DefinePK

Abstract

The wellbeing and productivity of employees are of great concern in organizations operating in a developing remote work environment. The research investigated how social mindfulness and dependency at the workplace predict improvements in wellbeing and work productivity among remote workers in Pakistan. Based on the sample of 300 subjects with at-home work in either full-time or flexible arrangements, participants completed standardized measures of social mindfulness (Van Doesum et al., 2013), psychological wellbeing (Ryff, 1989), workplace autonomy (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006), and personal work performance (Koopmans et al., 2015). The analysis of data involved Pearson correlation, multiple regression analyses, and independent-samples t-tests. Findings indicated that social mindfulness showed a significant positive relationship to psychological wellbeing, whereas workplace autonomy was also a significant predictor of workplace productivity and psychological wellbeing. Flexible workers were interestingly ranked higher in terms of personal autonomy and productivity than full-time remote workers. There was also a statistically significant variance between groups in terms of gender, residential background, and family system, where females and urban workers reported experiencing more wellbeing and autonomy. This confirms other studies that suggested autonomy and prosociality are significant on the virtual level (Weng et al., 2020; Slemp et al., 2015). This analysis lends weight to the fact that in remote work policies, organizations need to endorse the enabling of flexible structures, instill social attention, and emphasize the application of autonomy-supportive behaviors to ensure optimal employee operations.