Working from home in Romania during COVID-19 lockdown across occupations and economic sectors

Abstract

Based on novel household data, we document the status of working from home in Romania during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Remote work had a sharp increase during the lockdown, showcasing significant differences among different categories of workers' behaviours, pointing to a gendered nature of the practice.The article is built on the data resulting from a Household Survey distributed on random sampling by the World Bank in Romania at the level of 2,241 households, covering approximately 5,700 individuals.We have found out that women working remotely were more numerous than men. Moreover, amenable occupations to working from home appear to belong to the specialist, clerks, and skilled and assimilated workers, whereas managers have worked from home to a lesser extent than expected. Finally, the highest numbers of employees working from home were in the education sector, followed by employees in other public, social and personal services and financial intermediation. Remote work in the public administration was modest.The findings of this research are useful for both companies and public administration representatives. Companies in specific economic sectors that plan to transition into working from home can become aware of their potential remote work by learning from peers. Therefore, they could search for streamlining their organizational processes to allow work from home gradually, which could generate reduced administrative costs, high returns for the environment and better work-life balance for the employees. Public administration may challenge their current practices to increase the share of employees working from home, as we have documented that there is an unexplored potential for remote work in the public sector.

Work from Home during the COVID-19 Pandemic—The Impact on Employees’ Self-Assessed Job Performance

“…Working remotely was not common in Romania before the pandemic. The legislation on teleworking was first approved in 2018, when Romania had one of the lowest percentages of remote work in the EU (European Union), 0.4% [ 3 ].…”