Job satisfaction and Teleworking: a study on Public Administration workers in Italy

This paper presents the results of one of the first surveys carried out in Italy on the living and working conditions of public administration employees who were engaged in compulsory telework during the first stages of the COVID-19 pandemic (March–May 2020). Although this study examines a small sample of public workers in Campania region, interesting results emerge in a modelling implementation. In fact, by means of a heteroskedastic Ordered Probit model, some findings are presented with job satisfaction being the response variable. Considering the workers’ need to adjust to a completely novel situation, our results reveal a significant role played by a potential lack of concentration and by the satisfaction of using their own home as a workplace as well as by the differences experienced in work efforts. The presence of children in the household turns out to be slightly significant, whereas childcare duties do seem to exert some impacts on job satisfaction, implying relevant effects on work-life balance. Workers’ concern regarding a possible lack of recognition of their job by supervisors or managers is also highlighted.