Working in Public Administration During Nonwork Time During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

With the outbreak of Covid-19, a pandemic was declared in March 2020 and countries introduced various measures to overcome it. As a result, employees worked more intensively from home with the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), which significantly affected the way of work, the length of the working day, and the time reserved for rest. The purpose of this article is to examine whether, during the pandemic, public employees in the Slovenian public administration worked during nonwork time. This is the first research of this kind in the Slovenian public administration. The research applied the quantitative method and an online questionnaire conducted in February 2021, whereby data from 1676 public administration employees were obtained. The results of the research show that at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, 80% of the respondents performed work during nonwork time. In fact, public employees quite often worked late in the afternoon after working hours and on weekends. Interestingly, about 10% of public employees even worked during annual leave and sick leave. The results of the research contribute to theoretical and practical knowledge about work related activities during nonwork time.

Work During Non-Work Time of Public Employees

“…For the RQ3:"During which periods do employees work during non-work times? ", we found in existing literature (Mar & Buzeti, 2021;CIPD, 2020;Bavafa & Terwiesch, 2019;ILO & Eurofound, 2017) that employees work at different times during non-work times.…”

“…As we know from practice the performance of work during non-work has expanded with the mass use of ICT at work and the problem started to be more visible because of mass spread of remote work during COVID-19 pandemic. We found and identified 18 scientific literature on the selected topic of work during non-work time (Andrade and Matias, 2021;Lee et al, 2021;Mar and Buzeti, 2021;Wendsche, de Bloom, Syrek and Vahle--Hinz, 2021;CIPD, 2020;Lutz et al, 2020;Mohd Fauzi et al, 2020;Bavafa and Terwiesch, 2019;Eurofound and ILO, 2019;Schmoll, 2019;Thulin, Vilhelmson and Johansson, 2019;Gadeyne et al 2018;Houdmont et al, 2018;ILO and Eurofound, 2017;Ďuranová and Ohly, 2016;Eurofound, 2016;Kreiner, 2006). Based on the research questions (RQ), we have analysed the following literature: RQ1: How is work during non-work times becoming more widespread among employees?…”

“…During this time, it is crucial for employees to take a mental break and recover from work, as this has an impact on their well-being and health (Lee at al., 2021;Sonnentag and Niessen, 2020;Ďuranová and Ohly, 2016). In the context of time periods, these are the time before the start of official working hours (morning) or after the end of official working hours (evening or night), when employees are entitled to daily rest, weekend rest or the corresponding weekly rest (Mar and Buzeti, 2021;ILO and Eurofound, 2017), and annual leave (CIPD, 2020;Houdmont et al, 2018). Additionally, this time does not include paid work6.…”

“…Following a review literature (Mar and Buzeti, 2021;CIPD, 2020;Bavafa and Terwiesch, 2019;ILO and Eurofound, 2017), we have identified the most frequent periods of non-work times (morning, evening, night, weekends, annual leave) during which employees carry out work.…”

“…There is a growing trend towards different forms of flexible working in the workplace . The rapid development and widespread use of information and communication technology (ICT) allows employees to continue work during non-work times (Lee at al., 2021;Bauwens et al, 2020); for example at night, at weekends and during annual leave (Mar and Buzeti, 2021;CIPD, 2020;Houdmont, Elliott-Davies and Donnelly, 2018) and away from the employer's location (Von Bergen, Bressler and Proctor, 2019). Organisations provide flexible policies to their employees, and in turn, they expect their alertness and promptness in reaction to their managers' requests and customers` needs (Lutz, Schneider and Vorderer, 2020;Von Bergen et al, 2019).…”