Workplace bureaucracies impact many areas of an employee’s working life. High levels of perceived bureaucracy can diminish employees’ job motivation, satisfaction, and performance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, infection containment measures likely contributed to the factors underlying the “great resignation” via the lack of self-efficacy from perceived bureaucracy. Recruiting 240 full-time employees between late 2021 to early 2022 across organizations in both private and public sectors, the Work Extrinsic Intrinsic Motivation Scale, the Workplace Bureaucracy Questionnaire, and the General Self-Efficacy Scale were employed along with demographic parameters for analysis, showing that salary range, education levels, self-efficacy and job motivation were negatively associated with perceived workplace bureaucracies, but not gender, age, and length of employment. The findings of the study provide insight into the effect of increased perceived bureaucracy during the COVID-19 pandemic on employee experience that would be relevant to the workplace environment even in normal times.