Employee Productivity Modelling on a Work From Home Scenario During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Case Study Using Classification Trees

Abstract

Employee productivity is recognized as a key factor for the development of any organization. Through many research in the past, “work environment” has emerged as one of the most significant aspects that greatly contributes towards employee productivity. When employees are reverted to a work from home scenario, the work environment can change substantially due to varied reasons such as social, economic and cultural scenarios, different than usual. This research investigates employee productivity in relation to a new work environment that has emerged due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The study aims to find factors impacting on employee productivity under this new work environment and views employees, as subgroups or segments, within the new setup. A survey based on 60 employees of a non-government organization in Sri Lanka, is used to exemplify the approach to meet the study aims. Employee Productivity is considered as a binary variable, the two categories being positive productivity and non-positive productivity, compared to the situation prior to Covid. The classification tree, with an accuracy of over 88%, revealed that, four features, namely, complying with daily hours of work, overall experience of working from home, ease of focusing on work and clear communication regarding work, significantly impacted on productivity. The analysis also showed that among the five different employee subgroups that emerged from the analysis, 36% of the employees forming the largest positive group seemed to be able to comply with the required hours easily, had a good overall experience and were able to focus well at home. On the other hand, 42% belonging to the largest non-positive group stated that their work expectations were communicated but they were not able to comply with the due hours or work per day. The proposed evidence-based quantitative approach has shown promising results in studying employee productivity during a work from home scenario.