Pandemic Transformation

What did we learn from the Pandemic

  1. Working from home was per se not a significant challenge for software engineers
  2. The quality of social contacts predicted positively, and stress predicted an individual’s well-being negatively when controlling for other variables consistently across both waves 
  3. Boredom and distractions predicted productivity negatively
  4. Productivity was less strongly associated with all predictor variables at time two compared to time one, suggesting that software engineers adapted to the lockdown situation over time
  5. Longitudinal analyses did not provide evidence that any predictor variable causal explained variance in well-being and productivity
  6. No significant gender differences. Women are slightly better with coping strategies (Distractions). Kids at home had low impact
  7. No significant country differences (US vs UK). Americans are driven more by material-extrinsic work motivation

Russo, D., Hanel, P. H., Altnickel, S., & van Berkel, N. (2021). Predictors of Well-being and Productivity among Software Professionals during the COVID-19 Pandemic-A Longitudinal Study. Empirical Software Engineering.

D. Russo, P.H.P. Hanel, S. Altnickel, N. van Berkel. The Daily Life of Software Engineers during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Proceedings of the 43th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE’21). IEEE. Madrid, Spain, May 2021.

About PanTra

PanTra (Pandemic Transformation) investigates the most relevant factors to improve Small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) resilience during a disruptive event, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The project focuses on three fundamental dimensions: 

  • organizational factors (e.g., performance) 
  • personal characteristics (e.g., employees well-being) 
  • technological factors (e.g., use of technology) 

As a result, PanTra will deliver easy-to-read recommendations for Danish and international companies, as also their employees, to cope best with extreme events.

This project is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation under grant agreement number CF20-0322.