Exploring proven strategies that enable remote workers to take active breaks during their workday

Remote work has been gaining in popularity for years, even before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Along with its perceived benefits, remote work often results in individuals spending long hours at a computer or on the phone. Consequently, remote workers may find that a large portion of their day is spent sitting without taking any kind of break, especially those for physical activity. The purpose of this action research study was to explore proven strategies that enable remote workers to take active breaks during their workday. Data was collected from longtime remote workers during Cycle 1 research through 11 semi-structured interviews and document analyses. Data analysis led to 12 themes that responded to the research questions. Along with the literature and a focus group, these findings informed the action step, which was designed, executed, and evaluated in Cycle 2. The action step involved four longtime remote workers sharing their lived experiences around remote work, breaks, and activity through a podcast series. These podcasts were consumed by 16 new remote workers who answered qualitative survey questions to determine the impact of the podcasts on their break taking during their workdays. The research found that a remote worker's work environment, degree of autonomy, and break options influence how they fit in breaks during their workdays. The findings suggest that remote workers need consistent organizational support;that having autonomy to manage their workdays is critical for remote workers;and all breaks "are not created equal". (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Loss of organic community and decentralized communications

This chapter explores the barriers and disruption to community and communication resulting from remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic. The University of Utah's decision to abruptly transition to a fully online model resulted in several communication impacts for staff. First, staff participants received little and inconsistent communication from the University. This caused uncertainty within departments, which trickled down to the students staff serve. Second, this led to staff participants feeling disconnected from the institution and increased their concerns around misinforming students. At the same time, the move to online learning and work decreased efficient communication between colleagues. Casual interactions in the office became email threads and extended feedback processes. Third, staff reported that online communications with students became less personal, which created difficulty for building and maintaining rapport. Finally, staff members' overall sense of community consistently dropped as the COVID-19 pandemic raged on and they were forced to continue to work remotely. The discontent and apprehension felt by staff members around the communication provided from University leadership was compounded by the impact of working from home. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Working from home challenges: Resources, tools, and quality concerns

This chapter provides a glimpse into the conversation around the resources that university staff need to thrive in their work both on campus or through telework. The COVID-19 pandemic and shifting to working from home exposed disparities in resources for staff at the University of Utah many of which existed in the on-campus work environment as well. Institutions of higher education were no exception;most non-essential employees made the change from working on campus to a teleworking environment. Because most colleges and universities still operate from a brick-and-mortar setting and primarily offer in-person instruction, this change to serving students and carrying out job responsibilities from home was a huge and unexpected shift, and very little infrastructure was in place for addressing needs and providing essential tools and resources for employee thriving in a work-at-home environment. It is found that the move to working from home revealed a broad continuum where on one end staff had access to essential resources for thriving as new telecommuters, and on the other end staff struggled from one day to the next to maintain quality services for students and co-workers due to the lack of basic resources. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

The impact of remote supervision communication skills upon the remote working experiences among accountants during the COVID-19 pandemic

Employee turnover hurts the overall efficiency of organizations;this is especially true within the accounting industry. Work-life balance has always been an issue for accountants, and may be a cause for the high turnover rates experienced at accounting firms. Flexible work arrangements, including remote working, were thought to be a possible mediator to help solve this problem. Many researchers have examined this issue;however, the forced shift to remote work for all employees due to the COVID-19 pandemic offered a unique opportunity to examine accountants' perceptions of e-work. Using a sample of 100 accounting professionals, this study explored whether several factors influenced employees' perceptions of e-work, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study found that supervisor communication skills could influence the work-life balance factor of e-work. The study further found that the demographic factor of "years worked as an accountant" can influence employees' perceptions of e-work in general, and specifically concerning the factor of work-life balance. As we enter the post-pandemic era, accounting leaders can use these findings when planning the future work modes for their employees and the human resource department can utilize these results as they plan their supervisor training materials. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Management preconditions to mitigate virtual employee burnout: An innovation study

Mandatory office closures during the COVID-19 pandemic catapulted virtual work to an unprecedented scale in the United States. Another growing trend in the U.S. workforce exacerbated by the pandemic is work-related burnout syndrome. This study considered the relationship between virtual work and burnout and addressed the nascent problem of virtual employee burnout. Leveraging an organization to investigate the problem, this innovation study entailed a needs analysis in the areas of knowledge and skill, motivation, and organizational resources necessary for managers to achieve a new stakeholder goal related to meeting management preconditions to mitigate virtual employee burnout. The conceptual framework adapted gap analysis into an innovation model to investigate managers' assumed needs based on the literature review. The study utilized a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design entailing a survey, interviews, and document analysis. The study's findings informed solution recommendations and an integrated implementation and evaluation plan. The study's limitations and delimitations reside in the study's pragmatic design to solve an intractable problem of practice within a specific organization. The study's primary contribution is a conceptual construct of virtual employee burnout. Future researchers can leverage this construct to further investigate virtual employee burnout in various contexts and with different demographics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Ambient Intelligence Telework System to Enhance Concentration for Each Individual: Easy to Concentrate Based on Neuroticism

In recent years, telework has enormously increased because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some people believe that teleworkers can concentrate the same as in-person office work, while others do not. Previous studies showed that the work environment necessary for concentration tends to differ depending on the worker's individual attributes. The goal of this study is to propose an Ambient Intelligence (AMI) telework system suited for each individual to enhance concentration. In this paper, we used two videos with different levels of diligence on a task to investigate what kind of environment makes it easier to concentrate, depending on the degree of neuroticism. Concentration was estimated using the auditory steady-state response (ASSR), which is an oscillatory brain signal elicited by repetitive auditory stimulation and used as a hearing test for infants and children. The changes in the power spectral density of the ASSR with concentration were increased by comparing EEG at rest and during concentration. The effect of the two types of videos on concentration was investigated by evaluating the relationship between neuroticism scores and the power spectral density of the ASSR. The results showed that there was a significant difference in concentration influenced by the two types of videos between the high and low neuroticism score groups. In addition, a negative correlation was found between the neuroticism score and the concentration influenced by the two types of videos. We found that people with lower neuroticism tended to easy to concentrate on their work after seeing someone working hard whereas people with higher neuroticism tended to easy to concentrate on their work after seeing someone working lazily. The experimental results suggest the possibility of constructing an AMI system suited to each individual that enhances concentration. © 2023 IEEE.

Benefits and Risks of Teleworking from Home: The Teleworkers' Point of View

Using a qualitative research-based approach, this study aimed to understand (i) the way home-based teleworkers in France perceive and organize their professional activities and workspaces, (ii) their teleworking conditions, (iii) the way they characterize the modalities and the nature of their interactions with their professional circle, and more broadly (iv) their quality of life ‘at work'. We performed a lexical and morphosyntactic analysis of interviews conducted with 28 teleworkers (working part-time or full-time from home) before the COVID-19 crisis and the associated establishment of emergency telework. Our results confirm and complement findings in the literature. Participant discourses underlined the beneficial effects of teleworking in terms of professional autonomy, flexibility, concentration, efficiency, performance, productivity, and being able to balance their professional and private lives. Nevertheless, they also highlighted the deleterious effects of teleworking on temporal workload, setting boundaries for work, work-based relationships and socio-professional integration. Despite the study limitations, our findings highlight the need for specific research-based and practical strategies to support the implementation of a sustainable telework organization in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era. © 2022 by the authors.

Monitoring Security Risks of Teleworker Devices in Hospital Institution

The massive and urgent adoption of telework during the Covid-19 pandemic, supported by information and communication technologies, implied an increasing number of risks in the security of the digital infrastructure of the institutions, due to potential vulnerabilities in personal devices used by teleworkers. In this paper, this problem is raised in the context of a public healthcare institution, whose IT team was unable to monitor in real time and in an automated way the security status of these devices, nor security incidents that had been targeted. Several endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions to mitigate this problem were researched, analyzed and tested. A validation experiment was conducted with teleworkers that allowed the selection of an effective and affordable centralized solution to solve the problem raised in this research. © 2022 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

REGULATION OF TELEWORK IN BRICS: LESSONS FROM THE PANDEMIC

The COVID-19 outbreak forced many employers worldwide to organize remote workplaces and introduce new technologies of labor organization in order to protect employees from the threat of disease. After the pandemic is over, it is reasonable to anticipate an increase in telework. The legal framework of telework continues to evolve unevenly in different countries around the world. The BRICS countries lag behind the United States and the European Union in terms of the legal regulation of telework, and they lack the necessary statistical data collection. The integration of the BRICS countries calls for the development of unified approaches to the legal status of teleworkers. The creation of new jobs in the conditions of the pandemic requires the development of the regulatory framework, analysis of innovative experience and assessment of law enforcement. This article systematizes the approaches of Russian and world scientists to the major issues of telework regulation, including: the conceptual apparatus, the advantages and disadvantages of remote employment, the analysis of legislative initiatives of the BRICS countries in the context of a pandemic and the allocation of best practices, the features of concluding, changing and terminating an employment contract, determining the rights and obligations of teleworkers, the implementation of the right to social partnership, and ensuring labor protection, safety and well-being. The findings of the analysis lead to the conclusion that in order to achieve decent work in digital economy, the BRICS countries need to design a general approach to the regulation of telework for similar to the approach taken by the European Union, and to upgrade existing legislation. © 2022, University of Tyumen. All rights reserved.

The tyranny of talking distance: A phenomenological study on empathetic communication and its effect on buy-in from geographically separated employees

As information and communications technologies continue to evolve, a growing number of global corporations can have their employees work simultaneously around the globe from multiple locations. There have been numerous historical studies on empathy and empathetic leaders, but there was a void regarding studies that examined empathetic communication from organizational leaders and its potential impact on increasing buy-in from geographically separated employees. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to investigate the lived experiences of individuals with substantial experience working in geographically dispersed organizations and understand if empathetic communication from their organizational leadership increased their buy-in to the organization. This study took on increased importance as the world continues to grapple with a global pandemic. This research study included interviewing eleven participants from diverse backgrounds to understand and analyze their lived experiences being geographically separated from their organizational leadership, and answer the research question: Does empathetic communication from organizational leaders increase buy-in from geographically separated employees? After data was collected and verified for accuracy, a thematic analysis was completed to examine any potential trends in the data. The results of this study illustrated five major themes, and a further seventeen subthemes, that supported a direct connection between empathetic communication from organizational leadership and employee buy-in to the organization. Most research participants explicitly stated that empathetic communication from organizational leadership drives increased buy-in to the organization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

New insights on employee adaptive performance during the COVID-19 pandemic: Empirical evidence from Indonesia

PURPOSE: This study investigates how perceived e-leadership and the teleworking output are linked to employee adaptive performance. Further, it seeks to comprehend whether a sense of purpose and organizational commitment have a mediating role. This study proposes a new research model that is empirically tested to predict employee adaptive performance, especially during remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODOLOGY: A quantitative survey was conducted in August 2021. Respondents were obtained from 271 teleworkers employed in a reputable private company operating in the financial industry in Indonesia. The data was collected by a questionnaire using a Likert-type scale and then analyzed using PLS-SEM. FINDINGS: Three antecedents are proven to affect employee adaptive performance directly: organizational commitment, followed by teleworking output, and a sense of purpose. Perceived e-leadership affects employee adaptive performance indirectly, and it is mediated through teleworking output, organizational commitment, and sense of purpose. ORIGINALITY AND VALUE: This is one of the first studies to deploy intrinsic motivation as an antecedent of employee adaptive performance, together with the perceived e-leadership and teleworking output. Corporations will be able to focus on some key areas that are proven to impact employee adaptive performance positively.

Eustress and Distress in the Context of Telework

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a surge in telework, with many organizations using telework to continue operations. Teleworkers are subject to stress due to the demands of working from home. Despite the common view of stress as being detrimental, stress can also be beneficial. In this paper, the authors investigate two forms of stress, eustress (beneficial stress) and distress (detrimental stress), using a theoretically-derived model that includes antecedents and outcomes of eustress and distress. They test the model using data from a survey of 525 American teleworkers. Results indicate that job resources (autonomy, managerial support, and technical support) and personal resources (resilience and self-efficacy) affect eustress while job demands (work overload, social isolation, and resource inadequacies) affect distress. Eustress is positively associated with job and telework satisfaction and negatively associated with telework exhaustion. Distress has the opposite effects. The findings hold implications for researchers and practitioners.

Relationship Between Flexible Work Arrangements, Well-Being, and Performance of Employees During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The primary purpose of the present research paper was to investigate the influence of flexible work arrangements on personal and family well-being and performance of employees. The study also examined the moderating role of managerial support on the relationship between flexible work arrangements and well-being & performance. The target respondents were the teleworkers employed with Indian IT organizations located in North India. Data were gathered from 412 teleworkers to study the hypotheses, and Smart PLS 2.0 was employed to analyze the data. The results revealed a significant relationship between flexible work arrangements, personal and family well-being, and employee performance. The study further confirmed the significant and moderating effect of managerial support on the relationship between flexible work arrangements and performance. During the work-from-home policies at the workplace, the employees perceived that receiving support from the managers helped them perform well. As the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the economies globally, the present study’s findings would be essential for the managers to support their employees during such crises. © 2022, Associated Management Consultants Pvt. Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Eustress and Distress in the Context of Telework

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a surge in telework, with many organizations using telework to continue operations. Teleworkers are subject to stress due to the demands of working from home. Despite the common view of stress as being detrimental, stress can also be beneficial. In this paper, we investigate two forms of stress, eustress (beneficial stress), and distress (detrimental stress) using a theoretically-derived model that includes antecedents and outcomes of eustress and distress. We test our model using data from a survey of 525 American teleworkers. Results indicate that job resources (autonomy, managerial support, and technical support), and personal resources (resilience and self-efficacy) affect eustress, while job demands (work overload, social isolation, and resource inadequacies) affect distress. Eustress is positively associated with job and telework satisfaction and negatively associated with telework exhaustion. Distress has the opposite effects. Our findings hold implications for researchers and practitioners.

Determinants of Effective Telework: An Evidence from Telecommunication Sector in Bahrain

This study investigates the effectiveness of working from home during COVID-19 pandemic based on seven characteristics from telecommunication sector in Bahrain, namely, social, job, teleworker, management, teleworking, crisis as well as demographic variables. The data are collected through a questionnaire using a sample of 104 employers working from home. A partial least squares regression that protects against multicollinearity and nonnormality has been employed as a unique technique to build two models. The results of these models have suggested that the teleworking effectiveness and the teleworker, teleworking and crisis characteristics are statistically significant while social, job, management characteristics and demographic variable are not statistically significant. Such results support the importance of teleworker skills and professional quality variation such as autonomy, self-disciplined self-motivation, management skills, likely to work during the most prolific period and to facilitate working in case of sickness as well as crisis. Decision-makers and managers will the most beneficiary of the study and the results. © 2021 IEEE.

Teleworker's Perception of Technology Use for Collaborative and Social During the COVID-19 Pandemic

With the flourish of collaborative and social technologies in the market since the pandemic, there is limited understanding of user's attitudes towards these technologies. We aim to understand teleworkers' perceptions of technology use during the pandemic and interviewed 46 teleworkers. We found that teleworkers generally hold a positive attitude towards social technologies and are creative to use these technologies to meet their social needs;they express overall negative feelings about remote collaboration technologies, though online communication flattens the communication hierarchy in the organization. The pandemic amplifies the extant challenges and highlights the shortcomings of technological design in well-established teleworking research and remote collaboration work. We suggest that future design should 1) combine and commercialize solutions that are well-grounded in prior work;2) consider scenarios that are typically missed and can be easily replaced with collocated interaction from the pre-pandemic context into the forced teleworking context. © Cai et al. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd.

An Integrated Framework Based on Fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS and Multiple Correspondences Analysis (MCA) for Evaluate the Technological Conditions of the Teleworker in Times of Pandemic: A Case Study

The COVID 19 pandemic has affected the daily routine of all people, both in their family and work environments, globally. As a result, many companies in practically all the productive sectors of the countries have required to rethink several critical aspects of the business itself so as not to be absorbed by the crisis, avoid as much as possible losses in financial, human, technological resources, etc., and even disappear. In these challenging times that we live in, the corporate technology platform must provide remote connection facilities to employees. Thus, Teleworking is facilitated in a safe, flexible way, which does not delay the processes and business goals. To define this technological roadmap, it is essential to review the current specialized components, the network infrastructure, and recommendations to improve and optimize existing processes. Concerning the application of integrated methodologies for evaluating Teleworker’s technological conditions during the COVID-19, some studies have been found related to health and safety conditions, growth in the implementation of this modality, and future trends in teleworking. However, the approach to technological requirements in teleworking during the COVID-19 pandemic is still limited and not sufficiently studied. To address this challenge, this paper presents an integrated framework based on the application of Fuzzy AHP, TOPSIS, and multivariate methods for the evaluation of technological conditions of teleworkers during the COVID-19 in the construction sector. The methodology’s design is based on the international guidelines and pertinent scientific literature in Telework. The results obtained evidence that the criteria “Infrastructure,” “Digital Connectivity Services,” “Applications,” and “Users” are relevant in the evaluation of technological conditions for Telework due to the few differences in their relative weights. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

How Do Teleworkers and Organizations Manage the COVID-19 Crisis in Brazil? The Role of Flexibility I-Deals and Work Recovery in Maintaining Sustainable Well-Being at Work.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the economic market and labor contexts worldwide. Brazil has suffered one of the worst social and governmental managements of the COVID-19 crisis, forcing workers and organizations to develop coping strategies. This environment can affect both well-being and performance at work. Sustainable well-being at work refers to different patterns of relationships between performance and well-being. It may include eudaimonic (e.g., Meaning of Work-MOW) or hedonic (e.g., emotions) forms of well-being. This study tests the moderating role of recovery from work stress in the relationship between flexibility i-deals and patterns of sustainable well-being at work in Brazilian teleworkers. We relied on two studies to achieve this objective. In Study 1, conducted during the pandemic's first outbreak in Brazil (N = 386), recovery experiences moderated the relationship between i-deals and clusters formed by performance and MOW (eudaimonic happiness). In Study 2, conducted during the second outbreak (N = 281), we identified relationships between clusters of emotions (hedonic happiness) and MOW (eudaimonic) with performance. The results supported the idea that recovery experiences moderated the relationship between i-deals and patterns of sustainable well-being at work differently. Our findings have implications for Human Resource Management and teleworkers, especially for employee behaviors to deal with stress.

Employee well-being in the COVID-19 pandemic: The moderating role of teleworking during the first lockdown in the province of Quebec, Canada.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on all aspects of society, including mental health. Many employees have had to pivot suddenly to teleworking to prevent the virus from spreading. While teleworking may have some negative consequences, it may also represent a human resources practice that may improve employee well-being. OBJECTIVE: The study main objective was to determine if teleworking played a moderating role in the relation between potential stressors and employee well-being during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic when working from home. This was based on the theory of conservation of resources. METHODS: Multivariate regression analyses were conducted with Stata 13 software to determine the contribution of potential stressors on employee well-being, as well as the moderating role of teleworking on a sample of 480 Canadian employees. Data were collected once for white and blue collar from both public (67.08%) and private (32.92%) business sectors. RESULTS: Results indicated that work-life imbalances, workload, and marital tension were associated with lower levels of well-being. On the other hand, teleworking and household income were associated with higher levels of well-being. Teleworking also moderated the differences in well-being between the public and private sectors. Teleworking in the public sector seems to increase employee well-being. Conversely, working on-site in the public sector seems to decrease well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Employers need to proactively address work-life imbalances, workloads, and teleworking to maintain employee well-being. Specific recommendations are offered to ensure that teleworking remains positive for employee well-being both during a pandemic and afterward.