Home office effects on the motivation of ICT companies' employees

Restricted measures for social isolation taken as precautions in the fight against pandemic due to the COVID-19 virus, have changed dramatically the normal business and professional life. Companies in all sectors have to be adaptive and flexible in order to survive in this complex and hardly unpredictable business environment. At first glance ICT sector is not so severely and visibly affected by the COVID-19 economic crisis. Due to numerous reasons companies from the sector have so far shown an enviable level of flexibility and adaptability to the rapid changes in business environment conditions. As a response to the anti-epidemiological requirements, most often used tool from ICT companies is to transform working processes from office to home, following the line of social isolation. In this regard the major objective of the current article is to reveal the specifics of home office work in ICT companies and its impact on the employees’ motivation in terms of their perceptions and level of commitment to the achievement of companies` goals. For this purpose we used questionnaire survey among employees working in different job positions in ICT companies in Bulgaria (n=158). Our findings reveal that majority of employees (almost 80% of responders) have positive attitude to the home office as a working measure in social isolation conditions. On the other hand, home office does not significantly impact on the level of employees` motivation and their engagement to the achievement of the company’s goals. Based on analysis of collected data, we propose divers measures for improving the employees satisfaction and motivation in specific context of home office work during stress crisis situation, such the pandemic is.