The Occupational Difficulties Faced by Working from Home Employees in South Korea: A Grounded Theory Study

Abstract: The global COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread lockdowns and social distancing measures, resulting in a significant shift towards Work from Home (WFH) practices among companies (Shirmohammadi et al., 2022). This transition, driven by various factors involving individuals, organizations, governments, and IT innovations, has gained momentum and piqued the interest of Human Resource Development (HRD) scholars and practitioners (Baker et al., 2020). However, research on WFH in South Korea has primarily focused on system implementation and improvements, and previous empirical studies predominantly included employees with limited WFH experience (Suhee Kim, & Yoonhee Park, 2021). Despite the increasing number of WFH employees in South Korea, there has been a lack of research addressing the challenges faced by employees transitioning to WFH.
To fill the knowledge gap in current literature, this study aims to investigate WFH employees who have worked at home for more than three years, as they are considered experts in their field based on the South Korean industrial perspective (Anna Choi & Jinkook Tak, 2021). By recruiting these participants, this study explores the difficulties of WFH employees and provides meaningful implications for HRD. The research questions in this study are as follows:
1) what specific challenges do long-term work-from-home (WFH) employees in South Korea encounter?
2) how do long-term WFH employees in South Korea employ coping mechanisms to address the challenges they face in their work environment?
3) what are the implications of long-term WFH experiences for Human Resource Development (HRD) practices in South Korea?
For the methodological approach, the researcher applied the grounded theory approach outlined by Strauss and Corbin (1990, 1998). Grounded theory approach is helpful to explore diverse causal and interactive conditions while studying the core phenomenon (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, 1998). By employing grounded theory, the researcher can comprehensively and systematically explore the challenges faced by long-term telecommuting employees in Korea, deriving theories to better understand these challenges. The purposive sampling method was also applied to recruit the participants for this study, and all of their WFH experiences were over five years. For the data collection, the researcher met the participants online two times to share the purpose of this study and delivered five basic interview questions. After receiving their agreements, in-depth, one-on-one, semi-structured interviews were conducted for two weeks, with each interview lasting approximately 1.2 hour by phone. The interviews began with basic work-related inquiries and proceeded to delve into their challenges working as WFH employees (Bhattacherjee, 2001; Hill et al., 2001). Data collection continued until theoretical saturation was achieved, with 2-3 follow-up contacts with participants for clarifying any confusion in the interview data.
After analyzing data obtained from the 10 participants, 42 concepts, 24 subcategories, and 6 categories were identified. These are organized into six elements of a paradigm model (see Figure 1), including causal conditions, contextual conditions, central phenomena, mediating conditions, actions/interactions, and results.
This study distinguishes itself by concentrating on relatively long-term WFH employees, with over five years of experience. This focus contrasts with previous research, which typically examined entry-level WFH employees or those with a short period of WFH experience due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, this study fills the gap revealing from prior work that primarily focused on the WFH system and exploring employees’ occupational difficulties affecting their individual and organizational level outcomes (Suhee Kim, & Yoonhee Park, 2021).
This study suggests that further research should consider replicating the study with a larger sample size in both South Korea and in other national contexts (Zarestky, 2022). Additionally, conducting a longitudinal study to track the occupational difficulties faced by WFH employees would be beneficial for developing a proper theoretical framework (Philip & Medina-Craven, 2022). Furthermore, implications for HRD include developing diverse interventions for social interaction and collaboration among WFH employees, such as virtual team-building activities and social events. While reducing their office maintenance costs, organizations should consider providing financial support to create a better work environment. This support may include ergonomic equipment and financial counseling for home office setups.
Keywords: work from home, occupational difficulties, South Korea