Impact of remote work on motivation of young employees

Abstract

Staff motivation plays a significant role in the long-term financial success of a company. Motivation is a driving factor that powers employees to achieve significant progress in performing job related tasks. High-quality, timely completed projects, in turn, propel the prosperity of a company and its reputation. In today's business world where advancements in various areas take place at a high speed, people are increasingly changing the companies they work for as well as their physical location in search of themselves, more interesting tasks that correspond to their competencies and interests, favorable working conditions, and relationships in the team. It is important to emphasize that in this fast-paced environment the aforementioned trend is most pronounced among young professionals. The high rate of staff turnover amongst young people lead to additional costs and missed benefits for companies in the form of constant hiring and training of new personnel. In 2020, COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant changes to daily routines as new conditions and forced restrictions required rapid adaptation. One of those changes that had an impact on both employers and employees across the globe was shift to remote work conditions. Previously, remote work was for the most part the choice and initiative of the employee, but it has become mandatory and necessary in the global pandemic conditions. Therefore, it is worth considering various aspects of management issues from the remote work point of view which brings its own requirements, sometimes creating obstacles for effective communication and complicating certain processes in general. The mass transfer of employees to forced remote work following COVID-19 outbreak has been a serious stress test for both employees and companies requiring high speed in decision-making. There were a lot of issues that required to be rebuilt under new conditions of pandemic. Any company that delayed responding rapidly to changing realities or failed to react at all, was risking its further existence. Not only the main business processes, but also work with clients, sales, as well as processes for organizing remote work with employees had to be addressed as many "old" rules and practices were no longer relevant. Amongst these questions there were significant number of unknowns related to psychological nature of employee management and in certain cases companies that were forced to take necessary steps to deliver the business activities during COVID 19 pandemic have faced resistance from employees and encountered dissatisfaction with customers. As the conditions have changed the behavior of employees working remotely, company management was supposed to think about how to keep motivated and engaged its employees who struggled to adapt to working remotely. In light of aforementioned management issues, current study is an attempt to find answer to questions related to the impact of remote work to motivation of young employees. Current study is structured accordingly to achieve set goal of revealing and assessing the effect of the remote work on motivation of young employees. The paper starts with the problem statement and formulation of major as well as minor research questions to address the problem. Further, literature review on the theoretical aspects of motivation, specifics of the motivation of young employees and remote work during COVID-19 pandemic is provided. Next, methods related to collecting necessary data for the current study are described. Results of the analysis of collected data and revealed findings on effects of the remote work on motivation of young employees are followed by discussion of the findings. After limitations and practical implications of the current study as well as remarks about future studies current paper is concluded.