Zoom fatigue, social presence, and performance: How do remote workers feel?

Abstract

The prevalence of remote work due to COVID-19 has imposed different challenges to workers around the world, including distracting or inadequate home-office environments, the adoption of a myriad of collaborative tools, as well as the lack of social interaction and peer presence. This study (N = 197) aims to understand how social presence, the sense being with another online, relates to workers’ perceived performance. We also explore three antecedent factors that influenced the social presence observed: the portion of a workweek devoted to online meetings, experienced fatigue, and facilitating conditions of their organization. Participants were recruited on Prolific and asked to fill out a 22- question survey about these measurements to obtain the degree of social presence they experienced – understood as an individual construct that consist of elements from two different measures: social presence of the collaboration tool and social presence of coworkers. A blended theoretical framework emerged from the results, illustrating the social presence as determinant element of perceived performance at work. This research offers practical contributions for both future scholars and practitioners to understand how social presence should be integrated in discussions about the adoption of new technologies for remote work, and how collaborative tools’ sense of human warmth and contact might affect the workers’ self-perceived performance.