Impact of ‘Work from Home’ Arrangement on Performance and Productivity and the mediating role of Employee Well-being: A comparative study on Male and Female IT Professionals

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a transformation in work practices, with Work-from-Home (WFH) evolving from an emergency response into a continuing work arrangement, particularly in the Information Technology (IT) sector. Against this backdrop, this research study investigates the impact of the WFH arrangement on the performance and the productivity of IT professionals in Kolkata, and the mediating role of employee well-being. The study adopted an empirical and exploratory research design. Data were collected from 505 IT professionals with WFH experience, comprising 261 males and 244 females, through a structured questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale. Purposive snowball sampling techniques were employed. The questionnaire demonstrated high reliability, with Cronbach’s Alpha values of .880 for males and .938 for females. Statistical analysis included One-way ANOVA, Welch ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis tests, Pearson correlation and simple linear regression. The findings reveal that all six hypotheses relating to performance were statistically significant for both male and female respondents. Performance was significantly influenced by marital status, organisational support, childcare responsibilities, infrastructure accessibility, working hours and family support. A strong positive relationship was established between well-being and performance among both males (r = .895) and females (r = .930), with well-being explaining 80.1% and 86.5% of the variance in performance, respectively.