ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformations across industries, but also introduced new challenges into workplaces, including the difficulties of effectively socializing with colleagues when working remotely. This challenge is exacerbated for new employees who need to develop workplace networks from the outset. In this paper, by analyzing a large-scale telemetry dataset of more than 10,000 Microsoft employees who joined the company in the first three months of 2022, we describe how new employees interact and telecommute with their colleagues during their "onboarding"period. Our results reveal that although new hires are gradually expanding networks over time, there still exists significant gaps between their network statistics and those of tenured employees even after the six-month onboarding phase. We also observe that heterogeneity exists among new employees in how their networks change over time, where employees whose job tasks do not necessarily require extensive and diverse connections could be at a disadvantaged position in this onboarding process. By investigating how web-based people recommendations in organizational knowledge base facilitate new employees naturally expand their networks, we also demonstrate the potential of web-based applications for addressing the aforementioned socialization challenges. Altogether, our findings provide insights on new employee network dynamics in remote and hybrid work environments, which may help guide organizational leaders and web application developers on quantifying and improving the socialization experiences of new employees in digital workplaces. © 2023 ACM.
ABSTRACT
Both enterprises and their employees have globally experienced remote work at an unprecedented scale since the outbreak of COVID-19. As the pandemic becomes less of a threat, some companies have called their employees back to a physical office, citing issues related to working remotely, but many employees have refused to return. Thus, working in the metaverse has gained much attention as an alternative that could complement the weaknesses of completely remote work or even offline work. However, we do not know yet what benefits and drawbacks the metaverse has as a legitimate workspace, because there are few real cases of 1) working in the metaverse and 2) working remotely at such an unprecedented scale. Thus, this paper aims to identify real challenges and opportunities the metaverse workspace presents when compared to remote work by conducting semi-structured interviews and participatory workshops with various employees and company stakeholders (e.g., HR managers and CEOs) who have experienced at least two of three work types: working in a physical office, remotely, or in the metaverse. Consequently, we identified 1) advantages and disadvantages of remote work and 2) opportunities and challenges of the metaverse. We further discuss design implications that may overcome the identified challenges of working in the metaverse. © 2023 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
The growing platformization of health has spurred new avenues for healthcare access and reinvigorated telemedicine as a viable pathway to care. Telemedicine adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic has surfaced barriers to patient-centered care that call for attention. Our work extends current Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research on telemedicine and the challenges to remote care, and investigates the scope for enhancing remote care seeking and provision through telemedicine workflows involving intermediation. Our study, focused on the urban Indian context, involved providing doctors with videos of remote clinical examinations to aid in telemedicine. We present a qualitative evaluation of this modified telemedicine experience, highlighting how workflows involving intermediation could bridge existing gaps in telemedicine, and how their acceptance among doctors could shift interaction dynamics between doctors and patients. We conclude by discussing the implications of such telemedicine workflows on patient-centered care and the future of care work. © 2023 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: This study aims to reflect on the future of work dimensions through the new concept of inclusive organizational behaviour (IOB) and its practices. Design/methodology/approach: This work is a reflective concept development paper that focuses on new dimensions of organizational behaviour (OB) exploring IOB practices in the new workplace which can broaden the concept of OB that fits into the future of work. Findings: The IOB practices will adapt and help in adapting to the new work dynamics that can create more humane and stimulating workplaces, thereby benefiting society at large. Individual positive psychological traits, team dynamics and a fusion of digital corporate culture with a human-centric approach and sustainability are highlighted in the redefined IOB, expanding the concept of OB from the three levels of analysis (individual, group and the entire organization's behaviour) in the new normal post-COVID situation. Research limitations/implications: Limited research studies are being conducted to investigate the future of work dynamics in the new standard post-COVID environment, which is dominated by digitization. The lack of literature and the changing situations that impact OB are the limitations. Practical implications: Corporate houses, policymakers and leaders who understand the workplace dynamics in the post-COVID scenario can effectively leverage the insights from this work and may chalk out a road map for future work through IOB practices. Originality/value: This research extends knowledge pertaining to IOB practices and the changing dynamics that need to be followed in the future OB practices. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
Workers from a variety of industries rapidly shifted to remote work at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While existing work has examined the impact of this shift on office workers, little work has examined how shifting from in-person to online work affected workers in the informal labor sector. We examine the impact of shifting from in-person to online-only work on a particularly marginalized group of workers: sex workers. Through 34 qualitative interviews with sex workers from seven countries in the Global North, we examine how a shift to online-only sex work impacted: (1) working conditions, (2) risks and protective behaviors, and (3) labor rewards. We find that online work offers benefits to sex workers' financial and physical well-being. However, online-only work introduces new and greater digital and mental health risks as a result of the need to be publicly visible on more platforms and to share more explicit content. From our findings we propose design and platform governance suggestions for digital sex workers and for informal workers more broadly, particularly those who create and sell digital content. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
Care workers are increasingly using digital technology in their daily lives, for monitoring, financial compensation, training, coordination, and more. State and corporate actors have invested significant resources to enable this digital shift, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, care work has remained chronically underpaid, and continues to rely on women from minoritized and marginalized backgrounds. Our paper examines how care workers carefully navigate digitization, precarity, and complex social relationships, in an attempt to care for their communities and each other. We analyze the emerging digital ecosystem for frontline health workers in India during the COVID-19 pandemic where these dynamics have been highly visible. Our research draws attention to four interconnected ways in which workers practiced care, by directing their efforts towards survival, resilience, advocacy, and/or resistance. We suggest these also as care orientations that can be adopted by researchers and practitioners, to critically reflect on and direct technology design towards enabling more caring futures, for (and with) workers and communities. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a discussion on how smart buildings and technologies currently and will continue to contribute to the future of work and workplaces. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a hybrid way of working has emerged and physical office spaces are becoming more a space for collaboration, innovation and interactions, which can be facilitated by the use of smart technologies. An analysis of the 15 highest-scoring smart buildings through the Smart Building Certification process highlights key trends in the smartest buildings as they contribute to the future of work and a hybrid way of working: increased flexibility, emphasis on user experience including indoor environmental quality and safety, and an overall drive towards sustainability. The shift towards smarter buildings also offers an opportunity to study the impacts of smart technologies on key performance aspects of the buildings and the building occupants. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
The aim of the article is to identify the attitudes and perceptions of remote working (RW) for employees, present the related employers’ attitudes and RW management experience following the Covid-19 crisis, and discuss the useful measures to meet the future challenges of RW. Primary research with two types of questionnaires for employees and employers was conducted from October to December 2021 among 247 employees and 49 employers from different countries and industries. The benefits and drawbacks of RW were revealed. People’s attitudes toward the organization of RW, work productivity, communication, and trust, as well as people’s changing expectations of the future of work, were analysed. The findings showed that despite the fact that 57% of employees surveyed had never experienced RW, they easily adapted to the emergency use of working remotely without compromising their work productivity, feeling supported and trusted by their managers. The discrepancies were found between employee-employer perceptions toward the expected changes in the post-covid future of work related to the hybrid office implementation. © 2022 IDIMT. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
In the past decade or so the Future of Work question has emerged as a major policy concern at national and international level. This is in large part due to opportunities and challenges created by the development of data and AI driven automation technologies, and in the past two years by the Covid pandemic, which has led many employees and employers to rethink the ways in which they work, as individuals and organisations. In the USA, there is now talk of a great resignation, as many employees reconsider the value and quality of their working lives. If there is one lesson that we have already learned it is that the future of work question resists easy formulations and answers, nor is it primarily a matter of jobs being replaced by automation. As work touches nearly every aspect of our lives the future of work is bound to be a complex question in need to careful investigation. In this talk I won't offer predictions, but try to unpack the problem, asking not so much what is the future of work, but rather how should we ask good question(s) about it in the first place. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has significantly increased interest in remote working. The phenomenon of this increase was examined in this paper by examining tweets on Twitter by analysis the sentiments of people working remotely. Data were collected by downloading tweets by using keywords “#remoteworking.” The study also explored magazines like HR people matters, HBR, and articles from reputed journals, and by visiting regularly NASSCOM Web site and newspapers. Compiled data are then refined through data mining techniques, and then, sentiment analyses have been deployed. Sentiment index was found greater than one which reflected that people are very happy with having remote working. It was also found that the issue of remote work increased nearly 15 times in a year, reaching an epidemic peak in March 2020. The study has shown that in the post-COVID period it will stay permanently. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABSTRACT
Frontline health workers in many countries are responsible for filling gaps in essential primary health infrastructure, as witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their work increasingly involves the use of purportedly "intelligent"systems or data collection for such systems, to support diagnosis, disease forecasting, and information delivery. My research aims to inform the design of data-driven and automated systems in frontline health work, particularly for women workers in low-level and precarious roles in the Global South. Drawing from literature in the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI), gender and development studies, and health informatics, I will critically examine health workers' experiences and relationships with "intelligent"systems, and engage in the participatory design of technology that might better serve worker needs while strengthening the frontline health ecology overall. © 2022 Owner/Author.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: As researchers are being called to examine the evolving technology research issues for COVID-19 and other pandemics, remote work has been accelerated and represents the future of work. Although it is known that one of the top forces shaping the future of work is changing employee expectations, the knowledge of remote work during a pandemic remains scant. Thus, this paper aims to determine the impact of remote worker’s expectations on their level of satisfaction and intention to continue to work remotely. Design/methodology/approach: Using one of the prominent theories on expectations, Expectation Disconfirmation Theory (EDT), the authors conduct an online survey of 146 individuals who are currently working remotely. Findings: By applying EDT, the findings demonstrate that an individual’s expectations regarding remote work impact their level of satisfaction with remote work and intention to continue to work remotely. Incorporating extant research, the findings extend the research stream to indicate that employees’ expectations about remote work significantly impact both their level of satisfaction and level of productivity. Originality/value: The discussion elucidates the significance of understanding employee expectations regarding remote work in the evolving new normal. The findings from the study demonstrate the importance of an individual’s expectations regarding remote work on their level of satisfaction with remote work and intention to continue to work remotely. Thus, this study fills a gap in the literature by applying EDT to the remote work context. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.