HMN 2025: How have our satisfaction (and our productivity) with teleworking evolved since the COVID shock?

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the pace at which both employees and employers developed experience with telework. How has this changed employees’ views on teleworking? Researchers at UGent@Work conducted a follow-up study to their authoritative survey at the start of the pandemic.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, UGent@Work researchers were among the first to survey employee well-being and the shock the pandemic created in relation to telework. Since then, their study has been cited in more than 580 national and international publications. In the early days of the pandemic, employees appeared, all in all, very enthusiastic about teleworking.

Other international research suggests that employees tend to evaluate their work-life balance and productivity more positively as they gain more experience with telework: over time, they learn to structure their tasks to minimize conflicts between work and family obligations, allowing them to combine different roles more effectively.

But does the long-term evaluation also shift in other dimensions?

“It is possible that some negative consequences—such as missed promotion opportunities or reduced connection with the employer—only gradually become apparent. On the other hand, these drawbacks may also be temporary, as employees and employers eventually discover effective strategies to address them,” says Professor Labor Economics Stijn Baert.

To shed light on this, the UGent@Work researchers replicated their earlier study by surveying the same sample of Flemish employees three years later. The new results are published in the journal Applied Economics Letters.

Telework benefits rated even more positively over time

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, employees reported that telework had a positive effect on their efficiency, work-life balance and ability to concentrate. Three years later, they rate these impacts even more positively.

For example: on a scale from 1 (completely negative) to 5 (completely positive), the perceived positive effect of teleworking on efficiency increased by 0.390 points, rising from an average of 3.456 (somewhere between neutral and positive) to 3.846 (close to 4, which indicates positive).

The same trend appears—though less strongly—for job satisfaction and reduced work stress.

“Over time, employees seem to value certain benefits of telework even more, likely because they need time to fully adapt to teleworking,” says Postdoctoral researcher Eline Moens.

Aspects of work that were rated less positively in 2020—such as promotion opportunities, professional development and relationships with colleagues—are generally not assessed more negatively three years later.

The sense of connectedness to the employer, which was also rated negatively in the first survey, is the only work aspect that appears at risk of becoming even more negatively perceived over time.

“While many employers nowadays want to scale back teleworking, many employees seem to take a very different view,” says Professor Baert.

Impact of migration background, autonomy, feedback, and job compatibility with telework

The evolution in how employees perceive telework differs across groups of people and types of jobs.

At the start of the pandemic, respondents with a migration background were notably more optimistic about the impact of telework on certain aspects—such as connectedness to the employer—than respondents without such a background. Three years later, the exact opposite is observed.

“It appears that the initial enthusiasm for telework among respondents with a migration background has been replaced by disappointment,” says Postdoctoral researcher Louis Lippens.

Job characteristics also play a role. When there is more work scheduling autonomy on the job, the perceived impact of telework on professional development and relationships with colleagues becomes less positive over time. On the contrary, when there is more feedback on the job, the perceived impact of telework on promotion chances, work stress reduction, and work concentration grows more positive with time.

“In line with earlier research, we find that feedback is a crucial factor in learning to telework effectively. Telework combined with a high degree of feedback is perceived as positive for long-term promotion prospects, work stress reduction and work concentration,” Doctoral researcher Liam D’hert.

Unsurprisingly, the impact of telework on certain job aspects—job satisfaction and especially work-life balance—is assessed even more positively when the job is highly compatible with telework: the more the job lends itself to teleworking, the more positive the evaluation over time.

Methodology

Researchers conducted a follow-up study assessing telework exactly three years after their initial data collection in 2020. At the start of the pandemic, an online sample of employees in Flanders who were able to telework at least 10% of the time was surveyed to evaluate the career consequences of regular telework (under normal circumstances, separate from increased pandemic-related telework). Exactly three years later (between 25 and 31 March 2023), these employees were invited to participate in a follow-up survey. A total of 370 respondents completed the questionnaire again. The data were then thoroughly analyzed and discussed.

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