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This paper investigates how organisations responded to the home office imposition during the recent global health crisis and its impacts on people management, detailing the organisational factors crucial for effective home-office implementation.

We used an exploratory design based on a multiple case study with four companies from two contrasting sectors (manufacturing and information technology (IT)). We interviewed a total of 12 managers, including one HR manager (HRms) and two team managers from each company. We also conducted an online questionnaire with open questions, reaching out to 128 home-office workers from the four participating companies. This diverse group consisted of 67 workers from the IT sector and 61 workers from the manufacturing sector. To ensure a comprehensive analysis, we opted for a qualitative approach to examine the data.

Findings enabled detail of the organisational factor of the Belzunegui-Eraso and Erro-Garcés (2020) extended Baruch and Nicholson’s (1997) model into people management issues: organisational culture, team management and human resources management (HRM) practices, as well as the technological support. The results also revealed that people management benefits from the successful home-office implementation, which boosted the digitalisation of human resources (HR) processes.

Considering the lessons learned from the home-office imposition, this research provides original insights into the field by exploring the roles of supervisors and HR managers, in non-health organisations, with different previous remote work experiences, in a recent global disruptive moment, based on a rich qualitative approach. The paper offers concrete guidelines for companies that intend to implement remote work management programs and contributes to deepen the knowledge of home-office experience, offering a model focusing on managers’ roles (HRms and TMs) and HRM practices.

This study explores the topic of remote work and the changing motivations to working from home after the COVID-19 pandemic-induced exposure to working from home. It examines the effects of that forced work from home (WFH) experience on subsequent motivations for continuing part or all of that changed mode of working. In this study, the authors examine the perspective of front-line knowledge workers regarding the motivation to WFH based on their lived experiences.

Self-determination theory (SDT) provided the theoretical basis for the study (Ryan and Deci, 2000, 2017). The authors employed semi-structured individual and group interviews (with 28 participants) and explored the following questions: How has the competence aspect of motivation to WFH changed due to the shift that occurred during the pandemic? How has the relatedness aspect of motivation to WFH changed due to the shift that occurred during the pandemic? How has the autonomy aspect of motivation to WFH changed due to the shift that transpired during the pandemic?

The findings show that there was a change from an extrinsic motivation based on external factors to one that is more intrinsic, or internal, in nature for knowledge workers who experienced the switch to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study makes an important contribution by developing a theoretical model based on SDT (Ryan and Deci, 2000, 2017) in the context of WFH. In the first phase (Phase 1), workers experienced many transitional challenges due to the suddenness and intensiveness of the shift. However, over time workers adapted and adjusted (we refer to this as Phase 2 in our model). Ultimately, all three aspects of SDT – competence, relatedness and autonomy – increased motivation to work from home. However, we also found some factors that act as demotivators to knowledge workers for embracing remote work such as those involving career advancement and the expectation of voice. Despite these moderating factors, the overall progression toward the desire to WFH, at least on a hybrid basis, has continued after adjusting to the forced experience of telecommuting during the pandemic.

The contribution of this study is to disaggregate the short-term effects of the sudden transition, to the longer-term effects after adaption and adjustment occurred, and to connect that to a new perspective on work by employees. It does this by extending SDT to the context of motivation regarding work from home. The COVID-19 pandemic provided experience of and opportunities for telework to more employees and changed many of their expectations and motivations. By looking at front-line knowledge workers’ expectations and motivations related to home-based work, we can better understand the increased demand by workers for hybrid work schedules.

Adult social care services are increasingly establishing reablement services as part of their range of home care provision, sometimes alone, sometimes jointly with NHS partners. Typically, home care reablement is a short‐term intervention, often free of charge, that aims to maximise independent living skills. This paper describes two small studies examining the impact of home care reablement on subsequent service use. The evidence so far strongly suggests that a period of home care reablement can reduce the subsequent use of home care services and that, for some people, these benefits may last for a year or more. However, a number of organisational and cultural factors can limit the immediate and longer‐term benefits of home care reablement.

This study compares and contrasts the clients of two domiciliary care services delivered to elderly people in Darlington, Durham, UK, in terms of their living circumstances, dependency levels and the service inputs they receive. The two services are the Home Help Service managed by the local authority social services department and a Home Care Service managed by the Darlington Health Authority which offers an alternative to long‐stay hospital care for elderly people. The study examined only a sample of the most dependent home help clients and all of the home care clients. The instruments used to measure dependency were found to be limited in their ability to detect crucial differences in the two client groups and suggestions are made about how these might be improved. The main distinguishing characteristics of the Home Care Service clients were that they were, on average, younger and frailer than the home help clients and were far more likely to need help with toiletting, dressing, getting in/out of bed, walkng and making hot drinks. In contrast the main predictor of Home Help Service membership was living alone. It was concluded that although some home help clients were as incapacitated as home care ones, the latter scheme was far more consistently targetted on very frail, and often ill, people.

More than two million older home owners have housing assets worth over £50,000, but incomes so low that they qualify for means‐tested benefits. Drawing on housing equity could improve their quality of life significantly, helping them to live more comfortably in their own homes for longer. But only about 25,000 home owners (of all ages and incomes) conclude equity release deals each year. This paper identifies the obstacles that deter asset‐rich, income‐poor older home owners from drawing on their housing equity, and suggests ways of overcoming them. The focus is on paying for additional care at home, home improvements and repairs.

The purpose of this paper is to observe and analyse the effects of the use of telemedicine in care homes on the use of acute hospital resources.

The study was an uncontrolled retrospective observational review of data on emergency hospital admissions and Emergency Department (ED) visits for care home residents in Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven. Acute hospital activity for residents was observed before and after the installation of telemedicine in 27 care homes. Data from a further 21 care homes that did not use telemedicine were used as a control group, using the median date of telemedicine installation for the “before and after” period. Patient outcomes were not considered.

Care homes with telemedicine showed a 39 per cent reduction in the costs of emergency admissions and a 45 per cent reduction in ED attendances after telemedicine installation. In the control group reductions were 31 and 31 per cent, respectively. The incremental difference in costs between the two groups of care homes was almost £1.2 million. The cost of telemedicine to care commissioners was £177,000, giving a return on investment over a 20-month period of £6.74 per £1 spent.

The results should be interpreted carefully. There is inherent bias as telemedicine was deployed in care homes with the highest use of acute hospital resources and there were some methodological limitations due to poor data. Nevertheless, controlling the data as much as possible and adopting a cautious approach to interpretation, it can be concluded that the use of telemedicine in these care homes was cost-effective.

There are very few telemedicine studies focused on care homes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what existing literature about the care home environment for people with dementia reveals. It also evaluates the implications for practice, to show which parts of the care home environment staff feel have the most impact on the day to day lives of residents living with dementia. In turn, this paper seeks to feedback to care home management to improve practice and to contribute to research in care homes in the future.

A literature review forms the basis of this research, in addition to four semi-structured interview conducted with care home staff of different roles; allowing them to share their experiences with little restriction. Participants were recruited through informal discussions with the researcher before the research took place, as part of her job role and using purposive sampling.

Data were analysed using computer software Nvivo and identified four main categories which all participants discussed: social interaction, staff involvement, staff restrictions, staff involvement and physical elements of the environment. This research has shown the importance of staff presence in the care home environment to facilitate social interaction among residents with dementia.

The sample is very small due to staff not having the time to take part in the interview and this itself is a key finding. Interviews were able to capture feelings but not the overall experience of interaction between resident and staff, which observations would have achieved if there was more time to conduct the research.

A literature review and qualitative research signifying the importance of staff presence in the care home setting in order for the residents to socially engage in their environment. However, it has also show the lack of time that is face by staff and the impact this has on people living with dementia.

There are two main objectives of the paper. First, in a systematic and statistically rigorous manner, we attempt to descriptively document the types and nature of marketing information on commercial home‐pages, with a view to identifying the major objectives of contemporary commercial Web sites that pre‐dominate the Web. Using Resnik and Stern’s “information content” paradigm, we evaluate the informativeness of commercial home pages. Second, we attempt to empirically examine various important factors of commercial home‐pages that lead to increased visits, or hit‐rates. The identification of hit‐rate determinants is likely to be of great value, both to Web page designers and to the many small and large firms seeking to establish their presence on the Web.

The study aims to compare management practices in private and publicly owned elderly care homes. The demands for cost-effective care combined with emphasis on client experience highlights the importance of appropriate management practices.

The study utilises a survey of 500 homes covering management practices on monitoring, performance management and staff development. These are highly correlated, allowing for treating the practices both in aggregate and individually in the analysis. Additional questions capture information on site and management conditions.

Management practices employed at the elderly care homes vary greatly, with high and low individual scores found in most homes. But private homes consistently score higher than public homes, especially when it comes to incentive practices. Also, elderly care homes of both ownership forms score at the top and bottom of each management practice. But looking at the average management score, there are fewer private homes that score really low and more private homes that score really high.

The results identify given characteristics and maturity of the various management practices employed to plan and control operations in the elderly care homes and provides managerial and staff insights into their use.

The application and impact of standard management practices has previously been limited in publicly funded services. Little is known about management practices in elderly care and whether the practices are associated with better performance.

The aim of this study was to test whether the client homebound score (CHS), the case management intensity score (CMIS) and the client priority visit score (CPVS) could be used to predict in‐home time of professional caregivers in the Aspen community care program. A random sample of 34 community care clients from the different geographical areas of the Aspen Regional Health Authority was selected and the home visits for each client were tracked for three months. Information such as client demographics, the client diagnostic category, number and in‐home time of visits was collected. In addition, the CHS, the CMIS and the CPVS were measured for each client. Data were analyzed, using a robust variance estimator regression model. CMIS was found to be the best predictor of in‐home time (coefficient 9.521, p > 0.001), followed by the CHS and the CPVS.