The impact of Working from Home on productivity during COVID-19 : A Survey with IT Project Managers

Abstract: The world has been affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and many companies and organizations have adopted different type of strategies in terms of the workplace in all sectors around the world. Working from home practice has gained prominence as a part of quarantine measures to curb the spread of the disease since the beginning of the outbreak. This abrupt change has a dramatic influence on the business life and employees have been struggling to adapt to their new way of working. Therefore their productivity has changed, too depending on various factors at their new workplace: home. Working from home is only possible with the use of information technology. Information technology makes it possible for the business life to continue owing to its solutions. Owing to the solutions of information technology, employees can communicate with each other and organizations and complete their tasks by sending and receiving written, audio and visual information. It is crucial for everyone’s sake that the employees working in information technology work efficiently, particularly in pandemic times. The key role of their success is played by their managers and coordinators. Therefore, this thesis focuses on IT project managers and coordinators’ productivity. The purpose of this study is to list the factors, as benefits and challenges, influencing the productivity of IT project managers and project coordinators working from home during COVID-19 pandemic and provide recommendations to the project managers and project coordinators and also public and private organizations and companies which prefer to continue working from home to increase their productivity. In this study, qualitative research method and descriptive statistics concerning the selected benefits and challenges are used via a self- administered digital survey responded by 46 project managers/coordinators. It is concluded that working from home due to COVID-19 pandemic has both positive and negative influences on productivity of the IT project managers/project coordinators. Many benefits, such as sleeping longer hours and being able to focus at home without open-office distractions and many challenges, such as being distracted by house chores and being disturbed by family members have been identified as a result of the survey. Respondents contributed to the study further by their valuable recommendations to public and private organizations and also to other IT project managers/coordinators who work from home during the pandemic to increase their productivity. The recommendations to other PM/PC are concerned with routine and discipline, work-life balance, breaks and doing other things, workspace, people around and communication. The recommendations to organizations, on the other hand, are concerned with various types of support, respecting time, flexibility about time, trust, communication and acceptance as family. Both the findings and recommendations may help IT project managers/coordinators and their employers to develop a more comprehensive vision in terms of increasing their productivity while working from home during the pandemic.