find that a psychological climate for face time hampers employees’ adjustment to WFH through increased perceptions of availability expectations, and that this process is exacerbated in the US.