1. Introduction
Telework reflects the volatile, unconventional work environment of the 21st century [
1]. With the rapid transformation of widely applicable advanced ICT, many organizations currently offer opportunities for working across time, space, and organizational boundaries [
2]. The possibility of teleworking in organizations attracts qualified employees who do not want to be tied to a specific work location and allows to reduce management costs [
2,
3]. In recent decades, the increase of organizational performance thanks to ICT is evident not only in the business sector, but also in the education, health, culture, arts, and entertainment industries [
4]. The virtual way of working is becoming increasingly popular due to its potential for cost savings. It is also a way for an organization to be more agile and to cope with ever-accelerating market changes and various crises [
5,
6]. A relevant example of nowadays is the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has moved millions of workers around the world from offices to their homes for self-isolation purposes.
Research to date has shown that teleworking is gaining momentum in a lot of countries all over the world, with the number of teleworkers increasing every year and expected to double each year [
7]. Unfortunately, in the case of Lithuania, this has so far been happening slowly.
Back in 2005, a study conducted by Merkevičius showed that companies in Lithuania lack the skills to effectively organize virtual work [
8]. According to a study published by Raišienė [
4] in 2013, only 9% of 560 surveyed employees had the opportunity to work remotely. The results of a research conducted by Nakrošienė and Butkevičienė [
9] in 2016 showed that remote work arrangements do not tend to spread rapidly in Lithuania—the percentage of teleworkers remained almost unchanged between 2013 and 2015. Results from a survey conducted by Eurofound in 2017 showed that Lithuania has one of the lowest percentages (13%, EU average being 18%) of employees working remotely compared to other EU countries [
2].
To change this situation, the possibility of working remotely was finally embedded in the Labour Code of the Republic of Lithuania. In some cases, organizations are even required, at the request of an employee, to provide their employees with the opportunity to work remotely for at least one-fifth of their working time: “the employer […] must meet the employee’s request to work remotely for at least one-fifth of the total working time rate” (“Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania on telework 2020/No. 2017-10021”) [
10]. The legal regulation emphasizes the importance and relevance of teleworking for employees.
The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has led to a massive relocation of the workplace to employees’ homes, with many companies around the world introducing mandatory teleworking [
11]. A state-wide decision on telework was also adopted in Lithuania.
On 14 March 2020, quarantine due to the COVID-19 virus was announced in the Republic of Lithuania. During the quarantine, both public and private organizations faced an urgent need to digitize their activities: educational activities in universities, schools, and kindergartens were moved to the virtual space, e-commerce and mail delivery flourished in the market, and office workers also moved to virtual workspaces. After that, about 40% of workers in Lithuania started to work from home [
12]. Thus, if the initiative of telework in Lithuania so far had come mostly from employees, during the quarantine, companies’ managements began to understand the advantages of telework in terms of resource management and business.
During the quarantine, a large number of items appeared in the press about the challenges of teleworking, ranging from business consultants’ advice on organizing work and collaboration [
13,
14] and recommendations from human resources consultants on maintaining employees’ productivity [
15,
16] to psychologists’ comments on work–life balance and wellbeing while working and living without leaving home [
17,
18]. However, the pandemic advice and recommendations shared by experts and consultants are based on the knowledge accumulated before the pandemic, and though the number of scientific studies on telework during the quarantine is increasing [
13,
14,
15], the relevance of the issue is not declining. It is important to study telework and gather substantiated evidence independent of the country’s culture and/or laws governing labor relations in order to capture specific changes in employees’ attitudes towards telework, which may be important in addressing human resource management challenges. This raises the legitimate question of whether the experience of those who have joined the ranks of teleworkers, after having hitherto worked only in the workplace provided by the organization, is peculiar and has any specific features. Thus, the aim of this study was to determine differences in the assessment of telework, evaluated by a questionnaire, between different conditional groups of teleworkers. The study was conducted in Lithuania, a country with one of the lowest percentages of teleworkers, which suddenly had to largely switch to telework.
The article is divided into three parts. The first part provides an overview of the peculiarities of teleworking, the second one presents the research methodology, and the third part presents the results of the survey. The article concludes with the research findings, insights, and practical implications.
Theoretical Background
The definition of telework includes geographical dispersion and employees’ dependence on technology when communicating with each other [
19]. In other words, a virtual organization is “a collection of geographically distributed, functionally and/or culturally diverse entities that are linked by electronic forms of communication […] and use technology media to communicate and coordinate the fulfilment of a defined objective or task” [
20]. One of the increasingly offered forms of virtual work arrangements is telework, which helps workers to balance work and personal life, allows to reduce real estate costs, and is one of the tools used by organizations to attract and retain highly qualified professionals [
19].
Practitioners’ interest in telework has been fueled by its flexibility and the resulting benefits for business and employees. The possibility to attract and hire qualified employees living anywhere in the world, extend the organization’s working hours to 24 h a day regardless of time zones, and thus more effectively implement its strategic goals and increase international competitiveness are just some of the reasons why virtual organizations are gaining popularity [
1,
21].
Telework has advantages not only for the organization itself but also for its employees: organizations’ flexibility as regards employee’s working time and place of work is very useful, as it helps to motivate the members of the organization, enables organizations to better meet the needs of employees by helping them to balance work and private life, maintain health and productivity, flexibly plan working hours, experience less stress related to communication, work without being constantly controlled by managers, and save time travelling to and from the workplace [
9,
19,
22].
On the other hand, research has shown that teleworkers face challenges such as the need for socialization, blurred boundaries between leisure and work, lack of boundaries between work and personal life [
9], and difficulties in maintaining effective communication and cooperation with co-workers and managers [
23,
24].
Generally, it can be noted that in the last decade, the scientific literature has been dominated by three main research topics regarding telework in organizations, i.e., (i) efficiency of virtual groups and teams [
1,
5,
6,
24,
25,
26,
27,
28,
29,
30], (ii) virtual or e-leadership [
7,
18,
22,
31,
32,
33,
34,
35,
36,
37,
38], and (iii) telework features [
4,
8,
9,
16,
39,
40,
41]. However, almost all studies, in the context of the challenges of teleworking, emphasize the aspects of communication, mutual trust, and leadership [
24,
30,
42,
43,
44,
45].
The authors of these researches discuss not only formal communication and organization of the communication process but also less visible aspects of communication. Daim et al. [
24] and Barhite [
29] emphasize the importance of communication quality for employees’ psychoemotional well-being. Their research suggests that lack of nonverbal communication and lack of communication quality in general can in some cases lead to anxiety, confusion, and miscommunication among employees. This finding is also confirmed by research conducted in Lithuania. According to Raišienė and Jonušauskas [
19], intensive work with ICT significantly increases the technostress experienced by employees, the consequences of which are related to the deterioration of the subjective quality of life.
Another major challenge in telework is related to building trust [
24,
44]. The level of trust in virtual teams is, as a rule, lower than among live-communicating colleagues [
23]. Lack of trust can become an obstacle to the effective execution of virtual work, therefore in virtual teams, who face uncertainty and have incomplete knowledge of all team members, trust is much more important than in traditional ones [
21].
Finally, telework requires strong leadership [
22], as it is managers who are responsible for the formation of feedback culture, introducing communication rules, efficient information exchange, motivating employees for active and continuous communication, and for the attitudes, feelings, thinking, behaviors, and activities of groups and/or organizations [
32]. According to Wilson, leadership in the digital age in general means “leadership in any institution or sector embedded in the broader transitions toward a more knowledge-intensive society” while using ICT [
46].
Researchers agree that being a leader when work is organized virtually is generally more difficult than leading traditional teams [
35], especially due to the fact that in the virtual world, teleworkers tend to act as leaders themselves, because the digital platform, by fostering mutual collaboration, removes some of the organizational powers and privileges of the leaders and thus enables and encourages employees to take the lead. Thus, the power dynamics between leaders and employees change due to remote interaction [
47], and the practice of shared leadership spreads [
35,
48]. Shared leadership can be a key mechanism to reduce loss of motivation and coordination and maintain team effectiveness when working remotely [
35]. One of the disadvantages of this form of leadership, according to Nordbäck and Espinosa, may be that the process of shared leadership requires additional attention to its coordination, i.e., the leaders and employees themselves must seek coordination so that the whole structure of shared leadership functions as a cohesive whole [
48]. Wildman and Griffith [
49] propose to address this shortcoming by forming a certain leadership structure, which should allow shared leadership to emerge naturally and leave only secondary leadership functions, such as supervision of performance and adaptation, to the formal leader. Other authors equate leadership in teleworking with collective leadership, which results in community members’ ability to effectively collaborate and produce results together [
42,
43].
Based on the theoretical overview of the advantages, disadvantages, and challenges of telework presented above, a research questionnaire was prepared and subjected to teleworkers who worked remotely during the quarantine; its features and results are presented below.
3. Results
Firstly, a correlation analysis between the study variables was performed. As can be seen in
Table 2, the evaluation of telework advantages and disadvantages, as well as the evaluation of the required qualities for remote worker differed between males and females. Women tended to value more the possibility to better keep up with their selected wellness program when telecommuting (
r = 0.125,
p < 0.01). In regard to the factors negatively affecting telework efficiency, men were found to express a more negative attitude toward these factors: distractions by other household members when teleworking (
r = −0.095,
p < 0.05), doubts regarding manager’s evaluation (
r = −0.103,
p < 0.05), career restrictions due to limited possibilities to demonstrate exceptional skills or extraordinary work results (
r = −0.098,
p < 0.05), information overload (
r = −0.137,
p < 0.01), time-consuming asynchronous communication (
r = −0.111,
p < 0.05), tensions due to the distribution of attention between work tasks and intense communication (
r = −0.173,
p < 0.01), and difficulties in identifying the start and the end of several simultaneously implemented tasks (
r = −0.138,
p < 0.05). Furthermore, the correlation analysis revealed that women attached more importance to the ability to work independently (
r = 0.096,
p < 0.05), good time-management (
r = 0.188,
p < 0.01) and communication skills (
r = 0.170,
p < 0.01), ability to engage and maintain their commitment to the organization (
r = 0.149,
p < 0.01), and a strong personal responsibility for one’s work (
r = 0.106,
p < 0.05) as the qualities required for telecommuting.
Next, we examined the association between respondents’ age and study variables. Spearman’s correlation indicated negative relationships between the respondents’ generation and the evaluation of factors negatively influencing the efficiency of telework (
Table 2), suggesting that the older generations tended to put more emphasis on the disadvantages of telecommuting. In addition, the younger generations tended to assign more importance to the qualities required for teleworking such as ability to work independently (
r = 0.096,
p < 0.5), good time-management (
r = 0.188,
p < 0.01) and communication skills (
r = 0.170,
p < 0.01), ability to engage and maintain commitment to the organization (
r = 0.149,
p < 0.01), and a strong personal responsibility for one’s work (
r = 0.106,
p < 0.05). In order to further examine how different generations evaluated factors influencing telework efficiency, a Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc method following a significant Kruskal-Wallis test was applied (
Table 3). The test showed that, compared to millennials, baby boomers felt more the lack of face-to-face interaction (
p = 0.013) and more often had the impression that other people finished their tasks and enjoyed life at home while they continued working all the time (
p = 0.015). In comparison to Xennials and millennials, baby boomers more often felt a lack of feedback (
p = 0.027;
p = 0.046) and team spirit (
r = 0.029;
p = 0.017), as well as experienced increased challenges related to self-organization and work accomplishment (
p = 0.022;
p = 0.001), blurred boundaries between work and personal life (
p = 0.032;
p = 0.008), extended decision-making time (
p = 0.021;
p = 0.45), self-motivation (
p = 0.07;
p = 0.037), complicated access to work-related information (
p = 0.014;
p = 0.019), and increased constrains on the possibilities to build mutual trust (
p = 0.029;
p = 0.019). Furthermore, baby boomers, as compared to all the other generations, more often experienced information overloads (
p < 0.05) and increased time-consuming asynchronous communication (
p < 0.05) when telecommuting. The test results also revealed that, in comparison to millennials, Generation X felt more the lack of feedback (
p = 0.031), of face-to-face interaction with colleagues (
p = 0.015), and of an inspirational work atmosphere (
p = 0.011). Moreover, Generation X more often experienced, compared to millennials, increased career restrictions (
p = 0.028), self-motivation-related challenges (
p = 0.01), impression that other people finished their tasks and enjoyed life at home while they continued working all the time (
p = 0.018), blurred boundaries between work and personal life (
p = 0.001), doubts regarding manager’s evaluation (
p = 0.011), constraints on the possibilities to build mutual trust (
p = 0.021), as well as challenges related to self-organization and work accomplishment (
p = 0.032). Finally, we found several significant differences in the evaluation of telecommuting efficiency between Generation X and Xennials. Compared to Xennials, generation X felt more, concerned that important information evaded them (
p = 0.023) and experienced more challenges related to self-organization and work accomplishment (
p = 0.039) as well as more constraints on the possibilities to build mutual trust (
p = 0.039).
We also tested the relationships between respondents’ education and all study variables. As can be seen in
Table 1, respondents holding a lower level of education valued more the possibility to better keep up with the selected wellness program when telecommuting (
r = 0.131,
p < 0.01). Moreover, it appeared that a higher level of education was related to an increased lack of face-to-face interaction with the manager (
r = 0.109,
p < 0.05), the lack of team spirit (
r = 0.099,
p < 0.05), concerns about missing important information (
r = 0.190,
p < 0.05), and doubts regarding manager’s evaluation (
r = 0.104,
p < 0.05). It was also found that the respondents holding a higher level of education tended to value more the qualities required when telecommuting: ability to work independently (
r = 0.162,
p < 0.01), good time-management (
r = 0.175,
p < 0.01) and communication skills (
r = 0.117,
p < 0.05), digital literacy, personal leadership (
r = 0.100,
r < 0.05), and a strong personal responsibility for one’s work (
r = 0.222,
p < 0.01). Next, Kruskal-Wallis (
Table 4) and Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc tests were performed in order to check differences related to education groups when evaluating the efficiency of telecommuting. The tests results revealed that respondents having secondary school education valued less the possibility to independently organize work as compared to those holding bachelor (
p = 0.000), master (
p = 0.000), and doctor (
p = 0.002) degrees. Furthermore, they attached less importance, as compared to all the other education groups, to the ability to work independently (
p < 0.01), good time-management skills (
p < 0.05), digital literacy (
p < 0.05), and strong personal responsibility (
p < 0.01) as necessary qualities for remote workers. Moreover, respondents having secondary school education felt less the lack of an inspirational work atmosphere, compared to those holding bachelor (
p = 0.021) and master degrees (
p = 0.016), and they were less concerned that they could miss important information compared to the respondents holding a master degree (
p = 0.26). Finally, they valued less the ability to engage and maintain their commitment to the organization as compared to the respondents having a bachelor degree (
p = 0.01) and they gave less importance to personal leadership and to good communication skills as required qualities for remote workers compared to the respondents having bachelor (
p < 0.05) and master degrees (
p < 0.01).
Next, we examined whether there were differences in the evaluation of telework efficiency depending on the fields of activity of the respondents. The results of Kruskal-Wallis (
Table 5) and Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc tests revealed that respondents working in the management and administration field assigned more importance to good management skills (
p = 0.005), personal leadership (
p = 0.002), and a strong personal responsibility for one’s work (
p = 0.002) as the qualities required to remote worker, compared to those working in the field of services and intellectual outputs. Furthermore, it appeared that respondents working in the field of services and intellectual outputs felt more difficulties in identifying start and end of several simultaneously implemented tasks in comparison to those working in the management and administration field (
p = 0.015).
We also examined how the employment duration of the respondents was associated with their evaluation of telecommuting (
Table 2). We found that the employment duration was negatively associated with the evaluation of the possibility to choose the workplace (
r = −0.131,
p < 0.01) and positively related with the possibility to limit unnecessary interaction (
r = 0.119,
p < 0.05) when telecommuting. Furthermore, it was also found that respondents having longer employment duration tended to emphasize the following disadvantages of telecommuting: lack of face-to-face interaction with colleagues (
r = 0.134,
p < 0.01) and manager (
r = 0.208,
p < 0.01), lack of feedback (
r = 0.094,
p < 0.05), blurred boundaries between work and personal life (
r = 0.144,
p < 0.01), lack of an inspirational work atmosphere (
r = 0.159,
p < 0.01), challenges related to self-organization and following of work routine (
r = 0.123,
p < 0.05), impression that other people finished their tasks and enjoy life at home while they continued to work all the time (
r = 0.231,
p < 0.05), feeling concerned that important information evaded them (
r = 0.119.
p < 0.05), doubts regarding manager’s evaluation (
r = 0.162,
p < 0.01), career restrictions (
r = 0.189,
p < 0.01), and self-motivation-related challenges (
r = 0.185,
p < 0.01). Furthermore, respondents who had a longer employment experience tended to attach more importance to digital literacy (
r = 0.173,
p < 0.01) and strong personal responsibility for one’s work (
r = 0.122,
p < 0.01) as qualities required for remote workers. In order to further examine how employment duration affected the evaluation of telecommuting, the Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc method following a significant Kruskal-Wallis test was applied (
Table 6). Compared to employees working 11–20 years, respondents whose employment duration was less than one year attached less importance to the ability to engage and maintain commitment to the organization (
p = 0.047), digital literacy (
p = 0.014), as well as strong personal responsibility for one’s work (
p = 0.005) as the qualities required for telecommuting. Moreover, this group (working less than one year) attached less importance to good communication skills as compared to all the other groups (
p < 0.05) and to digital literacy (
p = 0.003) as compared to the group working for more than 20 years. Furthermore, this group felt less the lack of face-to-face interaction with colleagues (
p = 0.027), self-motivation-related challenges (
p = 0.018), and blurred boundaries between work and personal life (
p = 0.005) when telecommuting, compared to the group working for more than 20 years. This group was also found to assign less importance to good time-management skills (
p = 0.01) when telecommuting in comparison to the group with an employment duration of 1–3 years. The test also showed that respondents whose employment duration was 4–10 years encountered less difficulties in identifying start and end of several simultaneously implemented tasks (
p = 0.014), had less doubts regarding manager’s evaluation (
p = 0.043), and experienced less blurred boundaries between work and personal life (
p = 0.07) compared to those having more than 20 years of working experience. In addition, this group (4–10 years of employment) experienced less career restrictions due to limited possibilities to demonstrate exceptional skills or extraordinary work results (
p = 0.043), as well as less doubts regarding manager’s evaluation (
p = 0.025), as compared to the group with 11–20 years of employment. Finally, the test results also revealed that respondents who had been working for 1–3 years felt less constraints on the possibilities to build mutual trust (
p < 0.01) and had less the impression that other people finished their tasks and enjoyed life at home while they continue working all the time (
p < 0.05), compared to those who had been working more than 11 years.
We also examined whether there were differences in the evaluation of telecommuting between respondents who had telework experience before the lockdown and those who did not. A correlation analysis (
Table 2) revealed that respondents who had telework experience before the lockdown valued more the advantages of telework: possibility to choose worktime (
r = −0.096,
p < 0.05), independently organize work (
r = −0.126,
p < 0.01), work individually (
r = −0.133,
p < 0.01), balance work and personal life (
r = −0.175,
p < 0.01), limit unnecessary interactions (
r = −0.103,
p < 0.05), and save time on commuting (
r = −0.146,
p < 0.01). On the other hand, respondents who did not have telecommuting experience before the lockdown tended to experience a more negative telework impact linked to lack of face-to-face interaction with the manager (
r = −0.101,
p < 0.05), complicated access to work-related information (
r = −0.168,
p < 0.01), lack of feedback (
r = −0.112,
p < 0.05), distractions when teleworking by other household members (
r = −0.122,
p < 0.05), working overtime due to the manager’s inability to estimate workload (
r = −0.121,
p < 0.05), lack of an inspirational work atmosphere (
r = −0.113,
p < 0.05), feeling concerned that important information evaded them (
r = −0.141,
p < 0.01), doubts regarding manager’s evaluation (
r = −0.104,
p < 0.05), extended decision-making time (
r = −0.100,
p < 0.05), and time-consuming asynchronous communication (
r = −0.100,
p < 0.05). Finally, we found several differences in the evaluation of the required qualities for remote workers. Respondents who had telework experience before the lockdown assigned more importance to the ability to work independently (
r = −0.102,
p < 0.05), good time-management skills (
r = −0.123,
p < 0.05), and personal leadership (
r = −0.123,
p < 0.05) as important qualities when telecommuting, while those who did not have telework experience before the lockdown tended to value more the ability to engage and maintain their commitment to the organization (
r = 0.114,
p < 0.05) and a strong personal responsibility for one’s work (
r = 0.132,
p < 0.01).
Next, we also tested the relationships between the length of the telecommuting experience and the study variables (
Table 7). It appeared that a longer telecommuting experience was related to a higher evaluation of these telecommuting benefits: possibility to choose workplace (
r = 0.124,
p < 0.01) and work time (
r = 0.163,
p < 0.01), to independently organize work (
r = 0.183,
p < 0.01), to work individually (
r = 0.143,
p < 0.01), to balance work and personal life (
r = 0.204,
p < 0.01), and time saved on commuting (
r = 0.122,
p < 0.01). A correlation analysis also revealed that respondents having a longer telecommuting experience tended to attach more importance to the following disadvantages of telework: lack of face-to-face interaction with the manager (
r = 0.096,
p < 0.05), complicated access to work-related information (
r = 0.183,
p < 0.01), lack of feedback (
r = 0.104,
p < 0.05), distractions when teleworking by other household members (
r = 0.101,
p < 0.05), working overtime due to the manger’s inability to estimate the workload (
r = 0.109,
p < 0.05), feeling concerned that they might miss important information (
r = 0.123,
p < 0.05), doubts regarding the manager’s evaluation (
r = 0.112,
p < 0.05), communication overload (
r = 0.098,
p < 0.05), extended decision-making time (
r = 0.095,
p < 0.05), time-consuming asynchronous communication (
r = 0.107,
p < 0.05), and focus on communication rather than on the tasks (
r = 0.106,
p < 0.05). Furthermore, respondents having a longer telecommuting experience tended to value more the ability to work independently (
r = 0.154,
p < 0.01), good time-management skills (
r = 0.150,
p < 0.01), personal leadership (
r = 0.133,
p < 0.05), and a strong personal responsibility for one’s work (
r = 0.182,
p < 0.01) as important qualities when telecommuting. Our study results revealed significant differences between the respondents teleworking only during the quarantine and those having a longer telework experience. It appeared that respondents who began teleworking only during the quarantine appreciated less the possibility to choose their work time (
p = 0.049) ant to work individually (
p = 0.027), compared to those who had experienced telecommuting for 1–3 years. Moreover, the respondents who telecommuted only during the quarantine and those who had telecommuted for several weeks assigned less importance to the possibilities to independently organize work (
p < 0.05) and to balance work and personal life (
p < 0.05), compared to those having a longer telecommuting experience (less than 1 year and 1–3 years). Therefore, the respondents teleworking only during the quarantine tended to appreciate less the teleworking’s benefits compared to those who were teleworking before the quarantine. The results also revealed that, compared to employees having more teleworking experience (less than 1 year), the respondents teleworking only during the quarantine placed less emphasis on these disadvantages of telework: complicated access to work-related information (
p = 0.006), distractions when teleworking by other household members (
p = 0.011), and time-consuming asynchronous communication (
p = 0.015). Finally, there were significant differences in the assessment of qualities required for teleworkers between the respondents who began teleworking during the quarantine and those having telework experience before the quarantine. Respondents who telecommuted only during the quarantine attached less importance to the ability to work individually, compared to groups having more experience (less than 1 year and more than 3 years) (
p < 0.05). They also placed less value on the strong personal responsibility when telecommuting as compared to the groups having more experience (1–3 years,
p = 0.03). Furthermore, respondents having less experience in telecommuting (less than 1 year) gave less importance to digital literacy, a quality requested to teleworkers, as compared to those having a longer experience (more than 3 years). Moreover, respondents who had more than 3 years of telecommuting experience placed more value on good time-management skills compared to those telecommuting only during the quarantine (
p = 0.018). Finally, respondents having a longer telecommuting experience (less than 1 year and more than 3 years) valued more highly personal leadership as an important quality for teleworkers, as compared to those having less telework experience (only during the quarantine and for several weeks) (
p < 0.05).
Finally, a correlation analysis (
Table 2) showed that respondents who telecommuted more often tended to place more value on the possibilities to independently organize work (
r = 0.014,
p < 0.05) and to balance work and personal life (
r = 0.135,
p < 0.05). It also appeared that respondents who spent more time on telecommuting tended to emphasize more the following disadvantages of telecommuting: lack of face-to-face interaction with the manager (
r = 0.158,
p < 0.01), complicated access to work-related information (
r = 0.164,
p < 0.01), lack of feedback (
r = 0.126,
p < 0.01), feeling concerned about missing important information (
r = 0.099,
p < 0.05), doubts regarding the manger’s evaluation (
r = 0.118,
p < 0.05), extended decision-making time (
r = 0.116,
p < 0.05), and increased focus on communication rather than on the task (
r = 0.095,
p < 0.05). Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc method following a significant Kruskal-Wallis test showed that respondents who telecommuted approximately up to two days per week valued more the benefit of time saved on commuting as compared to the respondents who did not telecommute before the lockdown (
p = 0.005), who telecommuted more than half of the week (
p = 0.019), and who telecommuted all the working week (
p = 0.024) (
Table 8). The test also revealed that respondents who telecommuted all the working week placed more emphasis on the constraints on the possibilities to build mutual trust (
p = 0.002), compared to those telecommuting approximately up to two days per week. In addition, respondents who telecommuted more than half of the week (
p = 0.025) and all the working week (
p = 0.025) placed more emphasis on the lack of mutual trust between employees and their manager, as compared to those who telecommuted for an insignificant working time. Furthermore, respondents who did not have telecommuting experience before the lockdown placed less importance to complicated access to work-related information, compared to those telecommuting approximately up to one day per week (
p = 0.015) and those telecommuting all the working week (
p = 0.006),. Respondents who telecommuted all their working week were more focused on communication rather than on the tasks (
p = 0.023), as compared to those who did not have telecommuting experience before the lockdown. Finally, respondents who telecommuted approximately up to two days per week attached more importance to personal leadership compared to those who did not have teleworking experience before the lockdown (
p = 0.029).