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The ‘forced' telework from home during the pandemic changed the practices, routines, and especially the working contexts of many employees in a leadership position as leaders themselves became teleworkers in addition to those they were expected to lead. This chapter looks at the challenges and resources of working from home (WFH)-and their ambivalences-among teleworkers and teleworking leaders during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey data was collected immediately after the lockdown. From this data, two subsets were filtered. First, the responses of teleworkers (N = 228) and, second, of teleworking leaders (N = 195) were identified and analysed in regard to the ‘the most challenging' and ‘the most rewarding' issues when working from home. The study shows that telework from home is ‘Janus-faced': telework is simultaneously challenging and rewarding in several respects. In addition, teleworking leaders have a dual role, as they must both adapt to working at home as teleworkers themselves and to being leaders of homeworkers. The findings can be used for designing, organizing, performing, and leading hybrid work in the future. In this evolving ʼnew normal, ' leaders need to adapt to their dual role, learn new leadership competencies, and encourage their employees to lead themselves. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has opened up the landscape for the advantages of work from home (WFH) and adapting oneself in performing tasks. Leadership style and work autonomy also have the potential to assist employees to adapt the flexible work environment. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to examine the effect of WFH, work autonomy and humble leadership on adaptive performance as well as its moderating effect. Self-determination theory is referred to as an underlying theory to identify the extent to which work autonomy and humble leadership may assist employees to be more motivated in performing work from home. The Partial Least Square (PLS) technique was used to test the hypothesized relationships among variables using the 200 responded data. The results of this study indicated that the WFH, job autonomy and humble leadership influenced adaptive performance and employees with high job autonomy and perceived high humble leadership strengthen the relationship between WFH and adaptive performance. The study sheds new light on the theoretical contribution that the extensive of work autonomy and the influence of a humble leadership style has improved adaptive performance even when working from home. Whereas in practice, organizations need to equip supervisors with a humble leadership style and expand work autonomy to strengthen employee performance regardless of where they work. © 2023 Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. All rights reserved.
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Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has radically transformed workplaces, bearing an adverse impact on the mental health of employees. Aim: The current study attempts to gain an understanding of the mental health of employees while working from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Setting and Design: The research followed a mixed-methods design and was conducted across two phases, with participants divided into two subgroups - the WFH subgroup (currently engaging in WFH) and the not working from home (NWFH) subgroup (unable to engage in vocational tasks due to the pandemic). Materials and Methods: The first phase employed quantitative standardized measures of workplace well-being, work and social adjustment, and quality of mental health across 187 participants. The second phase involved in-depth interviews of 31 participants selected from the previous phase, to understand the factors impacting mental health. Results: Strong correlations were recorded between the mental health of an individual and work-related constructs such as workplace well-being and work and social adjustment. The study revealed that participants rated themselves as being significantly more stressed and less productive during the pandemic. Thematic analysis identified the stressors (factors that negatively impact mental health) and enhancers (factors that enhance mental health). Fourteen stressors and 12 enhancers were identified for the WFH group, while five stressors and three enhancers were identified for the NWFH group. Conclusions: The results of the study indicate a significant relationship between the mental health of employees and work-related experiences through the pandemic. Further research on the stressors and enhancers identified through the study can pave the way for effective interventions to promote employee mental health.
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Through addressing female academics in three public universities in Egypt, we aim to find out the extent to which female academics prefer to continue working from home (WFH) as a means of fulfilling their job responsibilities and the determinants for accepting or rejecting that option. A qualitative research method through semi-structured interviews with 33 female academics from three public universities selected from among 26 public institutions of higher education in Egypt. Moreover, our findings show that the preference to continue working from home varies across the addressed female academics, as they all differ in terms of workload, psychological well-being and the level of authority, control, and autonomy they have over their job. Furthermore, we identified familial commitments, availability of the information and infrastructure needed for work, cohesiveness when adopting WFH, and the extreme level of work from home as the four main determinants shaping the preferences of female academics in regard to working from home. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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Objective: Working from home (WFH) has become common place since the Covid-19 pandemic. Early studies observed population-level shifts in sleep patterns (later and longer sleep) and physical activity (reduced PA), during home confinement. Other studies found these changes to depend on the proportion of days that individuals WFH (vs. work from office; WFO). Here, we examined the effects of WFH on sleep and activity patterns in the transition to normality during the later stages of the Covid-19 pandemic (Aug 2021-Jan 2022). Methods: Two-hundred and twenty-five working adults enrolled in a public health study were followed for 22 weeks. Sleep and activity data were collected with a consumer fitness tracker (Fitbit Versa 2). Over three 2-week periods (Phase 1/week 1-2: August 16-29, 2021; Phase 2/week 11-12: October 25-November 7, 2021; Phase 3/week 21-22: January 3-16, 2022), participants provided daily Fitbit sleep and activity records. Additionally, they completed daily phone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA), providing ratings of sleep quality, wellbeing (mood, stress, motivation), and information on daily work arrangements (WFH, WFO, no work). Work arrangement data were used to examine the effects of WFH vs. WFO on sleep, activity, and wellbeing. Results: The proportion of WFH vs. WFO days fluctuated over the three measurement periods, mirroring evolving Covid restrictions. Across all three measurement periods WFH days were robustly associated with later bedtimes (+14.7 min), later wake times (+42.3 min), and longer Total Sleep Time (+20.2 min), compared to WFO days. Sleep efficiency was not affected. WFH was further associated with lower daily step count than WFO (-2,471 steps/day). WFH was associated with higher wellbeing ratings compared to WFO for those participants who had no children. However, for participants with children, these differences were not present. Conclusion: Pandemic-initiated changes in sleep and physical activity were sustained during the later stage of the pandemic. These changes could have longer term effects, and conscious effort is encouraged to harness the benefits (i.e., longer sleep), and mitigate the pitfalls (i.e., less physical activity). These findings are relevant for public health as hybrid WHF is likely to persist in a post-pandemic world.
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Scholarly work interrogating time and temporality in CSCW predominantly focuses on the temporal coordination of work in high-resource settings and is usually based in Global North. This paper aims to complicate and complement this scholarship by investigating the temporal entanglements of digital humanitarian work with refugees and asylum seekers in Turkey during COVID-19. We interviewed 22 humanitarian workers to understand their experiences and concerns as well as strategies they employed to support refugees and immigrants at a distance. The data reveal the complex temporal, informational, and infrastructural dimensions of technologically-mediated refugee support work, challenging the trope of "pivot to remote work", as popular in western countries. Our findings contribute to the CSCW research on the theory of anticipation work and its relationship with the concept of collaborative rhythms to explicate the relational and situated aspects of the temporal experiences of humanitarian workers in low-resource settings. © 2023 ACM.
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Former studies have shown that working from home can contribute to work-family conflict, which in turn can negatively affect employees' well-being. According to the assumptions of the job-demands-resources model, personal resources can moderate the individual risk of strain. To test this assumption for personal resilience, I conducted an online-survey with N = 142 employees working from home during the third wave of the COVID-19-pandemic. I examined irritation and vitality as dependent variables, work-family conflict as an independent variable, and resilience as a potential moderator. I hypothesized that resilient employees report less irritation when confronted with work-family conflict. Modorator analyses confirmed the postulated indirect effect. Resilience thus proves to be a resource that can support employees in better coping with the specific demands when working from home. I discuss the practical implications for human resource development and health promotion.
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This article examines the troubling of gender norms that unfolded on the social networking site, Mumsnet, at the beginning of the UK's first lockdown response to the COVID pandemic. Using an analysis of 7144 contributions which included the acronym ‘WFH' (=working from home), posted from March 1, 2020 to April 5, 2020, the article examines how Mumsnet members talked about working from home while caring for toddlers and home‐schooled children. Mumsnet discussions about everyday moral dilemmas create a discursive space for examining the situated rationalities and normative judgments that shape expectations of how to behave as a working parent. Drawing on post‐structuralist discourse theory, the article shows how Mumsnet contributors generated alternative sub‐categorizations of ‘good mums', and destabilized discourse assumptions of intensive motherhood, such as always ‘being there' for their children, thereby ‘working the weakness in the norms' (Butler, 1993) and creating potential for change.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, most organizations were forced to implement a work-from-home policy, and in many cases, employees have not been expected to return to the office on a full-time basis. This sudden shift in the work culture was accompanied by an increase in the number of information security-related threats which organizations were unprepared for. The ability to effectively address these threats relies on a comprehensive threat analysis and risk assessment and the creation of relevant asset and threat taxonomies for the new work-from-home culture. In response to this need, we built the required taxonomies and performed a thorough analysis of the threats associated with this new work culture. In this paper, we present our taxonomies and the results of our analysis. We also examine the impact of each threat, indicate when it is expected to occur, describe the various prevention methods available commercially or proposed in academic research, and present specific use cases.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Pandemics , Humans , Pandemics/prevention & control , Computer Security , Risk AssessmentABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic led to the mass adoption of remote working and other office market dynamics. As firms continue to adapt to the changes caused by the pandemic through various work patterns, the potential implications for the office market are unclear. Using data from Knight Frank's (Y)OUR SPACE (2021) survey, this paper employs probit and mul-tinomial models to examine the relationship between COVID-19 related remote working and changes to firms' office space strategies. The study confirms that the pandemic has significantly influenced firms' medium-term office space use strategies, and the results show that firms' perception of their employees' work-from-home experience has influenced their strategy re-view. The results specifically show that a positive WFH experience increases the likelihood that firms will reduce their total space quantity, reduce their density of occupation, and negotiate shorter leases in the medium term. We further observe that the pandemic is likely to have weaker effects on space quality than on space quantity, implying that economic factors remain core priorities in future office space use strategies, while social and environmental factors may remain secondary. These insights extend the literature beyond the economic determinants of office space demand to other social factors. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University.
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The situation where one can practise working from home is not easy for some people in Malaysia, especially those with limited space at home. Working from home (WFH), on the other hand, needs to be rethought and thoroughly examined for individuals in the bottom 40 percent (B40) for a variety of reasons. A total of 144 samples from low-income households in Shah Alam responded to the structured questionnaire. The questionnaire focuses on two main investigations: (1) the WFH conditions in terms of space and environment among the B40;and (2) how they manage WFH distractions in connection to the house space and environment. According to survey results, most respondents prefer working in a bedroom or living room since it is a more pleasant environment. The availability of electrical plugs, internet access, and adequate ventilation are further considerations that influence their choice of workspace. The survey's findings indicated that the lack of a comfortable workspace made the majority of respondents unhappy about practising WFH. The majority of responders suggested that future bedrooms be larger to guarantee that those practising WFH are comfortable. The results of this study are expected to enhance the planning and design of residential living space and pave the way for future low-cost housing development that places greater emphasis on the well-being of the urban poor. © 2022 by MIP.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered the workplace. It drove a mass social experiment in working from home. To mitigate the spread of the virus and protect employees, many companies shifted to remote work with video calls and instant messaging replacing in-person meetings. Several studies have shown that working from home boosted worker productivity, with the reduction in commuting time being the greatest contributing factor;thus, it will stick in the post-pandemic economy. In addition, studies have also shown that there is an increase in the number of people wanting to work remotely. However, choosing to work remotely can affect people's budgets. For instance, working from home reduces transportation costs but many remote workers have seen an increase in their energy bills. In addition, many remote workers paid for home office setup on their own. This study analyzes the overall benefit and disbenefit of working from home and performs an economic analysis of working from home for an individual. Copyright, American Society for Engineering Management, 2022.
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The COVID-19 pandemic forced information workers across the world to work from home. This situation removes the physical boundary between work and home, impacting their work-life balance. How information workers configure the digital workplace (DWP) to manage their workplace boundaries and what effect this has on their individual job satisfaction remains unclear. To close this gap in the literature, 202 information workers completed an online survey. The findings partially confirm existing theory that more work flexibility increases job satisfaction while more work permeability decreases job satisfaction. However, depending on the flexibility and permeability of their work-home boundaries, the frequency with which information workers use DWP tools has cross-over effects on job satisfaction. The findings contribute to boundary theory and the new stream of digital workplace literature. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH.
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More employees are working from home (WFH) due to improved telecommunication technology and social distancing requirements associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies indicate well-being and productivity benefits from nature in office settings, as well as well-being benefits from nature during the pandemic, although the benefits of nature when WFH under social distancing requirements have not been explored. The aim of the current study, therefore, was to investigate the relationship between nature contact, well-being, and productivity among adults WFH. Three-hundred forty WFH participants completed online questionnaires assessing their well-being (Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale), productivity (Individual Work Performance Questionnaire), and contact with nature (Nature Contact Questionnaire: outdoor nature;for example, eating lunch outside, indoor nature;for example, live plants, house-based nature;for example, natural views from windows). Results indicated that contact with nature, specifically house-based nature contact, contributed to increased well-being. The benefits of house-based nature contact have implications for cost-effective and accessible strategies for organizations and employees to improve well-being while WFH. © 2023 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.
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The COVID-19 crisis highlighted the effectiveness of working-from-home (WFH) arrangements but also raised questions about their slow implementation before the lockdowns and whether adoption has since accelerated. To examine the dynamics of trust in granting WFH before, during, and after the pandemic, we conducted a multi-case study and 63 in-depth interviews with French managers and their subordinates. Our research shows that the democratization of WFH cannot be attributed to a single factor. We propose that an increase in trust towards WFH depends on the intertwining of multiple factors: (1) pre-pandemic level of trust in WFH, (2) sophistication of organizations' IT infrastructure, and (3) organizations' type of resilience. We contribute to WFH research by proposing a conceptual model that provides a holistic understanding of how trust interacts with WFH on different levels and how the interplay of trust propensity, resilience strategies, and the use of digital tools fosters broader WFH implementation. © 2023 Elsevier Inc.
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The measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic have strengthened Work from Home and the use of digital communication technologies and digital collaboration. The resulting flexibility in terms of control over time and place of work can support workers in improving their work-life balance. In this paper, we investigate whether workers using digital communication technologies made use of this flexibility and changed the distribution of their work hours across the week and day. To answer this question, we investigate the use of an Enterprise Collaboration System in 2019-2022. Using real-world data, a MS Power BI dashboard was created following the steps suggested by the Social Collaboration Analytics Framework (SCAF). The dashboard shows that the system use increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, an expansion of work on weekends and outside of regular working hours can be observed. Although, timely adjustments of use-patterns were highest in the beginning of the pandemic, long-term trends could be observed as well. The results indicate that knowledge workers used digital collaboration technologies to restructure working days, according to their specific personal and business needs while working from home. The paper is a valuable starting point in the context of a long-term interdisciplinary research project on the digitalisation of the workplace.
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(1) Background: Pandemic-imposed lockdowns have heightened our awareness of the value of (work)place and made apparent the role it plays in establishing our sense of belonging and professional identity. The opportunity to work remotely during the pandemic has given us an appreciation of the benefits from access to increased flexibility, but there is consistent evidence emerging showing how much workers miss in-office social and learning interactions. This paper focuses on results about (i) reported perceived effectiveness and performance, (ii) sense of adjustment to remote working, and (iii) sense of belonging during the first two COVID-19-induced lockdowns, as reported by managers and workers in Australia in 2020. Findings shed light onto (i) how remote working experience affected our connection to, and the importance of, (work)place and (ii) how to harness insights towards creating spaces responsive to the activities we prefer to undertake in the workplace, permitting employees to choose the workstyle and pattern that suits their professional role and personal circumstances. (2) Methods: Correlational and thematic analyses were conducted on findings from 1579 online surveys focusing on remote working experiences during the first and second rounds of COVID-19-imposed lockdowns. A total of 668 managers and 911 workers from 12 different industry sectors participated in two rounds of the Bates Smart remote work survey (BSRWS). Surveys targeted knowledge workers of all career stages, age, and experience. (3) Results: Employees felt (i) technologically supported and productive whilst working from home, but (ii) aspects of connection, collaboration, and sense of belonging suffered;(iii) collaboration and togetherness are main motivators for returning to the office. Managers' experiences were significantly different with (i) perceived productivity, collaboration, knowledge sharing, sense of belonging, and performance dropping;(ii) face-to-face interaction and business development were key priorities for returning to the office with (iii) challenges of mentoring and managing emotional wellbeing of teams evident. (4) Conclusions: From these surveys we conclude space is an enabler of organisational culture and professional identity, playing a critical role in establishing psychologically safe and equitable workplaces. This paper reports snapshot data showing knowledge workers' experiences and effects of WFH under strict lockdown circumstances on wellbeing, productivity, and culture over time. It proposes two lenses (togetherness and place), through which the future workplace should be considered by industry and researchers alike. © 2022 by the authors.
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Purpose: Working from home (WFH) was one of the major changes that occurred in many organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. This also led to online training being conducted during this WFH period. The present study investigated the role of technology, manager support and peer support on self-efficacy and job outcomes (i.e. training transfer, work engagement and job satisfaction) of employees while WFH. Design/methodology/approach: The study framework incorporated Bandura's self-efficacy theory. Data were collected from 852 employees in India, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Findings: The study found positive relationships between ease of technology use, manager support and peer support on self-efficacy and a negative relationship between self-efficacy and technostress. The study also found significant positive relationships between self-efficacy and training transfer, work engagement and job satisfaction. Moreover, the study also identified the moderating effects of WFH and technical issues in the relationships of self-efficacy with training transfer, work engagement and job satisfaction. Originality/value: The study is novel in that it extended self-efficacy theory regarding the WFH context with influencers such as technology, managers and peers as organizational factors. It also demonstrated the effectiveness of remote working and online training considering the potential antecedents while WFH. Moreover, the study highlighted the simultaneous role of technology and people (managers and peers) in enhancing job outcomes by increasing self-efficacy among employees. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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Myriad research examines benefits and drawbacks of working from home, both pre- and post-pandemic. Our research looks at how work from home mandates due to the COVID-19 pandemic were implemented, primarily by those who also had caregiver roles to fulfill. We used a convenience sample, drawing from full-time college faculty at a mid-sized state college in Florida, gathering information from caregivers and non-caregivers for comparative purposes. As we analyzed our data, we considered two additional concepts: Elmore's backward mapping, which asks us to consider how employer mandates are implemented and will assist us in making policy recommendations, and Smith's Standpoint, which allowed us to consider our own different gendered experiences as we analyzed survey responses. Our findings reveal that there are some employees well suited to working from home, while others are less enthusiastic about this initiative, and that a significant factor is household caregiving responsibilities, often considered to be the domain of women. Our insights shed light on differences in caregiver-employee statuses; we hope to help guide effective institutional policy should there be a need for workplaces to shut down again and to encourage administrators to consider faculty who may be a good work from home fit should it be considered for everyday work. Understanding where the strengths and weaknesses were/are for workers who work from home will benefit employers.
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Telecommuting has boomed in popularity during the pandemic and is expected to remain at elevated levels persistently. Using 2009 and 2017 U.S. National Household Travel Surveys, we investigate if there exist consistent modification influences of telecommuting on trip-chaining behavior in the decade prior to the pandemic. We find telecommuting significantly increases people's propensity to chain trips, raises trip chaining frequency, and encourages more complex trip chains. Furthermore, these impacts are significant on commuting days, which suggests that telecommuters still have different trip chaining behavior than non-telecommuters on the days when they commute to the workplace. While trip chaining has been encouraged under pandemic conditions to minimize health risks, heightened health concerns will fade as the pandemic recedes. With telecommuting likely to persist, unraveling how trip chaining behavior had changed in response to telecommuting before the pandemic helps policymakers better understand the long-term changes in travel behavior in the post-pandemic world. [ FROM AUTHOR]