How working from home affects job satisfaction: Shedding light on the mechanisms

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a large number of people began working from home, and this form of work will remain important. However, there is no consensus on how working from home affects workers’ job satisfaction. This paper provides novel insights into the mechanisms through which working from home affects job satisfaction. We use data from an online survey of graduates of professional colleges in Switzerland in 2021. We find that working from home increases job satisfaction on average. We then compare the relative importance of five mechanisms. We find that the positive association between working from home and job satisfaction is mainly due to increasing productivity and making work more interesting. Working from home is also positively associated with job satisfaction, but to a lesser degree, due to more flexible working hours. In contrast, our findings indicate that the worse work–life balance resulting from working from home and more difficult interactions with coworkers and supervisors are negatively associated with job satisfaction. We further find substantial heterogeneity in the relative relevance of these five mechanisms across workers with and without previous working from home experience, gender, age, and executive position. These differences might contribute to the lack of consensus on how working from home affects workers’ job satisfaction.