‘(Dis)connecting’ - Interpersonal communication for young professionals during enforced home-based telework (HBTW). A qualitative study

Home-based teleworking (HBTW) has been intensively growing in the Netherlands, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, teleworkers have been primarily researched in comparison to face-to-face workers. However, this body of research leaves many gaps, such as the state of enforced remote work, different fields of occupation in this setting of enforced remote work and different age groups. The involuntary nature of HBTW in this research is key to understanding the experience of teleworking young professionals. The current thesis aims to explore how young professionals in the Netherlands experience HBTW, with a specific focus on interpersonal communication, relationships, and boundary work through the following research question: How do Dutch young professionals experience interpersonal communication in an enforced remote workplace? To answer the research question, 12 in-depth interviews were conducted with a variety of young knowledge workers, in the fields of marketing, accounting, consultancy and HR. This data was analyzed through a constructivist grounded theory approach and resulted into three selective codes. These three selective codes are: implications of formal virtuality, which entails the implications of formal virtual communication, but also the increased formality of communication in the workplace. The second selective code is relationships and social deprivation, which stress the importance of relationships, informal communication, trust and social facilitation for a positive work environment. Lastly increased boundary negotiations explain how the lines between professional and personal lines are being blurred, how young professionals are responding to this and the opportunity they see. The present study contributes to the growing body of literature on HBTW in various ways. Firstly, it expands the knowledge on how the digital natives of contemporary society experience implications of HBTW. Moreover, it fills in a gap in research on boundary work regarding the factor of non-voluntary adoption of remote work environments. Societal and managerial implications are suggested to insist future decisionmakers to invest in young professionals, the workforce of the future. These explorations pave the way for future research to expand on. Suggestions for future research entail more research on enforced remote work in other demographics, but also on ways in which the benefits of social facilitation could be fostered through virtual offices.