Teleworking—An Economic and Social Impact during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Data Mining Analysis

Abstract

The health crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic has induced, among other things, an increase in the importance of remote work or teleworking (TL) in the current period. The objective of this research is to identify the economic and social impact of telework in changing the behavior of employees in Romania. The research was conducted approximately one year after the onset of the pandemic until the beginning of the vaccination period in Romania. The research proposed includes three main directions of analysis of the extracted data, which are related to telework efficiency, this being considered one of the most important indicators for a company. In order to obtain conclusive results, we used a mixed methodology, combining results obtained through a survey based on a self-administered electronic questionnaire, with a data mining analysis. Detailed analysis of the groups identified based on work efficiency allowed us to highlight the most common employee profiles. This analysis was doubled by a second classification experiment, which provided us a more detailed analysis of the groups identified based on job satisfaction and highlighted the most common employee profiles. The expansion of telework in various economic areas is a result of adaptation to the new economic and social conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.