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Samantha Metselaar, Laura den Dulk and Brenda Vermeeren
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the relevance of the intersections between work and personal life. Measures introduced to slow the spread of COVID-19 have included an…
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the relevance of the intersections between work and personal life. Measures introduced to slow the spread of COVID-19 have included an increase of working from home and the temporary closure of schools and child-care facilities, leading to a lighter workload for some and a heavier workload for others. These consequences are likely to affect employees’ work–life balance (WLB), although the impact may differ across groups of employees depending on the nature of their work, family and personal demands and resources. This mixed-method study examined how Dutch government employees perceive their WLB during the pandemic and how differences in what employees are experiencing can be explained. In May/June 2020, an online survey (N = 827) and an interview study (N = 17) were conducted at a government organization whose employees were obliged to work from home partly or exclusively. Results indicate that demands changed when working entirely from home and resources became more important to maintain WLB satisfaction. Being able to manage boundaries across life domains and find a new routine also appeared to be crucial for WLB satisfaction.
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Hannah Kira Wilson, Matthew Tucker and Gemma Dale
This research investigates the challenges and benefits of working from home and the needs that organisations should understand when adopting working from home practices.
Abstract
Purpose
This research investigates the challenges and benefits of working from home and the needs that organisations should understand when adopting working from home practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Self-determination theory was used to understand the drivers of motivation when working from home, to provide a deep understanding of how organisations may support employees working from home. A cross-sectional qualitative survey design was used to collect data from 511 office workers during May and June of 2020.
Findings
Employees' needs for competence were thwarted by a lack of direction and focus, unsuitable work environment, work extensification and negative work culture. Employees' experiences and needs for relatedness were more diverse, identifying that they enjoyed spending more time with family and having a greater connection to the outdoors, but felt more isolated and suffered from a lack of interaction. Employees' experiences of autonomy whilst working from home were also mixed, having less autonomy from blurred boundaries between home and work, as well as childcare responsibilities. Conversely, there was more freedom to be able to concentrate on physical health.
Practical implications
Employee’s needs for competence should be prioritised. Organisations must be conscious of this and provide the support that enables direction and focus when working at home.
Originality/value
Swathes of research were conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, but overwhelmingly focused on quantitative methods. A qualitative survey design enabled participants to answer meaningful open-ended questions, better suited to explain the complexity of their experiences, which allowed for understanding and richness not gained through previous studies.
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Ragna Kemp Haraldsdottir, Fiorella Foscarini, Charles Jeurgens, Pekka Henttonen, Gillian Oliver, Seren Wendelken and Viviane Frings-Hessami
The purpose of this paper was to investigate how recordkeepers in Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Iceland and Italy experienced accomplishing their tasks from home…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to investigate how recordkeepers in Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Iceland and Italy experienced accomplishing their tasks from home over varying lengths of time during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
A multilingual survey including 44 questions was designed and administered to the six countries identified above in 2022. This research was preceded by an environmental scan looking at existing studies considering archival and records management responses to the pandemic.
Findings
The impact of working from home on recordkeeping and, more generally, work performance was perceived differently by the survey respondents depending on various factors. The study also identified a number of similarities across countries, such as an increased awareness of the importance of records management shared by organizational actors. Surprisingly, the pandemic did not appear to have a great impact on the perceived quality of records management.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study aiming to capture records professionals’ perceptions of their role while working from home during the pandemic.
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Karen Modesta Olsen, Jarle Hildrum, Kamilla Kummen and Caroline Leirdal
The study examines the extent to which job demands and resources are related to job stress and engagement among young employees exposed to remote work. The study draws on the job…
Abstract
Purpose
The study examines the extent to which job demands and resources are related to job stress and engagement among young employees exposed to remote work. The study draws on the job demands–resources (JD-R) model, adapted to working from home during the pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses data from a survey among young employees (35 years and younger) in a large, telecommunications company in Norway (N = 303), conducted in May 2021. Linear regression analysis was employed.
Findings
The results show that the difficulty of work tasks is positively related to stress while time spent working from home, managing work–life balance and receiving support from leaders are negatively related to stress. Furthermore, overtime, support from leaders and colleagues and managing work–life balance are positively related to job engagement. Having a dedicated workspace at home is not related to either job stress or engagement and no gender differences exist.
Originality/value
The study theoretically contributes to the literature by showing that the nature of work plays out differently for the well-being of employees working from home. In terms of practical implications, the study suggests that adjusting the level of difficulty of work tasks and providing support can alleviate stress among young employees. Providing the option to work from home may reduce stress among these young employees, however working from home may face limitations regarding enhancing job engagement.
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Eunhwa Yang, Yujin Kim and Sungil Hong
This study aims to understand how knowledge workers working from home during COVID-19 changed their views on physical work environments and working-from-home practices.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand how knowledge workers working from home during COVID-19 changed their views on physical work environments and working-from-home practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducted a survey targeting workers in the USA recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk. A total of 1,651 responses were collected and 648 responses were used for the analysis.
Findings
The perceived work-life balance improved during the pandemic compared to before, while the balance of physical boundaries between the workplace and home decreased. Workplace flexibility, environmental conditions of home offices and organizational supports are positively associated with productivity, satisfaction with working from home and work-life balance during the pandemic.
Research limitations/implications
While the strict traditional view of “showing” up in the office from Monday through Friday is likely on the decline, the hybrid workplace with flexibility can be introduced as some activities are not significantly affected by the work location, either at home-based or corporate offices. The results of this study also highlight the importance of organizations to support productivity and satisfaction in the corporate office as well as home. With the industry collaboration, future research of relatively large sample sizes and study sites, investigating workers’ needs and adapted patterns of use in home-based and corporate offices, will help corporate real estate managers make decisions and provide some level of standardization of spatial efficiency and configurations of corporate offices as well as essential supports for home offices.
Originality/value
The pandemic-enforced working-from-home practices awaken the interdependence between corporate and home environments, how works are done and consequently, the role of the physical workplace. This study built a more in-depth understanding of how workers who were able to continue working from home during COVID-19 changed or not changed their views on physical work environments and working-from-home practices.
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Jessica Simon and Megan McDonald Way
– This paper aims to explore gender differences in terms of self-employment for US Millennials, relating them to working from home as well as other factors.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore gender differences in terms of self-employment for US Millennials, relating them to working from home as well as other factors.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use a population-based survey, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which allows to compare home-based vs non-home-based self-employed women and men on a wide variety of characteristics. Descriptive analyses reveal the unconditional relationships between the covariates of interest, and the authors use ordinary least squares regression to reveal the conditional correlations between working from home and earnings for both women and men.
Findings
The authors find that working from home is highly negatively correlated with earnings for women, but not for men, and that working from home may trump the other characteristics typically associated with lower earnings.
Research limitations/implications
The regression subsample is relatively small (n = 245), leading to omitted variable bias in the regression. The “working-from-home” variable is potentially endogenous. The small sample size does not allow the authors to use detailed information on the self-employment industry. Future research should focus on finding larger samples and a way to instrument for working from home.
Social implications
Work/life trends and communications technology have made working from home more prevalent (Mateyka et al., 2012). It is important for researchers and policymakers to understand the gendered implications of basing a business at home.
Originality/value
The study is the first to use population-based data to focus specifically on gender gaps in earnings of self-employed Millennials in relation to working from home.
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Sonia Schifano, Andrew E. Clark, Samuel Greiff, Claus Vögele and Conchita D'Ambrosio
The authors track the well-being of individuals across five European countries during the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and relate their well-being to…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors track the well-being of individuals across five European countries during the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and relate their well-being to working from home. The authors also consider the role of pandemic-policy stringency in affecting well-being in Europe.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors have four waves of novel harmonised longitudinal data in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden, covering the period May–November 2020. Well-being is measured in five dimensions: life satisfaction, a worthwhile life, loneliness, depression and anxiety. A retrospective diary indicates whether the individual was working in each month since February 2020 and if so whether at home or not at home. Policy stringency is matched in per country at the daily level. The authors consider both cross-section and panel regressions and the mediating and moderating effects of control variables, including household variables and income.
Findings
Well-being among workers is lower for those who work from home, and those who are not working have the lowest well-being of all. The panel results are more mitigated, with switching into working at home yielding a small drop in anxiety. The panel and cross-section difference could reflect adaptation or the selection of certain types of individuals into working at home. Policy stringency is always negatively correlated with well-being. The authors find no mediation effects. The well-being penalty from working at home is larger for the older, the better-educated, those with young children and those with more crowded housing.
Originality/value
The harmonised cross-country panel data on individuals' experiences during COVID-19 are novel. The authors relate working from home and policy stringency to multiple well-being measures. The authors emphasise the effect of working from home on not only the level of well-being but also its distribution.
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Uma Jogulu, Nicola Green, Esme Franken, Alexis Vassiley, Tim Bentley and Leigh-ann Onnis
This study explored one form of remote working – work from home – to understand the impact of work disruptions on workers and human resource management (HRM) practice and…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explored one form of remote working – work from home – to understand the impact of work disruptions on workers and human resource management (HRM) practice and therefore how to adapt to future crises. Specifically, the purpose is to understand the impact of events on employees when they are forced to move back and forth (yo-yoing) between work from home and a central office, using the case of Perth, Western Australia (WA).
Design/methodology/approach
Thirty-nine interviews with leaders, managers and co-workers working in private and public organisations suggest that forced changes to work arrangements affect job content and demands, well-being and potentially career trajectories.
Findings
The authors critically applied and developed the tenets of event system theory (EST) (novelty, disruption and criticality) by analysing an ongoing or “long” event rather than a discrete or time-limited one. The study found that the work-from-home experience influenced the individual perception of whether remote working would suit employees in the future, potentially influencing career paths. In addition, the selection of locations to live, preferred properties (e.g. home office space) and access to services (e.g. broadband infrastructure) has also become dominant features of work decisions.
Research limitations/implications
While the study generated rich data, it is not without limitations. The participants were from one Australian state which may not reflect the COVID-19 experiences of other jurisdictions. In addition, the participants were mostly female so this may offer a different perspective than a more gender-balanced sample. The study was limited to the perspectives of employees and middle managers.
Practical implications
The authors note three areas of implications for practitioners. First, the findings suggest that strong organisational and HRM support assists employees to cope well with change. Second, the importance of technological and social preparedness in improving employee experiences highlights the role of HRM in job design. Third, it is key that salient events are recognised as potential determinants of career pathways.
Originality/value
The evidence from this research broadens the application of EST showing that forced flexibility has an influence on work arrangements by influencing a series of changes in features of work and experiences of employees. As such, this impacts employee's well-being and potentially future career decisions.
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Virtual care is any interaction between a patient and clinician or clinicians, occurring remotely using information technologies. Like many international services, United Kingdom…
Abstract
Purpose
Virtual care is any interaction between a patient and clinician or clinicians, occurring remotely using information technologies. Like many international services, United Kingdom (UK) ambulance services use paramedics and nurses to undertake telephone assessments of patients calling the 999 emergency service line. Using their clinical knowledge, experience, and, at times, computer decision support software, these clinicians assess patients from a range of clinical acuities to confirm the need for an emergency response or identify and support those patients who can be cared for with remote treatment advice and referral. The Covid-19 pandemic saw UK ambulance services change and adapt their operating models to meet social distancing requirements, increase clinical staff numbers and mitigate staff becoming unavailable for work due to self-isolation. One such strategy was moving clinicians from Emergency Operations Centres (EOCs) to working at home. Staff utilised digital phone systems, remote computer-aided dispatch modules, remote clinical decision support software and video platforms, which allowed close to full functionality compared to inside typical EOCs. There is a dearth of literature exploring the comparative practice of clinicians from home rather than from EOCs. Therefore, this study reports the findings of a qualitative analysis of these effects from the clinician's perspective. The authors hope that the findings from this study will inform the operating, education and leadership practices of those delivering such services.
Design/methodology/approach
A convenience sample of telephone nurses and paramedics from one UK ambulance service in which home working had been implemented were contacted. 15 clinicians with recent home working experience responded to the invite out of a possible 31 (48%). All participants had previously practised remote assessment from within an EOC. Semi-structured interviews took place via video conferencing software and were recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed. An inductive approach was taken to generating codes and both researchers separately reading the transcripts before re-reading them, assigning initial themes and determining frequency.
Findings
Four main themes were identified with further associated sub-themes: (1) performance, (2) support, (3) distractions and interruptions and (4) confidence in decision-making.
Originality/value
There are very few studies exploring the practice of remote clinicians in emergency EOCs. This study identified that home working clinicians felt their productivity had increased, making them more satisfied in their practice. However, there were mixed feelings over the level of support they perceived they now received, despite the mechanisms of support being largely the same. Supervisors found it especially challenging to provide support to practitioners; and employers might need to clarify the support mechanisms they provide to homeworkers. The elimination of distractions and interruptions was seen as a largely positive result of homeworking; however, these interruptions were not seen as inappropriate, thus, identifying a need for role clarity and task coordination rather than interruption elimination. Finally, clinicians felt that they become more confident when working from home, researching more, trusting themselves more and relying less on others to reach safe outcomes. However, there were missed opportunities to learn from listening to others' clinical practice.
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