Working from Home—Who Is Happy? A Survey of Lithuania’s Employees during the COVID-19 Quarantine Period

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors bring currently interesting research that provides practical information on the possibility of improving teleworking in the future. The presented results are in the required quality and therefore I recommend only minor adjustments:

-add the reference/source number in square brackets (for example lines 49, 84),
-modify the decimal point in numeric values to a dot (in English translation, the decimal point is in the form of a dot).

For consideration for the authors: addition of hypotheses and comparison with the results with other studies. I recommend the article for publication after minimal editing. I believe that this will enrich the knowledge base in the area addressed.

Author Response

Thanks for the review
We accept your comments, we have incorporated them into the article

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript about teleworking in the pandemic is very timely. The article aims to evaluate teleworking in Lithuania in the quarantine (Covid-19).

However, from my perspective, there are huge differences between teleworking in quarantine and teleworking after and before the quarantine. I would suggest authors including these differences in the manuscript. Concretely, results and conclusions should be clear in this regard (e.g., rows 216-218 should be referred to differences IN a quarantine). 

From a survey of 436 remote workers conducted from 30 March to 15 April, conclusions and results must be referred to the pandemic time. On the contrary, results and conclusions seem to be expanded to a non-pandemic time. 

Would it be possible to compare data from a non-pandemic and the pandemic time?

Along with this line, what is the contribution to the literature? I suggest the authors clarify this point.

With regard to the background and references, new articles have been published about teleworking and Covid-19:

Kawashima, T., Nomura, S., Tanoue, Y., Yoneoka, D., Eguchi, A., Shi, S., & Miyata, H. (2020). The relationship between fever rate and telework implementation as a social distancing measure against the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. Public Health.

Belzunegui-Eraso, A., & Erro-Garcés, A. (2020). Teleworking in the Context of the Covid-19 Crisis. Sustainability, 12(9), 3662.

Bouziri, H., Smith, D. R., Descatha, A., Dab, W., & Jean, K. (2020). Working from home in the time of covid-19: how to best preserve occupational health?. Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Etc.

They can be useful to complement the introduction (rows 63-67) and the theoretical background.

Additional comments:

• rows 81-88: virtual work, virtual organization and telework. Please, complete with the definition of telework or, even better, virtual work.
• bias in the sample: 67% women but are women a 67% of workforce in Lithuania?

Author Response

• However, from my perspective, there are huge differences between teleworking in quarantine and teleworking after and before the quarantine. I would suggest authors including these differences in the manuscript. Concretely, results and conclusions should be clear in this regard (e.g., rows 216-218 should be referred to differences IN a quarantine). 

In our view, quarantine itself does not have a direct impact, especially on workers with previous telework experience. Thus, emphasizing the period does not make much sense when analyzing responses that have little to do with available work experience. On the other hand, in the article we emphasize the aspect of experience - in a separate paragraph we analyze the answers of employees who started working only during quarantine and compare these results with the answers of other employees.

• From a survey of 436 remote workers conducted from 30 March to 15 April, conclusions and results must be referred to the pandemic time. On the contrary, results and conclusions seem to be expanded to a non-pandemic time. 

Thanks for comment. We made amendments.

• Would it be possible to compare data from a non-pandemic and the pandemic time?

It is pitty to say that we, in Lithuania, have no data or survey done before pandemics except those pulished by Merkevicius and Nakrosiene&Butkeviciene.

• Along with this line, what is the contribution to the literature? I suggest the authors clarify this point.

Our research gives evidence that in virtual organisation HRM needs take special attention to teleworking staff development as telework require specific personnel competences and self-organizing skills.

• In the last paragraph we conclude with “our research insights can contribute to a better understanding of organisational management on challenges that employees face when teleworking (specifically in our study - from home) and consequently it could create preconditions for higher efficiency of employees, higher levels of work motivation and, finally, greater efficiency of telework.”With regard to the background and references, new articles have been published about teleworking and Covid-19:

We referred suggested articles - but really, those articles are not suitable for analysis ☹

• Kawashima, T., Nomura, S., Tanoue, Y., Yoneoka, D., Eguchi, A., Shi, S., & Miyata, H. (2020). The relationship between fever rate and telework implementation as a social distancing measure against the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. Public Health.

Not suitable for analysis as it investigates the issue of health (temperature) while working from home and working in the office.

• Belzunegui-Eraso, A., & Erro-Garcés, A. (2020). Teleworking in the Context of the Covid-19 Crisis. Sustainability, 12(9), 3662.

It is only useful to mention that telework and the management of organizations during quarantine are investigated.

• Bouziri, H., Smith, D. R., Descatha, A., Dab, W., & Jean, K. (2020). Working from home in the time of covid-19: how to best preserve occupational health?. Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

This is not an article but a summary of the research report.

• They can be useful to complement the introduction (rows 63-67) and the theoretical background.

Done

Additional comments:

• rows 81-88: virtual work, virtual organization and telework. Please, complete with the definition of telework or, even better, virtual work.

We explained terms in theoretical part.

• bias in the sample: 67% women but are women a 67% of workforce in Lithuania?

We added statistics and explanation to the text. (Official Statistics: https://osp.stat.gov.lt/lietuvos-regionai/lietuvos-regionai-2019/zmones/moterys-ir-vyrai#Darbo%20rinka)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

The subject matter covered in the article is very current. The literature review is well done. The authors refer to previous research on remote working. They analyze the situation as it was and is in Lithuania in relation to the studied issue. The authors also pay attention to the challenges of teleworking. The research questions make sense. The research procedure is well thought out and well conducted. The authors have shown advantages and disadvantages of remote working in an interesting way. They took into account different perspectives. Combining them together gave a very interesting picture. This research has discovered many issues that could be looked at in more depth in subsequent research projects. The presented study has great potential. In the conclusions you can indicate the further direction of the research. I encourage you to use this research tool to survey employees in other countries.

Author Response

Thanks for review

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I believe teleworking during quarantine has specific characteristics that differ from a non-pandemic time (e.g., conciliation and children at home during quarantine affects employees´ productivity).

Articles proposed can help to reinforce this idea. 

I suggest the authors considering this perspective. 

Author Response

We asked about work-home conflict in the question about family and relatives who disturb when respondents working at home. And this point was most important for men-millennials?
Generally, it was not the issue which was significant to productivity, etc. We could think, this happen because all families (children and spouses) were working at home every day quite a long time, but such discussion wouldn't be based on any data.
Really, the biggest problem was distance learning of children. Parents were very tired because teaching-learning system was creating in parallel with lessons, and people needed very much help. But we didn't prognose that when spread the questioner.