Fully remote work: Understanding employee experiences of work characteristics and work quality

Fully remote work has increasingly become a standard operating model for many organizations. However, our understanding of employee experiences in entirely voluntary remote work environments remains limited, particularly regarding the specific work characteristics that define fully remote work, or how they interact with perceived work quality. To address this gap, this study investigates the multidimensional nature of employee experience in fully remote work by examining the relationship between work characteristics and work quality. We draw on 1659 Glassdoor employee reviews from 13 companies that operate exclusively remotely. Our analysis shows that social support, along with job autonomy, are the most salient and positively perceived work characteristics in fully remote settings. In contrast, workload and monitoring practices were consistently viewed as negative. Furthermore, the findings extend existing work characteristics models by identifying two novel dimensions – virtual team characteristics and task characteristics – that appear to be important in fully remote work contexts, responding to recent calls for more integrative perspectives on global virtual work that incorporate the dynamics of people, technology, context, and time. Taken together, these insights refine our understanding of employee experience in digitally mediated environments and offer practical guidance for designing fully remote roles that enhance it. In addition, they offer actionable implications for organizations by highlighting the importance of designing autonomy with clear coordination structures, fostering social support and belonging, and enhancing transparency around career development and recognition in fully remote settings. They also highlight several promising avenues for future research on remote work, job design, work quality, and employee experience.