Emergency Remote Work in Portugal: Evaluation, Effects, and Recommendations

ABSTRACT

The recent pandemic caused by COVID-19 has forced unprecedented professional and social changes that affect the way people work, learn and live. Even in an era in which the digitalization of the workplace had been already widely announced, employers and employees had not expected such an urgent digital immersion of jobs with broad impacts on the professional, personal, financial and social dimensions of the workforce. In this paper, the main consequences, challenges, and effects of remote work in Portugal are reported, together with a set of recommendations for employers and workers, which were captured in survey-based research. Results show that professionals are not unanimous towards the benefits of remote work, and while some would like to resume in-person work, a substantial amount of professional, personal and financial benefits are associated to the possibility of working from home. Additionally, and according to pressing changes, professionals put forward several recommendations for employers and peers regarding workload and time management, employee assistance and self-regulated work. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.