A Post-Pandemic Critical Evaluation of Remote Working Influences on Affective Well-being, Work-life and Job Satisfaction.

The advent of the Covid-19 pandemic forced many employees to work remotely from home, solidifying the use of digital processes as a normal way of working, and in this post-pandemic world, many employees continue to work from home (Silver, 2023). However, there have been few studies looking into the affective aspects of this new remote/ hybrid working normality. The Affective Events Theory (AET: Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996) has highlighted the importance of affective state in influencing employee job satisfaction and behaviour (Wegge et al, 2006), which is the focus of the current research. Participants were recruited anonymously through social media (N=128) and pseudo-anonymously through an online panel provider sample (N=112). The study implemented a correlational quantitative questionnaire design examining relationships based on the AET framework using questions pertaining to gender, age, children at home, years in job, area where home office is based, and rating of home internet connection alongside questions from pre-existing scales covering social atmosphere, personality dispositions, affective wellbeing, work-life balance, job satisfaction, and job search activities. The descriptive statistics indicate an overall mild impact from isolation and distractions from friends or other media, on average. The standard deviation indicated that some individuals experienced severe isolation and distractions while working from home. Perceptions of positive work inducements in relation to social atmosphere at work since the pandemic averaged around the same as before the pandemic but some rated social atmosphere experiences as lower. The path analysis results of the study indicate that the relationships chosen based on the AET model sufficiently cover the important relationships within the data, providing support for the utility of AET. Most notably, greater levels of isolation linked to poorer social atmosphere and affective well-being, with lower affective well-being linking to lower job satisfaction predicting more job searching behaviours in some cases. Greater emotional stability lowered work-life imbalances and enhanced affective well-being. It is important for organizational managers to consider the impact of these remote working affect related factors impacting their employees, and this current study offers guidance on how to implement changes to deal with them.