A Comparative Study of Job Satisfaction among Work from Home and Field Employees during the Lockdown Period in the Pandemic

Pages: 186-191
Tarush and Monika Rikhi (Department of Applied Psychology, Sri Aurobindo College (Evening), University of Delhi, Delhi)

Pandemics have altered the work culture in many ways throughout history. COVID-19 emerging as a global pandemic resulted in economic ripple effects, causing a significant increase in the unemployment rate, large-scale changes to organisations’ business operations, and substantial modifications to work and management styles. However, much discussion surrounds the impact of this issue on the future of work and for people working in organisations. This study aimed to evaluate the levels of job satisfaction among work-from-home and field workers throughout the pandemic’s lockdown phase. The Job Satisfaction questionnaire by Sengupta et al. (2017) was conducted on a sample size of 80 individuals using the non-probability sampling approach. Participants were chosen from a group of 25-45-year-olds. The Delhi NCR area was used as a sampling frame. The study consisted of male and female subjects. Based on the nature of the job in the pandemic lockdown situation, 40 of the 80 participants were assigned to the “work from home” category, while the other 40 were assigned to the ‘field workers’ category. The outcomes of this study show that job satisfaction levels for essential and remote workers are not significantly different at the 0.05 or 0.01 level of significance (denoted by p< .05; p< .01), which suggests job satisfaction comes from other sources, indicating that field workers are more resilient than remote workers, maybe due to a greater sense of the necessity of the task to be done, especially and more than before in these extreme circumstances. On several occasions, comparing job satisfaction levels has shown important information that may enhance the work environment, perhaps leading to greater productivity and job happiness among employees.