ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed work arrangements and increased worldwide unemployment. Increasingly, many people have turned to gig work for income. However, low-skilled gig workers, such as food delivery personnel and ride-hailing drivers, are vulnerable to a plethora of disadvantageous working conditions, such as unstable income, lack of medical insurance, and heavy workload. Working remotely outside the workplace has also led to severe loneliness and isolation. Survey results from 100 gig-workers indicated that receiving social support and positive emotion improved job performance and satisfaction. Hence, we propose a peer-mentor supporting system. This paper primarily contributes to improving public awareness about the disadvantageous situations of gig workers. By examining the gig workers' perceptions, emotions, and motivations, this paper contributes to integrating job satisfaction and their inner work-life system. We suggest organizations broadcast gig workers' contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic, which improved their sense of responsibility and intrinsic motivation. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
On March 23, 2020, the Government of India (GoI) announced one of the strictest nationwide lockdowns in the world to curb the spread of novel SARS-CoV-2, otherwise known as CoVID-19. The country came to a standstill overnight and the service industry, including small businesses and restaurants, took a massive financial hit. The unknown nature of the virus and its spread deepened anxiety among the general public, quickly turning to distrust towards any "outside"contact with goods and people. In the hopes of (re)building consumer trust, food delivery platforms Zomato and Swiggy began providing digital solutions to exhibit care towards their customers, including: (1) sharing delivery workers' live temperatures alongside the workers' profile inside the app;(2) mandating the use of the controversial contact tracing app Aarogya Setu for the workers;(3) monitoring workers' usage of masks through random selfie requests;and (4) sharing specific worker vaccination details on the app for customers to view, including vaccination date and the vaccine's serial number. Such invasive data gathering infrastructures to address public health threats have long focused on the surveillance of laborers, migrants, and the bodies of other marginalized communities. Framed as public health management, such biometric and health data gathering is treated as a necessary feature of caring for the well-being of the general public. However, such datafication practices - ones which primarily focus on the extraction of data from one specific community in order to mollify the concerns of another - normalizes the false perception that disease is transmitted unidirectionally: from worker to the consumer. By centering food delivery workers' experiences during the pandemic and examining the normalization of such surveillance in the name of care and recovery, this paper aims to examine how new regimes of care are manufactured and legitimized using harmful and unethical datafication practices. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 global pandemic has transformed work and employment patterns within organizations. Two key emerging trends visible at the organization level are as follows. First, employees being asked to leave (which has mostly been seen within the aviation, hospitality, and travel industries) and second, employees asking to work part-time or on a contractual basis (e.g. within the education and healthcare sectors). This so-called ‘new normal’ has also given rise to an unprecedented increase and diffusion of digital workforces being engaged either full or part time within organizations. Thus, through our study, we aimed to contribute from a theoretical standpoint by exploring this phenomenon through the lenses of swift trust theory (STT) and psychological contract theory (PCT). Our goal was to understand how firms use gamification to engage their digital gig workforce. We collected our data from organizations that used some form of gamification in the process of engaging their employees and extended our inquiry to understand whether they did the same in engaging their gig workforces. We restricted our data to only those firms that had engaged white-collar gig workers. Overall, our study contributes to the literature by extending the theoretical debate pertaining to the use of STT and PCT theory to understand the phenomenon of digital gig workforce engagement and productivity. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.