The role of work stress, organizational climate, and improving employee performance in the implementation of work from home

BACKGROUND: The spread of COVID-19 around the world has caused many undesirable effects on human health. The pandemic forced the employees to resort to Remote Work (RW)/Work from Home (WFH) according to the nature of the jobs. Consequently, organizations, business process and results are affected and organizational and commercial activities are significantly reduced. OBJECTIVE: This study investigates the impact of work stress and organizational climate on employee performance in the context of WFH in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). METHOD: This study used a purposive sampling strategy and determined using the Slovin equation and equals 95 employees in marketing, business restructuring and finance. The Partial Least Square (PLS) approach and and the SmartPLS version 3.0 software for data analysis processing procedures for hypothesis testing were used. RESULTS: The results revealed that the organizational environment has a negative and significant effect on job stress. Furthermore, job stress had a negative impact on employee performance and the organizational climate had a favorable and considerable impact on employee performance. CONCLUSION: The lower the level of work stress, the higher the employee performance, and vice versa. Organizational climate has a positive and significant effect on employee performance, which means that the organization's climate is conducive, so the employee performance will increase and vice versa.