Understanding Employee Compliance With Mandatory Remote Work: The Interplay Of Attitude, Subjective Norms, Control, And Flexibility

As soon as the post-2023 era began, the decreasing of workplace spaces as a result of corporate real estate downsizing led to the change of WFH from being voluntary for Indonesian businesses to becoming imposed due to spatial restrictions. In order to determine how employees' compliance intentions could be assessed regarding the forced WFH policy, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) with an added moderation variable of work flexibility was employed in this study. Specifically, the current research is aimed at analyzing the impact of attitude toward remote work, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control on employee compliance intentions. In order to obtain necessary data, an online survey was conducted involving 247 corporate employees working in Java, Indonesia, using the PLS-SEM technique as an analytical tool. The obtained results demonstrate that all three factors, such as attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control, had a positive effect on compliance intentions towards mandatory WFHs, however, it is important to note that subjective norms, representing organizational pressures, proved to be the most influential factor. Additionally, the explained variance accounted for 60.6% of compliance intentions, which is relatively high. At the same time, work flexibility was proved to be an essential driver and moderator (f²=0.300). Thus, it is possible to conclude that it is highly important to protect employees' temporal flexibility and freedom in order to overcome the loss of office desk space