Perceived Organizational Membership and Extensive Work-from-Home: Qualitative Insights from Germany

There is a global trend towards increasingly flexible work arrangements, including extensive work-from-home. Two concerns are associated with it: First, there is the fear that employees’ sense of organizational belonging ( perceived organizational membership, POM ) might be eroded which, secondly, causes a drop in performance. To investigate the POM-effects of extensive work-from-home, we draw from 27 qualitative interviews with white collar employees in the German industrial sector. These were conducted during the only period in time in which extensive work-from-home was made mandatory in Germany, namely the first half of 2020, due to COVID-19 induced social distancing requirements. COVID-19 induced crisis mirrors the present BANI-environment in relevant ways and unifies sensemaking; it serves a burning glass for patterning New Work POM. Contrary to common belief, POM under extensive work-from-home conditions is relocated rather than diminished. We find that POM moves from organizational to team-levels and furthermore becomes individualized, e.g., as related to care-work obligations and individual perceptions of workplace conditions. Team-managers need to assume the role of POM-leaders; they need to engage in individualized interactions for shaping employee experiences and membership perceptions. POM-leaders’ diverse own POM-needs must then be acknowledged and integrated on overall organizational levels. We thus pattern a novel phenomenon – New Work POM – and derive implications for a better ‘gluing’ of the employee to the organization. Our study furthermore underscores the need to view belonging as an organizational ‘must-have’ factor in the present BANI-environment and to take up the challenges of facilitating such belonging.