The Relationships among Remote Work, Employee Engagement and Leadership Style during COVID-19 in Taiwan

Abstract

noneDue to the COVID-19 pandemic, plenty of businesses decide to implement remote work all around the world. Although remote work is not a new concept in both academic and practical fields, little is known about employees working remotely in the pandemic. This study aims to investigate the relationship between remote work, employee engagement, and leadership style. This study adopted a quantitative research design and online-based questionnaires to collect data. The data was collected from 339 employees who had remote work experience during COVID-19 in Taiwan. CFA analysis was tested using Mplus version 7. IBM SPSS version 23 was used to provide demographic information and test the hypotheses by descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis. The result shows that remote work has a positive relationship with employee engagement; however, leadership style does not have moderating effect between them. Additionally, leadership style was tested as a mediator on the relationship between remote work and employee engagement. Both transformational and transactional leadership full mediates the relationship between technology and employee engagement. Suggestions and the implications for human resource management were discussed by the researcher.