TABLE 2.
Themes and Codes Identified from Study 1 Interviews
| First‐order codes (reprehensive quotes with interviewee ID) | Second‐order categories | Aggregated themes |
|---|---|---|
| “The same thing can be solved immediately in the office, because there is no other thing involved. At home, when I was about to prepare for the task, the child came. At this time, I will certainly put the work at hand to deal with some home affairs, and the [work] efficiency is definitely not as high as in the office.” (#21) | Work‐home interferences | Remote work challenges |
| “I’m basically always online. In the normal workplace, the maximum of working overtime is one or two hours. However, during these days when I am working from home, my supervisors and colleagues may come to me whenever they wanted something done, and you have to provide real‐time feedback. Therefore, apart from sleeping, the rest of the time I am on standby.” (#23) | ||
| “If I want to communicate with others, I can only type or call. But sometimes, the information may not be conveyed in time.” (#4) | Ineffective communication | |
| “If you work from home, the overall collaboration efficiency will decrease. Some information can only be expressed clearly in face‐to‐face communications. In a video conference, you can only hear the voice, but you cannot really see others’ facial expressions. If you cannot see others’ reactions, you cannot get your points across. Face‐to‐face communications are more straightforward!” (#2) | ||
| “Without the kind of pressure in the workplace, I was a little slack. I did more private things [during working time].” (#18) | Procrastination | |
| “When I work in the office, the working hours are from 9:00 to 11:00 in the morning and from 1:30 to 5:00 in the afternoon. Therefore, I am very clear that I should work during this period. But when working from home, there is no restriction about when I should end my work. I might think that I can start to work after a short break; the task is not very urgent anyway. This definitely influenced my work.” (#25) | ||
| “In the office, we can chat with colleagues. Now [while working from home], we communicated only during meetings, but we did not talk about gossip or something interesting.” (#4) | Loneliness | |
| “I think the more influential factor is the lack of social interactions, because I feel lonely working at home. There are no colleagues or leaders whom I can communicate face‐to‐face. While working from home, I can communicate through the Internet. However, compared with face‐to‐face interactions, online communications cannot give people a sense of intimacy and closeness.” (#16) | ||
| “I think working in the office is better. That is because, when you work from home, it is difficult to seek help from colleagues or leaders while encountering problems at work.” (#31) | Social support | Virtual work characteristics |
| “Our work requires collaborations. We need emotional bonds, mutual help, and learning from each other's strengths to achieve a perfect work result. Now it has become a lonely struggle. This feeling is indescribable.” (#36) | ||
| “I was more productive with lesson preparation at home, because we can schedule time by ourselves. In the past, we might have to prepare lessons until midnight, and then we got up early to work. But for now, we are more flexible. We can get up late in the morning, so working until midnight is fine for me now.” (#37) | Job autonomy | |
| “I can control the rhythms of work and rest… As long as it's not during the meeting, I can have a short break, around ten to thirty minutes, and then continue to work. That also means more time to spend time with my family.” (#14) | ||
| “We have a meeting in the morning every day during this period…After this morning meeting, you will feel a sense of ritual and you will devote yourself to work. The morning meeting is actually very important.” (#1) | Monitoring | |
| “Some leadership behaviors indeed affect my productivity. For instance, managers measured your performance in remote working to make sure you are doing a good job.” (#29) | ||
| “I’m getting so many phone and video calls. I feel that the workload is super high and my work is endless…I don't like working from home, unless under special circumstances. More importantly, I don't think remote working can give me more personal time; instead, I feel that remote work increases my working time.” (#39) | Workload | |
| “While working from home, you can decide to work right now or procrastinate, which is associated with your workload. If the workload is not heavy, you can have a slow work pace.” (#3) | ||
| “I’m not a self‐disciplined person. If there is no external pressure [monitoring], I will be very indolent.” (#18) | Self‐discipline | Individual factors |
| “Autonomy at home office would be bad without self‐discipline. You will never achieve goals and will become lazy.” (#28) |