Exploring the impact of remote working on employees’ well-being

As remote and hybrid work becomes more prevalent, off-site workers and the businesses they work for are facing a new set of challenges. Communication breakdowns are claim to be more common issues which can lead to a loss of trust, team cohesion and productivity. However, not much is known about remote working in the Malaysian and Indonesian context. Hence, a qualitative approach was conducted to explore these issues. In this qualitative study, 10 (5 Malaysian, 5 Indonesian) participants share their opinions and experience on remote working. From the interview, it is found that participants adopt remote working because of personal problems such as balancing between work and family, commuting issues, offer flexibility, child raising issues, and financial. Study also found that all the participants (Malaysian and Indonesian) unanimously gave positive feedback on remote working Even though remote working offers greater flexibility, technical issues such as internet / Wi-Fi problem and communication barrier such as miscommunication, misinterpretation poses the main challenge in remote working. In terms of the impact of remote working, all participants did not have any serious issues regarding relationship with immediate supervisor, work performance and productivity, training and development and promotion. However, they have problems in communicate with their co-workers. Remote working tends to make relationship between co-workers weaker. Finally, advice shared by the participants towards future remote worker include the need to establish a boundary between work and personal life by setting clear goals and breaking task into manageable steps, setting routine starts and ends working time with regular breaks and comfortable work station. Also, to have a strong internet connection is considered crucial for remote working as using public Wi-Fi can risk the company data.