Remote Work: An Ally or Enemy for the Work-Life Balance? Remote Work Experiences of Male and Female Academics in the UK and Turkey During COVID-19

Introduction

In recent years, people have been concerned about the influence of technology on their lives and how they will continue working in the digital era. Some industries have already started doing operations (e.g., banking, shopping, training, etc.) on both physical and digital platforms. But the unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 forced a lot of organizations from different industries to transfer their operations to the online world, and it accelerated other organizations’ plans for digitalization. Transferring operations to the online platform has enabled several industries’ employees to work remotely (teleworking). Eurofound (2020)’s e-survey with 87,477 participants from 27 EU countries in April 2020 shows that around 50 percent of the employees in the sample worked from home during the pandemic. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also reports a large increase in teleworking such that 33 percent of US workers worked remotely because of the pandemic (Loewenstein, 2021).

Remote work offers employees some benefits, such as flexible working times, spending more time with the family, etc. (Lewis & Cooper, 2005). From the work-life balance (WLB) perspective, however, remote work in COVID-19 quarantine resulted in a blurred boundary between work and private life for remote workers and unprecedented levels of uncertainty in remote workers’ personal lives and job security (Magni et al., 2020). This situation is expected to have a substantial influence on employees’ work-life balance during quarantine. A large body of research exists on remote work and WLB, but remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic is an extraordinary situation (Wang et al., 2021). This requires the need to approach remote work and WLB in a new context-i.e. during the pandemic and post-pandemic period. Several studies (e.g., Ornell et al., 2020; Restubog et al., 2020) addressed the negative effects of COVID-19 on mental health and psychological strategies to cope with these effects. Some studies (e.g., Guy & Arthur, 2020) particularly focused on the experiences of diverse groups such as working mothers during the COVID-19 quarantine, as these mothers are considered to be the most vulnerable group negatively influenced by the pandemic.

A brief literature review on WLB and remote work in the COVID-19 context shows that most of the studies provide insight into the topic predominantly from a quantitative research perspective. Contributing to the debate in the literature, this research provides a qualitative-empirical perspective and concerns the diversity of individuals by searching for their different living circumstances. The research explores the academics’ remote work experiences during the COVID-19 quarantine while carrying out their academic role-i.e., teaching and research. The key question addressed in the research is how the COVID-19 period and its consequence of remote work have influenced male and female academics’ personal and professional roles and responsibilities. Reviewing the debates in the WLB literature, two outcomes emerge. As the boundary theory suggests, remote work may create a limitation in putting the boundary between work and private life (see Nippert-Eng, 1996). Alternatively, as the enrichment model suggests, it may enable academics to try new initiatives and lead to positive outcomes in both work and life domains-e.g., more productive work, trying new initiatives, quality time with the family, etc. (see McNall et al., 2010).