Perceived Threat Appraisal of Covid-19 among Indonesian Employees: Response to Work From Home (WFH)

Provisions on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic impose several limitations, one of which is Work from Home (WFH). This study aimed to examine employees' perceptions toward the threat of being infected with COVID-19 in Work from Home (WFH) and Work from Office (WFO) scenarios. Protective Motivation Theory (PMT) was used to assess employees' perception of WFH as an effort to prevent the spread of Covid-19. An online survey formulated based on PMT measured perceived severity, perceived vulnerability, intrinsic reward, and extrinsic reward during the implementation of WFH. This study involved 223 employees from several cities in Indonesia from 20 May 2020 to 2 July 2020. The study results show that 83.4% of the employees agree and strongly agree that more non-compliance to the recommendations to WFH would result in a wider spread of Covid-19, and 70.8% of employees agree that they will be infected with COVID-19 if they work from office. This study also used descriptive analysis and ANOVA to identify the differences in perceived threat, perceived vulnerability, intrinsic reward, and extrinsic reward by demographic variables. Regarding age, sex, job level, and WFH duration, there was a significant difference in the assessment of perceived intrinsic reward of WFO. We also found a significant difference in perceived vulnerability in job level, and we found a significant difference in perceived vulnerability in the type of WFH. These findings can help organizations understand workers' perceptions of WFH.