Major Research Project
Job Satisfaction and Work Engagement: The Impact of Gender and Working from Home in a COVID-19 Environment
For my major research project for my final year of Applied Psychology, I carried out a quantitative study looking at the effect gender and working from home had on work-related factors, job satisfaction and work engagement. Following the rapid onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent national lockdowns, more people than ever were working from home and I was interested in understanding how that impacted how they felt and engaged with work. The consequences of this rapid shift in work environment needed to be researched in both women and men to determine if there was a gender gap between job satisfaction and work engagement.
Literature Review
I carried out a review of the literature to determine the relationship between the variables being researched. Extensive research of the areas of work engagement and job satisfaction was carried out to gain and insight into these work-related variables. Following this base understanding of these areas, I began researching how gender and working environment, specifically working from home, may impact with engagement and satisfaction at work. Previous studies stated a gender gap between men and women for both variables as well as stating how working from home puts women at a disadvantage in relation to work.
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As this study was being conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, consideration had to be taken into the impact this rapid shift in work environment, as well as additional factors such as childcare and schooling, had on how people were able to engage with work from home. Recent studies carried out in 2020 and 2021 stated that job satisfaction would decrease following enforced work from home as well as a gender gap in work-related variables due to women being more involved in childcare and homeschooling than men which may impact their job. The present study aimed to analyse the gap in the literature in employees being forced to work from home and how this impacted their work engagement and job satisfaction.
Method
70 participants (31 male / 39 female) took part in the study by completing two surveys. The first was the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale and the second was the Job Satisfaction Survey. Participants completed each survey twice, once in relation to working in the workplace environment and then again in relation to the new working from home environment.
Results & Conclusion
Following analyses of the data collected, it was determined that both work engagement and job satisfaction significantly decreased following the enforced work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. No differences in gender were found in this study but the sample size was small and further research is needed to determine the impact of working from home has on men and women.
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With no set end date to working from home as of yet, it is important to understand how working from home impacts employees and how they feel about their job. Many workers have claimed that they are living at work as opposed to working from home and this may have been due to the rapid change to remote work or due to increase in household chores and childcare. Research studies such as the present study are important to employers when they are considering whether to continue keeping their staff working remotely following the pandemic in order to outline the impact on work-related variables this change in environment may have.
Learnings
This research project took many months of planning and research and allowed me to improve my research skills as well as my critical thinking skills. I hit many (virtual) walls when conducting this study, such as problems with recruiting online and survey layouts but I was able to solve these issues and come away from them with improved resilience and problem solving skills. I also found the value in asking questions and looking for advice when needed as even talking through a potential problem aloud helped me to clarify things for myself.