COVID-19 and
the workplace: The good, the
bad, and the ugly
Mark van Vugt
Professor of Psychology
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
& University of Oxford

Kevin
Jay
Mark

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• COVID-19: Knowns and unknowns
• The relatively Good:
– WFH (working-from-home)
– Virtual teams
– Remote leadership
• The Bad:
– Insecurity
– Inequality
• The Ugly:
– Social distancing
– Isolation
• Workplace after Covid-19

COVID-19: Knowns and unknowns
• Shocks (9/11, banking
crisis) create ethical
issues (privacy,
surveillance)
• Infectious disease
threats have changed
societies and
workplaces
fundamentally
• Vaccin?

Disease threats tighten cultures
Muray & Schaller, 2011

Disease threats induce xenophobia
Ji, T., Tybur, J. M., & van Vugt, M.
(2019)

The (relatively Good:
Working-from-home (WFH)
• Before Covid-19:
– 10-15% works from
home
• After COVID-19:
– 40-50% works from
home
• Mandatory
“Companies should never
just implement
telecommuting without
changing anything else,
they also need to shift
their culture and norms to
support the new
arrangement.“
- I/O psychologist Kristen
Shockley (2018)

Low Richness
Less Social Presence
High Richness
More Social
Presence
Medium properties
Communication

LinkedIn-study before COVID-19

WFH: Good
Employers
• Cost saving (office,
travel costs)
• Recruit best talent
(from anywhere)
• Form better teams by
matching talents.
expertise
Employees
• Work-life balance
– Saving time
– Care
– Hobbies
• Improves productivity
and wellbeing for
– Professionals (low
interdependence)
– Gig workers(ZZP) already
WFH for years
– Physically disabled

Which employees profit most?
• Workers with complex jobs
but no significant
collaboration do better
remotely
– Knowledge workers (e.g.,
software developers)
• Worker with clear objective
performance outcomes also
profit (e.g., call centers)
• Work-activity important:
writing reports versus
appraisals
Golden, T.D., Gajendran, R.S. J Bus
Psychol (2019).

WFH: Not so good
Employers
• Less control,
supervision
• Performance
management
• Team projects suffer
Employees:
• Social and professional
isolation
• Fewer opportunities to
share information and
collaborate (creativity
loss)
• Boundaries between
work and private life are
blurred

Who suffer the most from
Mandatory WFH?
A. Introverts
B. Extraverts

Dr. Kelder: “Since the pandemic, I
suffer from mood swings”

Intervention potential WFH
• Rituals/routines for
boundaries between
work-home life
• Co-working spaces (to
avoid professional
isolation)
• Improved online social
interaction (better
technology, GAZE-2)
• Back to office
• Identify risk groups
– Singles, Expats
– Young families
– New/young workers
– Personality differences
– Sex differences
• Increase in traditional
gender roles?

Teamwork during COVID-19

Virtual teams
• Virtual teams can better
match knowledge and
expertise
– Jarvenpaa, S. L., &
Leidner, D. E. (1999);
– Hertel, G., Geister, S., &
Konradt, U. (2005).
– Alsharo, M., Gregg, D., &
Ramirez, R. (2017).
– Mak, S., & Kozlowski,
S.W.J. (2019
Disadvantages
• Too much asynchronous
communication is bad
• Initial trust lower in
virtual teams
• Difficulties socializng
new members
• Team creativity may
suffer

Study comparing
Virtual and F2F teams
Technological issues
Absence body
language
Less social-emotional
communication
Less even
participation
Less extra-role
behavior
Less delegation by
leader
Less visible
dominance-behavior

Leadership: Three signifcant trends
(1) Crisis leadership
(1) Offering support
(2) Balance between realism and optimism
(3) Vision on future
(2) Remote leadership
(3) Health-oriented leadership

Historical disease threats affect
leadership
GLOBE project_ Directive leadership
dimension
Shirley
Sheng’s
PhD-project

Which candidate would you vote for as the president of Taminia?
dominant

Remote leadership
• Task-oriented (socio-emotional suffers)
• Team-oriented (little room for one on ones)
• Too little (synchronous better that asynchronous)
Shi, Cook, & van Vugt (2020)

Self-reported Work Actual work
F(3, 85) = .93, p = .43, η2 = .03 F(3, 85) = 2.74, p < .05, η2 = .09

3. Health-oriented leadership-
Female touch?
- Prioritize health among
employees (balance
privacy-interest)
- 1-on-1 contact
(especially low LMX)
- Compliance to health &
safety standard
- Good rolemodel

The Bad: Socio-economic impacts
• Unemployment, job insecurity
– Certain sectors hit hard
• Social-psychological and
material benefits of work are
lost
– Traditional gender roles
• Work “survivors” show more
stress and less job commitment
• (unsafe) Risk behavior among
low-paid employees
 Career adaptability is increasing

The Ugly: Evolutionary mismatch
• Presenteeism
– The critical (key workers)
– The engaged
• Social distancing (vs affiliating)
– Fewer people at work, fewer options to
socially learn learn and network
– Mental and physical health costs (singles,
lower SES) – app development (Clinical
psychology, VU)
– Increase in workstress (job demands
exceed resources, loss of social capital)

Workplace after COVID-19?
Stop Continue
Stopped 9-5 office jobs Training &
development
Started Mandatory working-
from-home
Online seminars
After COVID-19 crisis
During
COVID-19
crisis
Old work
practices
New
practices

Workers want more flexibility