How Remote Working Impacts the Performance, Motivation, and Well-Being of the Irish Recruitment Industry

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how remote working influences performance, motivation, and well-being of the Irish recruitment industry. To this end, this research paper explores the significant difference between remote employees working environment and their performance and motivations levels, performance levels of remote workers and their employment type and gender, well-being and work-related stress and the work/life balance of individuals working from home and their ability to meet deadlines and their distraction levels. This study adopted a quantitative research approach using a questionnaire as the quantitative method. The questionnaire consisted of 80 participants, of which 69% were female and 31% were male between the ages of 19 – 65 who have been working remotely during COVID-19 and prior. The sampling methods best suited to this research is non-probability sampling, the two non-probability sampling methods used for this study were a purposive sampling approach and a snowball method. Data analysis is performed with hypotheses supported that there is a relationship between remote employees working environment and their performance and motivations levels, performance levels of remote workers and their employment type and gender, well-being and work-related stress and the work/life balance of individuals working from home and their ability to meet deadlines and their distraction levels. The researcher carried out 3 binary logistic regression models, the first one on the relationship between remote workers performance levels and their gender and employment type, the second on, the relationship between an individual who’s working remotely well-being and work-related stress, and the third logistic regress carried out was on the relationship between work / life balance and the remote workers struggle to meet deadlines and their distraction levels. At the 5% level of significance, the 3 logistic models conducted found statistical significance between all the relationships. By conducting 2 ANOVA tests this study also showed a significant relationship between the working environment and the performance and motivation levels of a remote worker. Findings point towards a positive relationship between the working environment of remote worker and their motivation levels with just 8 participants struggling to stay motived working remotely. The study also showed a positive relationship between the working environment and the performance levels of individuals working remotely with 61.3% of respondents acknowledging their performance levels are enhanced working from home. A negative relationship was identified between an employee working from home and work related stress. A negative relationship was also found between the relationship of a remote worker and how their work/ life balance is impacted, as 72.5% of participants stated their work/life balance has been affected since working remotely