Studies on the impact of work from home during covid-19 pandemic: a systematic literature review

• Main Authors: Nur Ain Alifuddin, Dzurizah Ibrahim
• Format: Article
• Language: English; English
• Published: Penerbit UMS 2021
• Subjects: HD4801-8943 Labor. Work. Working class; R702-703 Medicine and the humanities. Medicine and disease in relation to history, literature, etc.
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/30420/1/Studies%20on%20the%20impact%20of%20work%20from%20home%20during%20covid-19%20pandemic.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/30420/2/Studies%20on%20the%20impact%20of%20work%20from%20home%20during%20covid-19%20pandemic1.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/30420/; https://jurcon.ums.edu.my/ojums/index.php/jkob/article/view/3253

When the pandemic outbreak happened back in the year 2020, the Government and the policymakers took preventive steps and directive measures to sustain social movement and infection among the citizens. Common action that has been taken globally was the implementation of lockdown. Consequently, non-essential businesses or organizations had to resolve to transition from central office to work-from-home for as long as the lockdown period ended. This has brought a greater change in the world of work and boosted the experimentation of work-from-home arrangements worldwide. Despite it being a practice that some may have experienced before, it is still relatively uncommon and unusual to be done on such a large scale for some countries. Therefore, many are interested to see the outcome of work-from-home, the impact it had on employers, employees, and companies. However, the ample amount of works of literature made it hard to distinguish the direction and trend of this research. This paper aims to identify and highlight the major findings on the impacts of work-from-home by reviewing 55 published papers in the year between 2020 to 2021 and analyze them through a thematic analysis. The results show 60 percent of these studies are covered by the field of social sciences which both involve developed and developing countries. Nevertheless, the impact of work from-home was found common as the problem used to arise even before the pandemic happened. This gives an opportunity in future studies to finally resolve some of these problems if work-from-home soon becomes the ‘new norm’ in the world of work.