The covid-19 pandemic plunged the world into an experiment in work-from-home without any collective experience in how to manage this situation. During a crisis characterised by social distancing and blurring lines between home and work, providing support to employees is important. Middle managers, being in-between upper management and subordinates, were in a special situation of having to balance new demands from both sides. In light of this, the purpose of our study was to investigate how middle managers handled the challenge of supporting their subordinates during the pandemic. To achieve the purpose of this study, a qualitative research methodology was applied. We investigated middle managers experiences of supporting their subordinates during the pandemic. The data was collected through 8 semi-structured interviews with middle managers working in Sweden. Our results show that during the pandemic middle managers had to adopt empathic behaviour as leaders and adapt their way of leading to each subordinates needs.

Background: COVID-19 is a dangerous contagious infection which was declared as a global pandemic by World Health Organisation (WHO) in March 2020. It was rapidly spreading worldwide, forcing the world to move into isolation and the software developing companies to change their work settings into remote working. Quality of the software is a significant attribute that determines the success of a project. Code reviews are an essential software development practice and are the first step towards improving the quality of the software. Objectives: The main objective of this research study is to list the challenges that the developers are facing while working from home and investigate the impact of challenges on code review practices. Methods: A multiple case study has been conducted in 5 organizations to understand and analyze the effect of transition on the code review process. We achieved this by conducting semi-structured interviews and participant observation with developers involved in code review practices of each organization considered for the study and qualitatively analyzed the gathered data using thematic analysis. Results: The results indicated challenges concerning team collaboration, infrastructure, productivity and burnout in the early stages of the pandemic. However, later, organizations’ mitigating strategies have helped them cope with the situation, and no significant impact due to working from home were observed on the code review process. Conclusions: Our findings highlight that there is no considerable impact of the challenges factored in due to working from home on the code review process. The major reasons behind that was the modernization of the tools used for code reviews and timely implementation of mitigation strategies by organizations. Based on the mitigation strategies taken by the organisations we formulated guidelines, which can be taken into consideration by the organisations still suffering with the transition to work from home.

Covid-19 pandemin, en kris som varit aktuell sedan början av år 2020, förändrade den geografiska platsen för arbetets utförande till följd av restriktionen gällande hemarbete. Syftet med denna studie var därför att undersöka vad som skiljt platsförlagt arbete och hemarbete åt med avseende på faktorerna motivation, kommunikation och sammanhållning. Dessa faktorer är centrala delar av arbetsmiljön och vi ville därför se om de påverkats när arbetsmiljön förändrat. För att kunna utreda valt problemområde nyttjades den kvalitativa datainsamlingsmetoden, med ansatsen semistrukturerad intervju. Under genomförande fanns ett flertal förutbestämda frågor med utrymme för respondenterna att tillägga information som var av värde för studien. Metoden valdes då vi ville få respondenters åsikter och erfarenheter kring hur faktorerna skiljt sig åt beroende på den geografiska platsen för arbetets utförande. I den teoretiska referensramen presenteras de valda faktorerna motivation, kommunikation och sammanhållning utförligt. I analysavsnittet kopplas teori och empiri samman, samt jämförs med tidigare studiers resultat. Studien visade på att Covid-19 haft störst påverkan gällande motivation vid hemarbete, men även förändrat vissa delar vid platsförlagt arbete. Kommunikationen påverkades positivt vid hemarbete men negativt vid platsförlagt arbete, slutligen påverkades sammanhållningen negativt enligt respondenterna. Avslutningsvis ges fyra rekommendationer för att förbättra arbetsmiljön. / The Covid-19 pandemic, a crisis that has been relevant since the beginning of 2020, changed the geographical location of the work performance as a result of the restriction which introduced work from home. The purpose of this inquiry was therefore to study how work from the original workplace and work from home differed regarding motivation, communication and cohesion. These factors are central parts of the work environment and therefore we wanted to see if they were affected by the change of work environment. In order to be able to investigate the selected problem area, the qualitative data collection method was used, with the semi-structured interview approach. During implementation, there were a number of predetermined questions with room for the respondents to add information that was of value to the study. The method was chosen because we wanted to obtain the respondents experiences and opinions regarding how the factors differed depending on the geographical location of the work performance. In the theoretical frame of reference, the selected factors motivation, communication and cohesion are presented. In the analysis section, theory and empiricism are contextualized with previous studies. The study showed that Covid-19 had the greatest impact on motivation regarding work from home, but also affected certain parts of work from the workplace. The communication had a positive effect on work from home but a negative effect on work from the workplace, and finally the respondents experienced a negative effect on cohesion. Finally, four recommendations were given to improve the work environment.