The perceived impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the motivation to continue working

Abstract

The perceived impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the motivation to continue working In the current aging society, organizations are becoming increasingly reliant on their older employees. To ensure the organization’s functional capability, employers will need to maintain the motivation to continue working of the older employees. This, however, is currently at risk with the expected negative influence of the mandatory change in work design to working from home, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The main objective of this master thesis is therefore to explore the perceived impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a major life event, on the motivation to continue working of older (forced) teleworking employees and to create an overview of the barriers and opportunities that were experienced in order to deal with the major life event. Data was collected by conducting 12 in-depth semi-structured interviews with teleworking employees of 55 years and older and analyzed using template analysis. It was found that the majority of the participants experienced the COVID-19 pandemic as a major life event, however, that this major life event did not impact their motivation to continue working. This lack of impact resulted from the barriers caused by the pandemic being outweighed by the perceived opportunities.