A Pandemic Experience of Remote Working: Reflections on Emotions

Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic employs spectacular and specific characteristics that are unique only to this period. First of all, remote working during Covid-19 is enforced. In other words, it is not a choice but rather an obligation to work remotely. In addition, mobility and socialization are limited under pandemic circumstances. Moreover, companies and employees had to switch remote working suddenly, and therefore they were unprepared for this sudden change (Waizenegger, McKenna, Cai, & Bendz, 2020). Before the pandemic, remote working could have been perceived as a “positive” option that provides more freedom and flexibility to the employees, employers, and scholars in the field. However, Covid-19’s enforced remote working unraveled the efficiencies of our working assumptions and challenged them. In fact, it can be argued that “the meaning of work” has also changed during the pandemic. In order to maintain the “business as usual”, it is on the shoulders of the knowledge workers to quickly adapt to the sudden merge of the living and working environment and the new ways of digital interacting.