Adjusting to epidemic-induced telework: empirical insights from teleworkers in France

Kevin Carillo, Gaëlle Cachat-Rosset, Josianne Marsan, Tania Saba et Alain Klarsfeld (2020), European Journal of Information Systems, vol. 30, no. 1, p. 69-88.

The Covid-19 pandemic crisis presents unprecedented challenges and has profound implications for the way people live and work. Information and communication technologies have been playing a crucial role in ensuring business continuity as lockdown measures have suddenly forced employees from across the globe to telework, often leaving them unprepared and ill-equipped.

This paper develops an epidemic-induced telework adjustment model derived from the theory of Work Adjustment and the Interactional Model of Individual Adjustment. It is tested on a sample of 1574 teleworkers in France.

The results demonstrate the superiority of the influence of crisis-specific variables that are professional isolation, telework environment, work increase and stress.

Implications for research are discussed while concrete and actionable recommendations for organizations are provided.