Topic Name- Work from Home During COVID -19
Submitted By:
Himani Jaiswal
(MBA) Finance First Year
Objectives- To Study the impact of working from home during COVID-19
Introduction
(SM) Brynjolfsson et al
During the COVID pandemic, many companies, schools, and public organizations all around the world asked their employees to start working from home or “smart working” This has and will have a serious impact on both employees and employers, which still needs to be clarified and investigated. Before the COVID crisis, compared to the figures we have today, the number of SM employees was much smaller. In Italy for example – the country which is the main target of this analysis – the number more than doubled with the pandemic compared to the previous year and reached more than one million people in just a few weeks. It is difficult to predict the future, but if after the pandemic SM remains a usual way of working especially for clerical workers, this will have a significant impact on the way working activities are managed in companies and public organizations. This paper reports the results of an online survey conducted in many different countries.
Life Balance and work stress during covid-19
All the employees face the challenge of finding the right work–life balance. The ability of employees to deal with the successful combining of work, family responsibilities, and personal life is crucial for both employers and family members of employees. During the COVID-19 emergency situation, many people around the world were forced to work remotely. Initially, there were observed some certain expectations about the possibility of working from home as a positive factor that will promote work–life balance. However, over time, negative tendencies were also revealed, as employees were only one call or message away from the employer, and uncertainty and leisure time with family often created more stress. As many organizations and individuals were not ready for this sudden change, many mistakes were made, which further raised the issue of work–life balance.
Sentiments towards Work-From-Home Experience
With almost one third of the world on a lockdown, the corporates and the offices have now rapidly shifted to working from home. Since no specific treatment has been suggested by any medical institution so far, World Health Organization has recommended that the only possible solution to be safe is to self-isolate and stay home. Due to this, the world has come to a screeching halt and the businesses have to be shifted to remote work. Work-from-Home is a very new experience for most of us and hence the perception of the people ranges from being very excited to very hopeless. This study aims to examine the sentiments of the people regarding Work-from-Home concept by analysing twitter activities posted on social media. Results indicate that Work-from-Home concept was taken positively by the people. The emotions associated with most of the tweets were of trust and anticipation indicating that this concept is being welcomed by the people.
Working from Home
Working from home, or remote work, is a flexible working arrangement (FWA), which consistently correlates with important organisational benefits, such as improved employee engagement and performance. It is also time consuming. However, extensive remote working can also yield disadvantages, such as social isolation and reduced employee engagement. Flexible working arrangements provide flexibility in terms of the place of work, time of work (flexible hours) and continuity of work. Working hours will be affected because sitting at home the time will extend more. High job resource availability fosters higher levels of employee engagement. whereas, a lack of resources prevents employees or excessive job demands and fosters mental withdrawal or disengagement.
Enforced home-working under lockdown
The Covid-19 pandemic precipitated a shift in the working practices of millions of people. Nearly half the British workforce reported to be working at home under lockdown in April 2020. This study investigated the impact of enforced home-working under lockdown on employee wellbeing via markers of stress, burnout, depressive symptoms, and sleep. Moderating effects of factors including age, gender, number of dependants, mental health status and work status were examined alongside work-related factors including work-life conflict and leadership quality. 81% of respondents were working at home either full or part-time.
Sentiments Analysis
From the analysis regarding work from home 70% are of positive sentiments whereas rest 30% are of negative sentiments. All the employees face the challenge of finding the right work–life balance. The ability of employees to deal with the successful combining of work, family responsibilities, and personal life is crucial for both employers and family members of employees. During the COVID-19 emergency situation, many people around the world were forced to work remotely. Initially, there were observed some certain expectations about the possibility of working from home as a positive factor that will promote work–life balance. However, over time, negative tendencies were also revealed, as employees were only one call or message away from the employer, and uncertainty and leisure time with family often created more stress.
Changes in Work Characteristics during COVID-19
A relatively high proportion of U.S. workers started working from home during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. There has been extensive tracking of employment trends, but it is less clear what kind of impact working from home during the pandemic has had on job experiences. The authors use data from the October 2020 Pew Research Centre American Trends Panel. On the basis of a sample of 4,508 respondents, the authors find that working from home improves job satisfaction, flexibility over when to put in one’s work hours, work-family balance, productivity, and work hours. Working from home reduces connectedness to co-workers, job security, and opportunities for advancement. The benefits for both workers and employers of working from home may encourage working from home even after the pandemic.
Work from Home of employees
COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lockdown affecting all businesses globally. Everyone was forced to work from home (WFH) leading to challenges in productivity and motivation. Methodology: One thousand working professionals who worked from home participated in the online survey with semi-structured questionnaire using nonprobability Snowball sampling technique. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the findings and to collect data method. Results: Participants were asked about their biggest worries during lockdown COVID-19 situation and their biggest worry was infection to COVID-19/death. Professionals were asked whether they were affected or not affected due to “WFH” in COVID situation. The questionnaire items were clubbed into six major categories of job role overload, lifestyle choices, family distraction, occupational discomfort, job performance, and distress, and majority categories were affected.
Learning
Many employees have switched to working from home. Despite the findings of previous research that working from home can improve productivity, the scale, nature, and purpose of those studies are not the same as in the current situation with the COVID-19 pandemic. the effects that three stress relievers of the work-from-home environment–company support, supervisor’s trust in the subordinate, and work-life balance–had on employees’ psychological well-being (stress and happiness), which in turn influenced productivity and engagement in non-work-related activities during working hours. In order to collect honest responses on sensitive questions or negative forms of behaviour including stress and non-work-related activities, we adopted the randomized response technique in the survey design to minimize response bias.
The New Normal
It is a long-cherished dream of several employees across the Globe- ‘To work from Home”. Employees cherish working from home for several reasons like they save lot of time spent on travel, less fatigue, more flexibility, less of unnecessary interaction, comfort of doing all office work in a relaxed, convenient and comfortable home atmosphere. Today, the advancements in Information Technology, the Internet connectivity and the Cloud storage have made it possible for companies to offer work from home advantage to their employees. Thus, the WFH sounds beneficial to all stake holders. The Effectiveness, Employee’s productivity, Psychological and Physiological impact on the employees have to assess before WFH can be implemented in the long run. This paper takes a one single dimensional view of the subject, focusing on the employee’s perception of WFH based on their experience during this pandemic.
Conclusion
The sudden and widespread shift to WFH due to the COVID-19 pandemic presents two important questions. First, it is important to understand the effect of this shift on the structure and intensity of different activities that knowledge workers engage in during WFH. Our results show that all workers commute significantly less post-COVID, but that other effects of the pandemic are diverse across workers with different roles (manager vs. non-manager) and in different sized firms (large vs. small). Second, we are interested in relating our findings about structure and intensity of activities to technology—how could technological innovation support WFH, given the novel data? We argue that there are opportunities for technological innovation both in supporting workers as they structure their activities, and as they try to complete their activities efficiently. Furthermore, technology can help as workers strive to find worklife balance.
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