Telecommuting and Teleworking (Teleportability): A Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation Mechanism in the Post COVID-19 Era

ABSTRACT

Organizations, societies, and economies are the scope of sustainability in every community. The growing realization of electronically-enabled business as critical drivers of sustainable economic growth and development especially during crisis is no doubt propelling nations into harnessing the benefits of enterpreneural transformation in the 21st century and post covid-19 era. Teleworking and Telecommuting are technologies that have the ability to enable ubiquitous digital service transmissions needed to combat and curtail the prevalence of pandemics such as Covid-19. Capabilities of telecommuting can be effectively utilized to address the challenges associated with Covid-19 presently and in the post covid-19 era including threats in war-turned geographical spaces. However, there is the paucity of such knowledge, orientation and awareness amongst entrepreneurs, industries and companies in developing countries like Nigeria. This lacuna, if properly bridged will help unpack the link between production, consumption and service delivery in an emerging economy. This paper examines the notional impact of the concept of telecommuting and teleworking as a mechanism for a sustainable economic transformation and global repositioning of the work force beyond the covid crisis. Furthermore, it analyzes and juxtaposes the readibility of business environments to ensure their employee's safety in the work place and remote working, thus providing continuity to economic, productive and business activity. This conceptual study uses the interpretive paradigm, through deductive analysis to draw the conclusion that there is a very poor level of deployment of telecommuting and teleworking models in countries like Nigeria during crisis and pandemics and therefore recommends that organizations adopt this mechanism to propel safety of the workforce and reduce cost. With the approval for the operation of the 5G network in the Nigerian telecommunications space, entrepreneurs can explore the gains to sustain remote working or working from home in the post-covid-19 era.