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Since the World Health Organization (WHO) classified coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a pandemic in March 2020, governments have adopted social distancing measures and suspended face-to-face activities as preventive and mandatory strategies to contain the spread of the virus.
The relationship between work and digital technologies (within the framework of informational capitalism, which has been expanding since the 1970s) is marked by different phases, has different characteristics, and introduces new work processes while also raises many questions about how workers experience, perceive, live, and develop strategies to handle this (Zukerfeld, 2020). Although remote work is not a new practice, it certainly was not the most common form of work, that is, until the outbreak of the pandemic when many people had to work from home.
Given this scenario, this article aims to analyze the perceptions and experiences of workers forced to set up teleworking during the COVID-19 pandemic and identify favorable and unfavorable factors for Quality of Work Life (QWL). The following aspects are discussed: the dichotomy between public and private and the Activity-Centered Ergonomics Applied to Quality of Life at Work (ACE-QLW) as a theoretical-methodological framework that allowed us to understand the different dimensions of this situation.
The changes to the world of work brought on by informational capitalism can be analyzed from different concepts, such as teleworking, knowledge workers, immaterial labor, and digital labor (Zukerfeld, 2020). The formulation and proposition of the work-from-home concept are attributed to Jack Nilles, who coined the term telecommuting in the 1970s to refer to the profession that, through the instruments of telecommunication, guarantees a direct connection between the company and the worker, regardless of their locality (Nilles, 1997).
Different definitions for the term can be found in literature, such as an instrument of conciliation (referring to the context of organizational flexibility), a form of productive decentralization, or an environmental strategy. There is also a plurality of words associated with this expression: e-work, remote work, virtual work, work from home, teleworking, and telecommuting (Bosch & González-Castro, 2015). The International Labor Organization (ILO) also adopted the category to refer to workers who intensively use digital technologies far from the context of producing goods and services (Zukerfeld, 2020).
Thus, the modality in question is not a recent one, but it stood out as a work alternative in situations of isolation (Zukerfeld, 2020). Empirical evidence previously showed ambiguous perceptions and experiences concerning telework. However, it is now more urgent than ever to understand the effects of working from home in the face of such an unexpected and unique situation as compulsory isolation due to the health crisis. There is no consensus on the advantages of teleworking. For many people, teleworking has benefits, such as autonomy, flexible schedules, reduced travel expenses, and the possibility of greater family life (Mello, 1999). For others, however, teleworking represents work overload, problems reconciling work/life balance, and working in the same space they live and rest, especially during social isolation due to COVID-19 (Santos, 2020).
The challenges that come with teleworking affect organizations, their managers, and workers, and can prove difficult when negotiating the modus operandi of teleworking. There are obstacles related to communication and team development and adversities to the dissemination of organizational culture, and workers need the ability to self-manage (Barros & Silva, 2010). As far as self-management, Palermo et al. (2020) argue that, in the era of digital capitalism, different control mechanisms have emerged, a major one being the overall tendency for workers to exercise self-control and adjust to the demands of capital on their own, without being monitored or subjected to any kind of punishment for failure. This results in a self-disciplined and, ultimately, anxious worker.
Similarly, when analyzing the current scenario and opposing the Foucauldian paradigm about disciplinary society and subjects of obedience, Byung-Chul Han (2012) argues that 21st-century society is focused on performance, and the subject finds themselves wrapped up in a discourse of positivity. For this philosopher, this society would produce depressed and weakened subjects as a result of the exhaustion placed on them from the pressure for productivity and the lack of attachment since they have to abandon themselves to maximize their income. When it becomes more acute, this excess of work and income transforms into self-exploitation, and today’s mental illnesses would be pathological manifestations of this paradoxical freedom.
Compulsory teleworking has brought themes that have been long addressed by theorists back to the center of the debate, such as work/life balance, work/family conflict, and public/private life.
The difference between public and private life is a topic discussed in philosophy, sociology, economics, law, and psychology. From a philosophical point of view, one of the concerns is to differentiate what is public and what is private. According to Herb (2002), when analyzing the notions of public and private in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Hannah Arendt, public life is manifested in collectivity, in the discourse declared to others, and in the space of politics. Private life, however, refers to the individual and their privacy and is only constituted after the experience of the community or the collective.
According to Santos (2012), Arendt points out that it is up to the private to carry out all activities to guarantee survival, support to the individual, and maintain their life process, and the public is responsible for everything that can be seen and heard by all, the policy and the social, including work. He points out that Arendt considers the lack of distinction between public and private a significant risk for humanity, as it could lead to the loss of what is built in public, such as freedom, the expression of different opinions, and political life. It could also lead to the loss of the benefits of private life, such as the feeling of security and warmth one gets from family.
Based on the philosophical perspectives presented here, we can make psychological assessments of how these spheres are constituted for individuals. The public becomes the space for individual manifestations before the collective, to be seen and heard by everyone and see and hear others. It is a space with rules for social control and not for private control, with attributions, criticisms, comparisons, and even the pursuit of excellence in current society.
The private space comprises the individual and the family, home activities, relationships, rest, and other pleasurable activities. It is the space where one can be whomever one wants to be, away from the eyes and ears of others. Social roles performed in private spaces differ from those in public spaces; consequently, the physical, cognitive, and affective-emotional demands are also different.
People being obliged to work from home (the place which most represents one’s private life) can lead to many “confusions”, malaise, and a lack of quality of life. It is stressful trying to separate the public from the private in the same physical space, attempting to reconcile the different social roles with all their inherent attributions. The space one used to rest in is now also the space for work.
With compulsory teleworking, this indistinction between spaces has become a reality, and the study sought to reveal how workers experience this unique work configuration.
The impacts of social isolation on work are being investigated in many countries. Di Pasquale et al. (2020) conducted a study in Argentina, identifying three fields of activity that were affected by the adoption of teleworking: education, public administration, and commerce. In terms of the profiles of these compulsory teleworkers, they concluded that one third of women working in education reported being overworked due to their online activities, stating that the presence of dependents represented an obstacle to performing their work, especially when that presence was school children.
Similar results were found in Brazil by Lemos et al. (2020) in their study on women working from home during the pandemic. These women claimed they were exhausted due to having to meet the demands of work at the same time as meeting the demands of caring for their children and the home. This study analyzes the ambivalent nature of teleworking, as some of the interviewees highlighted positive aspects of working from home, such as having more time to enjoy physical and leisure activities.
In this study, we analyzed remote work during the pandemic and adopted the theoretical-methodological model of ACE-QLW (Ferreira, 2008). From an organizational perspective, QWL is a management principle that is generally expressed through norms, guidelines, and practices in work organization and socio-professional relations. The goal is to promote well-being, development, and organizational citizenship. For workers, QWL is expressed through well-being at work, opportunities for professional growth, recognition, and respect for individual characteristics (Ferreira, 2017).
The ACE-QLW examines workers’ perceptions about the following factors: working conditions, work organization, socio-professional work relationships, recognition and professional growth, use of computers, feelings of exhaustion, a desire to leave the job, health-related absences from work, well-being at work (predominance of positive affects), and malaise at work (predominance of negative affects) (Ferreira, 2017). Most of the participants’ experiences of well-being (positive emotions and frame of mind when performing tasks) revolve around health at work and indicate the presence of QWL. In contrast, their anxieties (negative emotions and frame of mind when performing tasks) revolve around work-related health risks and indicate the absence of QWL (Ferreira, 2017).
Although the ACE-QLW refers to an organization’s physical space, the reality imposed by the pandemic allows us to reflect on how this model can be applied to working from home.
Method
Participants and study design
The research was qualitative in nature, and the convenience sampling consisted of the snowball technique, applied to 12 individuals working from home who volunteered to participate in the study. The study was based on Resolution No. 510/2016 of the National Health Council of the Ministry of Health, in article 1, a single paragraph, item VII, which does not require registration in Research Ethics Committee at National Research Ethics Commission (Comitê de Ética em Pesquisa - CEP/Comissão Nacional de Ética em Pesquisa - CONEP) in reason of to the need for theoretical deepening on the pertinence of the ACE-QLW categories applied to the compulsory home office scenario due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethical norms concerning studies with human beings were aptly followed, which included the free and informed consent of all participants, assistance and clearing up any doubts provided to participants throughout the research, their ability to discontinue participation at any time, and ensuring the anonymity of participants. The authors are responsible for the data presented.
The profiles of the 12 workers who participated in the study can be described as follows: eight women and four men; ages ranging from 25 to over 65 (half of the respondents were between 36 and 46 years old); higher education (six of them had postgraduate degrees); equitable distribution between public and private sector workers (one individual was self-employed and five other participants were formal workers).
Instrument
A semi-structured interview was developed and used to collect information based on the six categories proposed in the theoretical model used in this study - the ACE-QLW (Ferreira, 2017):
Working conditions (WC): physical conditions (location, space, lighting, temperature), materials (inputs), instruments (equipment, furniture, station), and support (technical support).
Work organization (WO): time variables (deadline, breaks), control (monitoring, pressure, demand), job features (rhythm, repetition), overworking, and instructions (standards).
Socio-professional relationships (SPR): relationships with peers (help, solidarity, trust), relationships with superiors (freedom, dialogue, access, interest, cooperation, assignment, and completion of tasks), communication (freedom of expression), harmonious environment, and conflicts.
Professional growth and recognition (PGR): recognition at work (existential, institutional, professional achievement, dedication, results achieved) and professional growth (opportunity, incentives, equity, creativity, development).
Information technology (IT): representations of the quality of information technology support provided by the organization.
Feelings at work (FW): experiences, emotions, attachment, and individual stress at work.
Procedures and analysis of information
A semi-structured interview was developed and used to collect information.
All interviews were conducted individually on the Zoom platform and recorded for later analysis. The information was transcribed and submitted to content analysis, according to Bardin (1977). In the following section (“Results”), the participants were coded based on the order in which the interviews were conducted, with P1, P2, P3, P5, P6, P7, P8, and P10 representing women, and P4, P9, P11, and P12 representing men.
Results
The six main categories that comprise the theoretical model of the ACE-QLW guided the content analysis of the corpus obtained from the transcripts of the 12 interviews. Table 1 presents the sources of well-being and malaise related to WC.
Table 1 Working conditions (WC): Sources of well-being and malaise
| Source of well-being for WC | n | % | Source of malaise for WC | n | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Appropriate physical space/furniture | 6 | 50 | Appropriate physical space/furniture | 9 | 75 |
| Reconciliation of personal/family life and work/home life with work | 7 | 58.3 | Interruptions/unforeseen events | 8 | 66.6 |
| Organizational support | 4 | 33.3 | Lack of training/adapting | 6 | 50 |
| Ease of being at home | 9 | 75 | Conflicts with home life | 9 | 75 |
| Total | 26 | Total | 32 |
According to the analyses, teleworkers during the pandemic have had WC with no QWL.
This excerpt illustrates how teleworkers see well-being as closely linked to the commute between home and work: “The relief of not getting caught in traffic, of already being at home. Sometimes you wake up and don’t even want to take a shower, you get up and go to work” (P1). The following excerpt talks about malaise and complaints about the physical environment and conflicts with domestic life:
At home, it is totally inappropriate because I work in the living room, at the dinner table, and while my children are watching TV. I have to take classes, and sometimes I share the space with other people, like my daughter or my husband. It’s not ergonomic because I’m sitting at the dining room table; there’s no chair, no footrest, and I don’t even have a place to keep my pen. So, every time I have dinner, I have to remove the computer and then put it back, and I end up losing my pen (P8).
Regarding WO, an analysis of the corpus indicates a predominance of malaise and risk to QWL, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2 Work organization (WO): Sources of well-being and malaise
| Source of well-being for WO | n | % | Source of malaise for WO | n | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flexibility of routine | 9 | 75 | Increased workload | 7 | 58.3 |
| Flexibility of work | 7 | 58.3 | Lack of work organization/time | 8 | 66.6 |
| Supervision and control | 5 | 41.6 | Problems with supervision and control | 5 | 41.6 |
| Increased productivity | 3 | 25 | Problems balancing “being at home” with “being at work” | 7 | 58.3 |
| Reduced workload | 1 | 8.3 | Decrease in quality and productivity | 2 | 16.6 |
| Increased pressure | 3 | 25 | |||
| Total | 25 | Total | 32 |
Well-being in the WO category is related to flexibility. P10’s statement reflects this analysis:
Here at home, as I have already done the work I needed to do, I can get around to some personal things. I think this freedom that teleworking offers is good.
Workers experience malaise with WO when they refer to increased workload, having difficulty with work/life balance, and being available full-time, which alludes to the increased time spent doing work-related activities:
We think that working from home means we’re available all the time, but we’re not (P1).
Sometimes you have to work much longer than you originally expected to, and this is not taken into account (P11).
The feeling is that you are working all the time. You might be in your room, but you’re just three meters away from work. If you sit down, you’ll have an e-mail to answer or a spreadsheet to fill. Nowadays, you leave nothing at work, and it is within your reach (P9).
The systematization of content analysis in the SPR category reveals a predominance of sources of well-being: good relationship with the boss (n = 8); good relationship with co-workers (n = 6); good relationship with external clients (n = 2); conversations by WhatsApp (n = 2). The malaise in that category was related to: less contact with colleagues and co-workers (n = 7); tension in relationships and conversations (n = 2); poor relationship with the boss (n = 2); communication problems (n = 1).
Analysis of the corpus showed a positive perception of the cooperation between managers and colleagues. Excerpts from P10, P11, and P12 exemplify this finding:
My baby was still eight months old; I was still breastfeeding. My boss, being a woman, was very understanding and relieved me of some of my duties in order to reduce my workload (P10).
Because of everything that people are going through, they are more fragile. I think there is an understanding of the difficulties and the complexity of everyone’s lives (P11).
The malaise was mostly due to the lack of contact with colleagues:
Sometimes I miss face-to-face contact with colleagues, the social interaction, the chatting and exchanging ideas with one another, social interaction in general. This makes me feel lonely or like I have less social contact (P12).
The PGR category had a presence of QWL in the studied group, although there was not a large difference. Well-being was perceived as: recognition of work done (n = 6) and an opportunity for professional growth (n = 5). Malaise is related to: a lack of recognition for work done (n = 4) and no opportunity for professional growth (n = 4).
The following statement can represent well-being in this category:
We have been able to do the things as they come in, precisely because our team is good. Thus we have had recognition and achievements (P8).
Regarding malaise, workers say:
I don’t think there is any recognition. You have to show that you are doing even more work just to make it sound like things are getting done (P1).
For the IT category, workers cited 16 sources of malaise and 33 sources of well-being. For example, the sources of well-being are related to: the functionality of IT (n = 9); use and availability of tools (n = 11); the foundation of teleworking (n = 5); organizational support (n = 8). Malaise related to IT: poor internet connection (n = 6); need for more learning (n = 2); low quality of interactions (n = 5); profusion of messages (n = 1); lack of support (n = 2).
Teleworkers said about well-being with IT:
It was the basis for all this to happen: the systems for meetings, the sharing of information, the document management; none of this would have been possible (P9).
Our technology has made this moment smoother. If this were ten or 15 years ago, we probably wouldn’t be able to work the way we are. It has to be a mature technology that can be used on a large scale, cheap (P11).
Interestingly, one worker (P8) stated both the positive points and the challenges of using IT:
The company was able to provide support. We easily left presence work behind for working at home.
Sometimes there is a problem with the internet connection, and we have to make do (P8).
The malaise participants felt with IT came from the social interactions, as P11 states:
Relations become more impersonal. The physical proximity, the smells, the body posture, you miss it all. We often don’t call each other, not even on video. This equates to a loss, and the loss comes from remoteness.
Table 3 illustrates the FW category, in which 22 sources of malaise and only six sources of well-being were reported.
Table 3 Feelings at work (FW): Sources of well-being and malaise
| Source of well-being for FW | n | % | Source of malaise for FW | n | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trust that work is getting done | 1 | 8.3 | Anxiety | 2 | 16.6 |
| Satisfaction | 1 | 8.3 | Feelings of stress and fatigue | 10 | 83.3 |
| Well-being | 3 | 25 | A sense of chaos, uncertainty, instability, worry | 4 | 33.3 |
| Happiness | 1 | 8.3 | Frustration, self-reliance on productivity | 3 | 25 |
| Feelings of isolation and sadness | 3 | 25 | |||
| Total | 6 | Total | 22 |
The following is a sentence from one of the workers that represents well-being:
Where I work, I sit in front of an open window, I have a view of the sky, the trees, and I can hear the birds singing. It’s like I’m working outside. I think this quality of life at work is very important in order to be productive, happy, and especially healthy (P12).
Examples of statements that express malaise:
A lot of wear and tear, I’ve already gone beyond my limit. When we have face-to-face work, we leave the office and go home; work is over. Not here. If you look at my cell phone right now, it’s bursting with messages. Everybody works at a different time of the day, there are people who send e-mails at 3 am; I cannot turn my cell phone off (P8).
It really got a lot heavier, and it just continues that way. It is very overwhelming; the feeling you get is that you owe something (P11).
It is very difficult to work from home when you have children. I felt despair, I was like “My god, how am I going to do this?” I was terrified because I had so much work to do (P10).
A graph was created (Figure 1) to summarize the frequencies obtained from the corpus content analysis.
Joint analysis of the data shows a higher occurrence of sources of malaise in three categories and a higher occurrence of well-being in another three. Adding together the occurrence of both categories shows that the research participants had mixed feelings about their perceptions and experiences of working from home. Of course, a job that leads to malaise can present psychosocial risk factors and different illnesses, something that literature on the subject has identified (Ferreira, 2017).
Discussion
The results of this study, which are somewhat ambiguous, do not allow us to come to generalizations given that the work/pandemic relationship has been experienced in unique ways, depending on gender, social class, the nature of the job, each worker’s living conditions, and the living standards of each region of the country - the way the pandemic is handled differs according to the region. However, they do allow us to present some considerations and open up space for new thoughts and research agendas.
The theoretical-methodological model used for this study was appropriate for analyzing the phenomenon, and our findings suggest that approaching the topic of teleworking through the dichotomy (good/bad, pros/cons, advantages/disadvantages) can mask the production of subjectivities and the relationship between work and digital technologies within the framework of informational or digital capitalism.
For this study, it is worth considering that the weakening of borders (public/private, work/home) is strongly connected to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). This presents new questions that make us reflect on the current changes to modes of work production and management and how they affect the new profiles of workers, their work activities, and their work/life balance.
The lack of distinction between public and private - supported by Arendt as cited in Santos (2012) and empirically proven in studies on remote work that point to borders being weakened by ICTs - suggests that the losses experienced from remote work are expressed (by workers) as loneliness, interpersonal relationships affected by ICTs, compromised social/work interactions, and a lack of social interaction. Arendt described a loss of political life (without disregarding all that this implies for the private sphere) articulations, agreements, alliances, resistance strategies, power games, and differences of opinion.
The public sphere is where the subject expresses their opinions and public narrative, and it is up to us to ask if remote work would not be a new form of alienation through work, one of the consequences being the disarticulation of work collectives and the weakening of the hidden discourse (woven into social interactions), which speaks of oppression and articulates strategies to face power (Scott, 2003). It is understood, therefore, that the lack of social interaction in remote work makes many aspects of non-verbal communication unfeasible, affects the emotional ties and support that are a part of socio-labor relations, impacts the meaning and sharing of meanings and values produced by work and raises awareness about work/life balance.
In summary, many things have improved under the era of informational capitalism (some of which are a result of technological advances in the working world), and there is an abundance of positivity, highlighted by a discourse of freedom - the power to operate more assertively without being limited or pressured, as Byung-Chul Han (2012) indicates.
What we have here is a solitary worker, one who does not have any attachment and is self-disciplined, managing their own work and career and placing pressure on themselves without being monitored or penalized (Palermo et al., 2020).
The subject demands themselves results, takes risks and, in order to cope with overproduction, lives with the feeling of owing something, having to demonstrate a work that no longer materializes. The subject is constantly connected and dedicated to remote work that is accessed very easily (by clicking the mouse, opening a new browser tab, or moving from one room to another). In this sense, these new control mechanisms (refined and sophisticated), mediated by technologies, signal the construction of self-control and self-adjustment. Even though the subjects are overworked, fatigued, burnout, feeling anxiety, pressure, exhaustion, frustration, and uncertainty, little is known about which strategies are taken (individually and/or collectively) to face this storm of (toxic) positivity that has been naturalized as the tendency is to individualize the problem and psychologize the illness (physical and mental).
Therefore, when work invades home, the worker is obliged to maximize income and take on the risks and consequences of excess positivity posed by society, income, fatigue, and super connectivity, all of which are intensified. The individual works while being isolated due to the pandemic.
