Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on the Workload and Home Office in Some European Countries

Abstract

The spread of a new and unknown viral infectious disease named the Covid-19 pandemic paralysed world without any preparation time. It has significantly changed approaches to organizational management as well as HR policy. Governments have taken immediate measures to address the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, including protecting jobs, providing financial support to businesses and households experiencing a sharp drop in income. The present study focuses on a subfield of a previous larger research, on the change in workload due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in the frequency of remote work, as well as their consequences. The increase in telecommuting is one of the innovations that can clearly be attributed to the impact of the pandemic. It has become an accepted form of work in many sectors where even the professionals did not think of using it before. The research has been conducted based on the questionnaire consisted of groups of questions related to the demographic characteristics (age, gender, place of residence, position), development of the workload, and the more complicated working conditions caused by Covid19 pandemic. The respondents from Hungary, Montenegro, Spain and the United Kingdom were selected using a respondent-driven time space sampling procedure. The method of sampling and the size of the target group can be considered as limitations of our research – the statistical conditions for evaluation are nevertheless met, given the for the number of elements and normality of the sample as a whole and its individual groups. As results, authors found that the same epidemic in each country led to different workload increases and affected subordinates and non-subordinates, and women and men to different degrees. Among the effects of the crises caused by the pandemic, the increase in workload is the most significant. That must be taken into consideration in the HRM policy. The most important finding is that the increasing frequency of remote work to a certain extend can be considered as innovation. The nature of the research conducted on basis of four European countries can contribute to the future development of scientific study related the solution of similar problems in HR management and labour organization.