Work-From-Home Engagement during COVID-19: Implications for Human Resource Management

Abstract

Work-from-home has gained swift and massive adoption due to technological advancement and the large-scale disruption evoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Work-from-home, also called telecommuting, involves performing work/business responsibilities from a non-office location or typically from home. The work-from-home format has garnered acceptance as the alternative to traditional office work, but it is not without disadvantages. Thus, a thorough insight into the mechanism of the work-from-home format and how it relates to engagement is necessary for organizational leaders and human resource practitioners to cultivate engagement of remote workers. This article illustrates the current state of scholarly research on work-from-home engagement by using the lens of an integrated literature review. This article explains the forces accompanying the work-from-home format and their interactions with employee engagement. The article proposes a conceptual framework of the work-from-home engagement field. The constructs of the work-from-home engagement field, which are the work-from-home positive forces, negative forces, and positive-negative forces, are explained, and the critical implications for human resource management are highlighted.