“Who am I? What am I doing?” The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on work identities
| Date | 16 October 2023 |
| Pages | 1527-1547 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-01-2023-0048 |
| Published date | 16 October 2023 |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
| Author | Mani Pillai |
“Who am I? What am I doing?”
The impact of the COVID-19
pandemic on work identities
Mani Pillai
Business School, Brunel University London, London, UK
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
sustenanceof 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 Goffman, COVID-19, London insurance market, Knowledge workers, Digital or virtual working,
Work identity
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
England underwent three lockdowns and several periods of social distancing restrictions
between March 2020 and June 2021 to minimise the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19) outbreak (Hurley and Walker, 2021;Institute for Government, 2022). These
measures produced complex challenges that reverberated across various domains (Caligiuri
et al., 2020;Carillo et al., 2021;Shoss et al., 2021). Careers were disrupted (Akkermans et al.,
2020) when all organisational employees –also denoted as knowledge workers in this paper –
were mandated to shift to remote working for an extended duration, irrespective of their
preferences and norms (Waizenegger et al., 2020). According to the events system theory
developed by Morgeson et al. (2015), large-scale unforeseen events have the potential to
unsettle and undermine established structures and norms. The COVID-19 pandemic aligns
with this concept because it had far-reaching consequences at both micro and macro levels.
Knowledge workers accustomed to conventional office environments faced abrupt changes
COVID-19’s
impact on work
identities
1527
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.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0142-5455.htm
Received 28 January 2023
Revised 6 July 2023
21 September 2023
Accepted 25 September 2023
Employee Relations: The
International Journal
Vol. 45 No. 6, 2023
pp. 1527-1547
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-01-2023-0048
in their established routines, which prompted a fundamental review of their work identities.
Concurrently, the pandemic reshaped work landscapes through the widespread adoption of
remote work, signifying a noteworthy societal shift in the realm of knowledge-based work
(Hennekam et al., 2021;Singh et al., 2022).
Work identity refers to an individual’s self-perception of their professional self and
encompasses a fusion of organisational, occupational, functional and other identities (Walsh
and Gordon, 2008). This composite identity influences their corresponding behaviours in the
workplace. Identity scholars have elucidated that individuals are driven by the pursuit of
better financial rewards and elevated status to shape, alter, uphold or fortify their work
identities within their social structures (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002;Walsh and Gordon,
2008;Wrzesniewski, 2002). This dynamic process of identity work assumes particular
importance when organisational members encounter ambivalence and conflicts arising from
various scenarios, such as when they have doubts about their competencies (Horn, 2017),
when their organisations undergo major corporate transformations (Corley and Gioia, 2004),
when they are members of stigmatised institutions (Eury et al., 2018), when the imposed
changes change the meanings of their occupations (Kyratsis et al., 2017) and when clashes
stem from the intersection of their multiple social identities (Caza et al., 2018;Clair et al., 2005;
Dahm et al., 2019;Ramarajan, 2014). These concerns become more pronounced when
triggered by macro-level events (Hennekam et al., 2021;Leigh and Melwani, 2019;Petriglieri,
2011). The previous literature has shown that such large-scale and unforeseen events
disconnect the past from the future, prompting organisational employees to re-evaluate the
work identities they had previously embraced or aspired to achieve (Chatrakul Na Ayudhya
et al., 2019;Daskalaki and Simosi, 2017;Donnelly and Proctor-Thomson, 2015;Elsbach and
Kramer, 1996;Wrzesniewski, 2002). Being forced to relinquish cherished identities can
damage one’s selfhood and evoke negative emotions (Conroy and O’Leary-Kelly, 2014).
According to a model developed by Williams and Murphy (2022), individuals typically need
12–18 months to make adequate sense of career-altering events before they can respond
appropriately.
A review of prior research on remote working, also known as virtual working, provided
insights for the present study. Notably, even before the pandemic restrictions, organisations
had already begun moving towards virtual or remote working to address workforce demands
(Jackson et al., 2006) and economic pressures (Gao and Sai, 2020). Parallel to these transitions,
another significant shift emerged with the rise of gig work, which altered knowledge workers’
participation in the workforce (Ashford et al., 2018;Petriglieri et al., 2019;Watson et al., 2021).
Consequently, there is some value in considering the extant literature on the work identities of
knowledge workers engaged in both virtual and gig working practices (Hodder, 2020;
Petriglieri et al., 2019).
Academic research documenting these trends presents diverse definitions of virtual and
gig workers (see Caza et al., 2022 and Charalampous et al., 2019). In the knowledge industry,
virtual workers are salaried employees who are often geographically separated from their
employers’offices and rely on technology to collaborate with colleagues (Au and Marks, 2012;
Makarius and Larson, 2017;Soga et al., 2022). Gig workers, on the other hand, operate more
independently, maintaining both physical and relational disconnection from their
collaborators and clients (Ashford et al., 2018;Petriglieri et al., 2019). Scholars have
examined the benefits of virtual and gig work for individuals and organisations (refer to
Ashford et al., 2018;Bailey and Kurland, 2002;Charalampous et al., 2019;Petriglieri et al.,
2019;Watson et al., 2021). However, academic perspectives also highlight the distinctive
challenges that can threaten and undermine the work identities of virtual and gig workers.
These challenges include feelings of estrangement from organisations and co-workers,
invisibility, status threats, interpersonal conflicts and the absence of established routines and
designated workspaces (Bailey and Kurland, 2002;Barsness et al., 2005;Petriglieri et al., 2019;
ER
45,6
1528
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