“Who am I? What am I doing?” The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on work identities
ISSN: 0142-5455
Article publication date: 16 October 2023
Issue publication date: 31 October 2023
Abstract
Purpose
As every day work is central to people's lives and events serve as significant contextual factors, examining what impact the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic restrictions had on knowledge workers warrants further investigation. The author's research question investigated how employees in the London Insurance Market had made sense of their work identities during a period of mandated remote work and isolation from co-workers, leaders and others, amidst a turbulent environment. To address this enquiry, this research drew on Goffman's institutional, dramaturgical and stigma theories.
Design/methodology/approach
Data used in this research are from an ongoing PhD study of how individuals conceive, construct and conduct their careers in this field. As individuals and their social worlds are interwoven, a qualitative methodological approach was employed in this research.
Findings
Participants were thrusted into a position where they had no prior knowledge what identity they should adopt in a situation which had totalising characteristics. The loss of clear boundaries between work and home setting caused a deterioration of participants' work identities whilst physical separation from their institutions and co-workers posed a risk of disconnecting their past work identities from the present. Moreover, participants' experiences of deterioration and disconnection were intertwined with their demographic and occupational identities.
Originality/value
This study aligns with existing research on identity work, emphasising the crucial role of social interaction in the formation of work identities. However, it also highlights that the establishment and sustenance of work identities is also reliant on individuals having separate frontstage and backstage settings to understand and interpret their conduct and those of their significant others.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Parts of this paper's findings were presented at the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Conference 2022, and the author would like to extend her appreciation to the conference delegates for their comments. The author is also very thankful to the two anonymous reviewers and to Professor Dennis Nickson, the Editor in Chief for Employee Relations for their valuable feedback on this paper. Additionally, the author would like to express her sincere gratitude to the research participants who contributed to this study.
Citation
Pillai, M. (2023), "“Who am I? What am I doing?” The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on work identities", Employee Relations, Vol. 45 No. 6, pp. 1527-1547. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-01-2023-0048
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited