Given the essential role that helping behavior plays in an organization's competitiveness, it has been the subject of extensive research. In complex environments, members may need workplace assistance to address various job-related issues. Helping behavior can enhance team cohesion and sense of belonging, attract talented individuals to the team, and bring benefits to workplace and organizational performance. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the foundational relational dynamics crucial for fostering helping behaviors within organizations. Amidst the pandemic, the daily interpersonal interactions that underpin trust among employees dwindled, and the limitation on collaborative efforts within shared physical environments impeded the natural observation of peers’ activities. This shift has posed considerable challenges to the traditional engagement in helping behaviors, which were previously facilitated by proximate and face-to-face interactions.

According to this background, by integrating social information processing theory and cognitive processes, this paper empirically examines the impact of employees' awareness, along with its antecedents—sensitivity and information accuracy—on helping behavior in remote work. The study specifically considers how the frequency of remote working and team-member exchange (TMX) moderate these dynamics. Through the analysis of data from 396 employees in China, all with remote work experience, employing both multiple regression and structural equation modeling techniques, we unearthed pivotal insights. A principal discovery is that awareness of workplace and colleagues' circumstances, significantly enhances the propensity to engage in helping behavior, especially in the remote work context. In additional, awareness acts as a mediator in the relationship between the sensitivity to and accuracy of information and the manifestation of helping behavior. Physical separation inherent to telecommuting, alongside the psychological distances narrowed through effective TMX, synergistically moderates these mechanisms. These insights underscore the nuanced interplay between cognitive processes and the structural aspects of remote work, offering strategies for problems aimed at ameliorating the decline in helping behaviors observed in telecommuting scenarios.

This paper was presented at The Japanese Association of Administrative Science