Korean Workers' Adaptive Experience of Work From Home (WFH) during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Although work from home (WFH) programs have been recognized as beneficial for both employees and organizations, they had not caught the attention of Korean organizations because, culturally, it was unusual for Korean employees to perform their tasks outside of the workplace. However, the COVID-19 pandemic inevitably forced Korean organizations to implement WFH programs, and thus many employees experienced such programs for the first time during COVID-19. This study aims to explore the adaptive experiences of Korean employees to new WFH programs by analyzing the adaptation process based on a grounded theory approach. To this end, we interviewed 20 Korean employees working in the business sector. Our findings show that although at first the participants felt anxious about the uncontrollable situation, they tried to adapt quickly to the new non-face-to-face working style. They developed their own individual strategies (i.e., self-management and self-leadership) to maintain work resources and to separate work from family in the process of adaptation in order to achieve and provide evidence for superior job performance. Based on these findings, we suggest some theoretical and practical implications for human resource development and discuss recommendations for further research.