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In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic organisations are adapting to a new environment of global talent shortages, economic uncertainty and geo-political turmoil. As an outcome, the organisational strategies of digital transformation and remote working have been accelerated in the race to boost innovation, competitivity and attract staff. This has led to the rise of two new organisational dynamics: the increase of virtual teams (VTs) and focus on widespread work automation. However, despite the rise of these two related phenomena, literature does not connect them as one research area, and there is a gap in the understanding of the new employee wellbeing needs they form and how to respond to them. This paper aims to bridge this gap through a systematic literature across these areas.

This paper conducts a systematic literature review across the areas of leadership, VTs and automation over the past three years.

In this review, a number of newly arising employee wellbeing needs are identified such as fear of job displacement, a lack of self-efficacy and social cohesion, poor relationships with leaders and more. In addition, this paper recommends three fundamental research gaps to be addressed by future studies: 1. How to build and cultivate the new leadership skills needed to support VTs and workplace automation? 2. How to design work in a way that caters for employee wellbeing needs when operating in VTs or hybrid teams and working on or with workplace automation? 3. How to design work in a way that builds and emphasises the new employee skillsets to support augmentation and solves for the new employee wellbeing needs experienced by workplace automation?

This paper provides a novel contribution to literature by centralising current schools of thought across the cross-disciplinary themes and synthesising literature to recommend new wellbeing and leadership skills for organisations to focus on, alongside producing a new research agenda for scholars to focus.

New ways of working have rapidly increased in organizations, promising employees a better control over their work time, space, and more autonomy. The present study analyzes the relationship between new ways of working and employee engagement and productivity.

A survey was conducted to evaluate organizational practices developed based on flexible schemes and the relevance of employee engagement for better productivity based on digital tools. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

New ways of work requires an integration of workspaces' design, social interaction, and individual wellness. Organizations need to recognize how employees' trust, commitment, and passion are fundamental to face current and future changes. Flexibility in time and space and digital tools for work are critical.

A personalization of organizational practices to support individual well-being and flexible and hybrid schemes of work are needed. Developing policies collaboratively to work together respectfully in a hybrid environment is necessary.

Hybrid work format is allowing women to balance career and childcare, reducing the wage gap with men. The green imperative has also played a role reducing the amount of carbon monoxide produced via commuter.

The present study exposes how organizational practices must ensure employee well-being and autonomy to perform their tasks. In this regard, employees need to be recognized as individuals, physically and mentally. Attempting to force a one-size-fit-all solution can have detrimental effects on the workforce, particularly on women, people of lower socioeconomic status, and people in less advanced economies. Personalization requests empowerment and democratization at work.

Research suggests that leaders influence employee engagement and their connection to the organization, their manager and their team. However, the influence of leadership behaviors on new employees requires further investigation.

This nonexperimental, cross-sectional, quantitative, exploratory study examined Situational Leadership II (SLII) behaviors, specifically the Coaching (S2) style and new employee engagement. New employees that had worked with medium-sized organizations (100 to 999 employees) for less than a year were surveyed using the Leadership Action Profile II (LAPII; The Ken Blanchard Co., 1979) and the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-9 (UWES-9; Schaufeli and Baker, 2003). Regression analysis was used to determine the degree to which the SLII leaders’ behaviors explained new employee engagement. The research question and hypotheses explored the gap between SLII behaviors and new employee engagement.

The findings of this research indicated a positive relationship between the SLII leadership style of Coaching (S2) and new employee engagement. It is important to engage new hires in order to reduce turnover.

The SLII leadership style of Coaching (SW) was studied and in relation to new employee engagement. New hire engagement (those working for an organization for less than a year) is not an area that has been studied in relation to coaching in medium sized organizations and this article contributes to the literature.

Introduction: Skills are vital for the survival of an organisation to meet its objectives through producing goods and services. Due to their importance, they are among the sought-after aspects of employment. However, organisations need more skilled employees to bridge the gaps due to disruptions, shifts in consumer demands and needs, and transformations in the global world.

Purpose of the Study: This study aims to identify various skill gap in talent, competencies, and experience emerging in the hospitality sector. It will also present some challenges to the hospitality sector that faces due to the skill gap identified.

Industrial and Academic Justification of the Study: The study examines the needs and challenges from academic and industry perspectives. Hence, it provides significance for academics and industry to apply the findings to address skill gap.

Research Gap: Previous research has focused on different aspects of skills in other countries. This study will look at the issue globally and the recent trends emerging from disruptions and shifts in consumer behaviour.

Results and Findings: Though the study is ongoing, the findings show that specific skill gap exist, particularly in emerging technologies, digitisation, data, robotics, and various job openings from different countries’ perspectives, hospitality, and the tourism industry.

Practical Implications: The findings have implications for the tourism and hospitality industry as a whole, as well as individual organisations. The tourism and hospitality industry should apply these suggestions, such as operational skills, digital skills, and interpersonal skills in various sections of tourism and hospitality organisations

This case is based on primary and secondary data collection. ABCo’s Founder, Jocelyn Sheppard, sat down with the author for a 75-min recorded interview in July 2022, and she provided follow-up information via email. Interview data was supplemented with secondary data from publicly available sources to fill in portions on the founder, the company’s history and its location; and triangulate the collected interview data (Creswell and Poth, 2018). There are no conflicts of interest that the author needs to disclose related to the founder or company.

The case was piloted at one institution in the Fall 2022, Spring 2023 and Fall 2023 semesters, with 59 undergraduates in an in-person social entrepreneurship course and 165 undergraduates and 33 graduate students in an online asynchronous social entrepreneurship course. All students worked through the case in groups, and as a requirement of their corresponding assignment submission, they provided feedback that was de-identified. In total, 60 groups reported their feedback, which was considered during the subsequent drafts of the case and instructors’ manual IM.

According to the anonymized feedback, the protagonist, product line, desired social impact and experienced challenges of ABCo were all said to be interesting, approachable and relatable for students, and the case piqued the interest of students coming from different majors (e.g. business, environmental issues, human services and criminal justice). Students from rural areas, or those who have family in rural areas, felt the case was particularly interesting; a handful of the students in the asynchronous online class who were unfamiliar with such settings suggested providing students with some additional contextualization of rural environments, either through class discussion with other students who had experience in those environments or additional media or text-based supports. Further adjustments also included removing a reading and a corresponding question and revising elements within the Teaching Approaches section of the IM to support the additions they suggested within the feedback (i.e. spending time to define and walk through the provided model and highlight the differences of rural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in the rural as a class before engaging in the related write-ups for that question).

Jocelyn Sheppard, Founder of Appalachian Botanical Company (“ABCo”), had built her company not just on a vision of revitalizing reclaimed coal mine land through planting and producing products with lavender, but also to have a social impact on the rural town of Ashford and its greater region of Boone County in West Virginia, USA. While she understood that hiring workers in need of a second chance would present its challenges, she was shocked by the depth of social need her new employees presented, which contributed to many employees’ disruptive behaviors and turnover. To approach the problem at hand, Sheppard needed to reflect on the resources around her, namely, other entities and organizations who might be able to support her efforts to improve how ABCo delivers on its social mission and, thus, helps to improve the local community and its economy. The case draws upon literature and models within rural entrepreneurship and community development to have students advise Sheppard on what she should do next to improve the social outcomes for ABCo and its employees.

This case is geared for both upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in entrepreneurship, including in social, environmental and rural entrepreneurship courses and course modules. The case introduces students to a social enterprise struggling to get its footing in a rural context. The case would be suitable for both introductory and advanced courses, especially when placemaking/place-based entrepreneurship or ecosystem building are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of communities of practice (CoP) as knowledge-sharing tools in family small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In this context, CoPs that jointly involve family and non-family members are expected to act as knowledge-sharing tools.

This paper employs a multiple case study methodology, analysing the cases of six small companies in different sectors and countries over a period of 8 years. Both primary and secondary data are used.

The results show the role CoPs play in involving family and non-family members in empowering knowledge-sharing initiatives. A CoP's role in knowledge sharing depends on the presence (or lack) of a family leader, the leadership approach, the degree of cohesion around shared approaches and values within the CoP, and the presence of multiple generations at work.

This paper contributes to the literature on knowledge sharing in family businesses, by exploring for the first time the role of the CoP as a knowledge-sharing tool, depending on families' involvement in the CoP.

This paper aims to examine the interaction between gatekeeping and trust in a public sector organization, where employees at lower hierarchical levels are expected to autonomously translate and transform directives into public services. This requires them to have access to operational steering information, i.e. information about directives and how to interpret and apply them. This study focuses on how gatekeeping structures regulate flows of operational steering information and how the gatekeeping structures affect the development of trust.

The research design is qualitative. The data material consisted of semi-structured interviews with 26 employees in home care and schools and of eight complementary nonparticipant observations. Thematic analysis revealed the presence of static and dynamic gatekeeping structures, which are characterized by fixed and variable arrangements of information sources and channels, respectively.

In static gatekeeping structures, managers or domain experts typically act as gatekeepers, and employees also perform gatekeeping activities collectively. Gatekeeping structures allow employees to switch between acting as gatekeepers and being gated, depending on the situation. The results show that gatekeeping structures for intermediation of operational steering information may support or impede employees' work, thus affecting their trust in their peers and their work organization.

Although the present study included both interviews and observations, these primarily occurred within scheduled and prearranged activities rather than capturing the nuances of the typical daily work of teachers and home care employees. As a result, certain perspectives may have been unintentionally omitted.

The participants were recruited through the City of Oslo contact people, which may have impacted their status or perception in some way. Moreover, the study was conducted in the City of Oslo, a specific organization with its own unique set of values, norms and processes. The trust-based management in the City of Oslo is likely not representative of all public sector organizations.

This study contributes conceptually by introducing gatekeeping structures and operational steering information and empirically by providing evidence of their relationship to trust development in public service delivery. Thus, it contributes to the research fields of information management and public administration.

The post-COVID environment presents significant challenges for organizations. Unfortunately, many leaders and organizations are living in “post-pandemic.” Leaders must reframe their approaches to employee relationships and the nature of the workplace. Employee experience, which combines, user experience, design thinking and organizational development, provides a methodology and perspective that is needed to address these significant changes. The purpose of this paper is to readdress employee experience and how its approach challenges conventional approaches to human resources (HR) and employee engagement and demonstrate how it can serve as an indispensable tool for transitioning to the new workplace.

Employee experience has become ubiquitous in organizations, but unfortunately the underlying sources and philosophies that distinguish this approach are often neglected. This paper demonstrates the new, irreversible organizational world created by COVID-19, reviews the origins of the concept, reviews the six principles previously introduced and then explicates three philosophical paradigmatic shifts that must be undertaken to take advantage of employee experience and address the new organizational challenges.

Employee experience can serve as a strategic tool for addressing post-COVID-19 organizational challenges. Past ideas about engagement will not work. Three shifts deriving from employee experience’s roots in user experiences, design thinking and emergent organization development must be adopted. Instead of thinking structurally in which things are primary, leaders need to take a relational perspective which insists on relational primacy. Because experience is holistic and embodied, a phenomenological perspective must take the place of the usual behavioral perspective. Finally, leaders and HR must see the task ahead as a collaborative codesign with employees, insisting on radical participation.

As with the medical challenges with the COVID-19 virus itself, the organizational challenges are new and have never been faced before. It is difficult to shift paradigms, challenge assumptions and redirect effort while maintaining operating organizations. Often, leaders and organizations are ill-equipped to address very novel situations from past experience and education. Much more research and practical implementations need to be conducted to continue to evolve the concept.

Organizations are facing many crises beyond the supply/demand economic issues caused by COVID-19. The social issues within the organizational world are often overlooked but having significant impact. Cultures have been attenuated and disrupted, employee expectations have changed and the remote job market has expanded opportunities for employment. As a result, retention, performance, loyalty and satisfaction have been negatively impacted. If organizations want to continue growth and productivity, they need to find new ways of working and operating.

The nature of work, organization and employee/organization relationship is in transition. Because much of people’s lives are spent in the workplace, this shift has significant implications for relationships within and beyond the workplace. COVID-19 has also had an impact on mental health, life satisfaction and other aspects of the human experience. Experience in the workplace and outside the workplace are converging and impacting each other. The new reality cannot be ignored or denied.

Many organizations, leaders and HR practitioners are approaching the new reality with outdated and ineffective tools from the pre-COVID-19 world, tools that were questionably effective then. Reclaiming the revolutionary underpinnings of employee experience is a necessary but often neglected action.