Remote work and leadership during the Covid-19 Pandemic : An exploratory study on how remote work is affecting leadership styles and employee motivation

Abstract: Background: The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted all of society, and businesses are faced by having to close or adapt to the new regulations and laws by pursuing digital transformation. As companies are transitioning to remote work, leaders are now met with the obstacle of taking in-person, face-to-face leadership and putting it through digital transformation. Due to all these unforeseen changes employee motivation is at risk as employees are working remotely in isolation with leaders adopting new leadership styles.    Purpose: This research aims to investigate the change in leadership styles resulting from remote work and investigate if it has affected employee motivation.   Method: This research is an exploratory qualitative study conducted, focusing on multiple cases where semi-structured, and in-depth interviews were held with nine participants from three companies, with one leader and two employees from each company. A thematic analysis was used to investigate the primary data. Conclusion: The empirical findings and the analysis provide two areas that have been found during this conducted research: 1) Leaders realized that instead of focusing on performances-oriented approaches with heavy monitoring and supervision, it was more important to tend to human-centric care and being more open and nurturing to alleviate stress for employees. 2) Employee motivation has generally been negatively impacted due to employees and leaders experiencing communication difficulties, loneliness, lack of support and easily accessible distractions. With a few exceptions of employees coping better with a more balanced supervision and higher level of isolation acceptance.