This presentation concerns the social and psychological implications of COVID-19 for workers and work organziations around the globe with a focus on the good (e.g., working-from-home, remote leadership), the bad (e.g., unemployment) and the ugly (e.g., stress, mental health). This was presented at the Work and Organizational Psychology association in the Netherlands in November 2020.

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

2. Kevin
Jay
Mark

3. Read more?

4. Talk
• 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

5. 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?

6. Disease threats tighten cultures
Muray & Schaller, 2011

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

8. 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)

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

10. LinkedIn-study before COVID-19

11. 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

12. 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).

13. 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

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

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

18. 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?

19. Teamwork during COVID-19

20. 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

21. 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

23. 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

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

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

26. 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)

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

28. 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

29. 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

30. 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)

31. 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

32. Workers want more flexibility