Does Working from Home Really Work? Self-Control in Work-From-Home Versus In-Person Employees

Abstract

Working-from-home became a necessity for many companies during the COVID-19 lockdowns in New Zealand. The popularity of this workspace environment has continued following the pandemic, however research has failed to investigate its effects on psychological constructs related to wellbeing and productivity, such as self-control. This presentation will introduce a proposed study which aims to determine whether workspace environment affects a multidimensional view of self-control. By using an online survey, participants will be presented with three self-control tasks to investigate self-control through three psychological lenses: cognitive, behavioural, and personality. First, they will complete an attentional control task which aims to measure how effectively they can inhibit a conditioned response in favour of a goal-directed response. They will complete a delay discounting task which aims to determine whether an individual is more likely to choose a smaller, immediate reward or a larger, delayed reward. Finally, participants perceptions of their self-control abilities will be examined using a self-report questionnaire. Workspace environment will be assessed by asking participants to describe their primary working environment: for example, hot desks, a private office dining table, or a dedicated home office space? Past research has indicated that working from home often results in a decline in employee motivation through increased distractibility (Aiswarya & Perwez, 2023). Furthermore, 95% of IT professionals working from home during the pandemic were experiencing burnout, a chronic stress induced syndrome which leads to fatigue, lack of motivation and decreased productivity (Khader, 2024). Based on past research such as this, it is hypothesised that working-from-home will result in decreased self-control in employees. But what specific workspace environment affects self-control the most? And are all types of self-control equally affected? The proposed study aims to determine: Does working-from-home really work?