The Impact of Remote Work on Depersonalization: The Moderating Effect of Dealing with Others and Friendship Opportunity

Abstract

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Since 2019, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has continuously influenced people’s lives in Taiwan approximately three years. Overall, the virus has given the entire society, our livelihood, physical health, and even mental condition a hard blow. Even though life is now gradually back on track, there are still some corporations implement remote work or hybrid work to ensure both their employees’ safety as well as a certain degree of flexibility and the business operation. This work pattern indeed brings about lots of benefits and convenience for both employers and employees, but many drawbacks of this work pattern such as lack of face-to-face interaction and communication have also drawn researchers and practitioners’ attention. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between remote work and employee depersonalization. Furthermore, two core dimensions of the job characteristics, dealing with others and friendship opportunity, were hypothesized to moderate the effect of remote work on depersonalization. This research was conducted in Taiwan using 218 valid office workers as the sample. The quantitative research approach and survey methodology were adopted to collect the data. SPSS 23.0 was used to analyze the data and test the proposed hypotheses. Regarding the results in this research, remote work significantly and negatively influenced the perception of depersonalization. However, dealing with others and friendship opportunity had insignificant and no direct moderating effects on the association between remote work and depersonalization.