ObjectiveOne of the most visible changes of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the swift and widespread adoption of telework. Existing knowledge on teleworking has been largely limited to employees from ...certain occupational groups who voluntarily engaged in telework, making it difficult to generalise prior findings. Using the Job-Demands Resources model as a theoretical framework, the objective of this study was to identify the job demands and job resources associated with telework satisfaction and telework performance during the pandemic.MethodDuring a period of enforced teleworking during COVID-19 lockdown measures, this study surveyed employed individuals (N = 208) from Melbourne (Australia).ResultsUsing ordinal logistic regression analyses, it was found that three job resources (home office comfort, technical support, and job security) were positively associated with both telework satisfaction and telework performance. Further, technical resources (job resource) was positively associated with telework satisfaction, whereas professional isolation (job demand) was negatively associated with telework satisfaction.ConclusionsDuring a mandated period of telework, this study identified several factors associated with important telework outcomes. As there has been a greater uptake of remote and hybrid working arrangements in Australia post-pandemic, these findings could help inform and optimise future telework policies.
Abstract The objective of this study was to develop and validate a measure called the Tele Attitude Scale (TAS). This measure aims to evaluate relevant aspects of the teleworking experience related ...to its perceived effects regarding, for instance: job characteristics, perceived productivity, quality of work-related interactions, work-non-work balance, and well-being. Four studies were conducted between 2021 and 2022. First, a qualitative study was conducted to develop the scale ( N = 80). Afterward, a second study to explore the scale’s factorial structure ( N = 602) was developed. A third study served to analyze its internal validity and reliability ( N = 232). A fourth study analyzed the criterion validity of the scale by exploring its correlations with measures of health, affect, and performance ( N = 837 teleworkers). The findings revealed that the 10-item scale accounted for a unique factor and that it was a reliable measure. Moreover, the results also showed that the scale was significantly related to measures of health, affect, and performance, thus supporting its convergent and criterion validity. This research advances the knowledge about telework by proposing a user-friendly scale to measure teleworking, specifically how workers perceive their experience of it and how it may impact them at several levels. Thus, the TAS can not only fill a gap in the research but also help organizations evaluate and support teleworkers’ needs and subsequent satisfaction while teleworking.
The COVID-19 pandemic and mandatory lockdowns have forced businesses to look more enthusiastically at telework issues in order to maintain some activity during this difficult time. But, depending on ...the nature of the work, teleworking is not always a very suitable solution. We wonder here whether agile project management is part of the practices facilitated or, on the contrary, constrained by remote work. Our research led us to compare interviews with experts, responses to a survey, and existing literature on the subject. We propose a guide for project managers to check whether everything has been put in place to facilitate agile project management in telework. We validated our guide with another expert on an ongoing project in a French company.
Boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic, more than ever, an organization's success depends on its teleworkers' performance. However, little attention has been paid to the individual strategies implemented ...by teleworkers to achieve goals such as drawing boundaries between work- and private-life, working task-oriented and productively, and keeping social contact. We collected quantitative survey data of 548 teleworkers indicating their implementation of 85 telework strategies derived from scientific literature and popular media (e.g., working in a separate room, wearing work clothes at home), self-reported job performance, boundary management preferences, and telework experience. We identified (a) the implementation of telework strategies, (b) associations with job performance, (c) divergences between the implementation and the performance association, and (d) moderating influences of boundary management preferences and telework experience. The results suggest that the most implemented telework strategies tend to be the ones most positively associated with job performance. These telework strategies serve goals related to working task-oriented and productively by adopting a conducive work attitude as well as keeping social contact by using modern communication technology rather than goals related to drawing boundaries between work- and private-life. The findings underscore the benefits of expanding a narrow focus on telework strategies stemming from boundary theory to unravel telework strategies' puzzling impacts on (tele-) work outcomes. Also, taking a person-environment fit perspective appeared to be a promising approach to tailor evidence-based best practice telework strategies to teleworkers' individual preferences and needs (boundary management preferences and telework experience).
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between theoretically grounded telework factors and various individual and organizational outcomes of telework (overall ...satisfaction with telework, perceived advantages of telework, career opportunities and self-reported productivity).
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a literature review, ten telework factors that may affect individual and organizational telework outcomes were identified and empirically tested using the survey data of 128 teleworkers exercising different telework intensity and representing various sectors of the economy.
Findings
The bundle of theoretically selected variables explained a significant part of the variance of telework outcomes. Reduced communication with co-workers, supervisor’s trust and support, suitability of the working place at home were found to be the most important telework factors impacting different telework outcomes. Higher self-reported productivity was related to reduced time in communicating with co-workers, a suitable working place at home and the possibility to take care of family members when teleworking.
Practical implications
This study provides insights about the management of telework in organizations by highlighting the factors that promote the satisfaction, productivity and perceived career opportunities of teleworkers.
Originality/value
This paper challenges the results of previous research on the factors related with telework and its outcomes. Based on the job demands-resources theory, the authors identified the factors that serve as resources in generating positive telework outcomes, and the factors increasing job demands and reducing satisfaction with telework.
Although pre-COVID-19 research on telework is well established, most research has compared teleworkers against nonteleworkers to assess the adoption of telework. Thus, the investigation of the ...determinants of teleworker performance is limited. The current study seeks to identify the determinants of teleworker job performance in the pre-COVID-19 period. Using U.S. federal government employee telework data, the current study tests the effects of work, technology, and management factors on teleworker performance mediated by the organizational impact of telework. The findings revealed that work similarity, telework frequency, accessibility of technologies, and quality of performance management positively affected the organizational impact of telework. Telework frequency, quality of performance management, and quality of supervision showed a positive association with job performance. However, in contrast to expectations, evidence of a mediation effect was not found as the organizational impact of telework was negatively associated with teleworker performance. Implications for telework implementation and research in the post-COVID-19 period are offered.
We study how large shocks impact individuals’ skilling decisions using data from a large, government-sponsored, online learning platform in Saudi Arabia. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought ...about a massive increase in online skilling, and demand shifted towards courses that offered skills, such as telework, likely to be immediately valuable during the pandemic. Consistent with a model where individuals trade off reskilling costs with their expectations of future labor market conditions and their duration of work, we find that shifts into telework courses were largest for older workers. In contrast, younger workers increased enrollments in courses related to new skills, such as general, occupation-specific, and computer-related skills. Using national administrative employment data, we provide descriptive evidence that these investments in skills in early 2020 helped users maintain employment over the course of the pandemic.
•We study changes in skilling decisions surrounding the onset of COVID-19.•The onset of COVID-19 raised demand for online skilling, particularly in telework.•Increases in demand for telework courses were largest among older users.•Our results are consistent with a lifecycle heterogeneous skill acquisition model.•We find suggestive evidence that post-COVID skill investments increased employment.
Our study investigates the perceived individual and organizational outcomes of coworkers' telework between teleworkers and non-teleworkers in the US federal government. We address two research ...questions: (1) how are perceived individual outcomes of coworkers' telework different between teleworkers and non-teleworkers? and (2) how are perceived organizational outcomes of telework different between teleworkers and non-teleworkers? We incorporate the perspectives of non-teleworkers to better understand a wide range of individual and organizational outcomes of telework. In order to answer these questions, we analyze a unique telework survey administered by the US Merit Systems Protection Board. Our findings indicate that compared to teleworkers, non-teleworkers perceive less positive impact of telework on employees and organizations. Besides ensuring fairness in determining employees' telework eligibility and participation, our findings suggest that managers and supervisors should also be mindful of unfairness and ineffectiveness non-teleworkers may perceive about coworkers' telework after their organizations roll out telework.
An investigation of dissonance in telework frequency Anderson, Samantha M.; Asmussen, Katherine E.; Saxena, Shobhit ...
Transportation research. Part C, Emerging technologies,
September 2024, 2024-09-00, Volume:
166
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
•Existing and preferred teleworking arrangements are examined.•The concept of telework frequency dissonance (TFD) is introduced.•A novel bivariate ordered-response probit model is formulated.•The ...results inform land-use-transportation planning professionals.
The remote work arrangement trend engendered by the pandemic continues to be prevalent today in most work sectors. But some employers have reverted to an all in-person office workday system recently, with no allowance for remote work despite their employees’ desire for such flexibility. At the same time, some employees may prefer more office-based workdays than what their employer is able to offer today based on office rotation schemes and office downsizing. The challenge to find a harmonious balance between employee and employer preferences and perceptions regarding telework raises the issue of telework frequency dissonance (TFD). The purpose of this study is to investigate this pandemic-induced TFD. The data for our study is derived from the third wave of the COVID Future Panel Survey which was deployed across the United States in the Fall of 2021. The survey includes information regarding employees' existing telework frequency (ETF) and ideal telework frequency (ITF). These two dimensions are jointly modeled as a function of socioeconomic and demographic explanatory variables. The findings from this study provide important insights regarding how best to balance employee and employer preferences regarding work arrangements. Given the important effects of work arrangements on commute and non-commute travel, the findings from our study should help inform land use and travel models regarding predicting our transportation future.
With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, telework became widely used to ensure work activities and protect employee health. However, its rapid implementation has led to little attention to its ...quality and increased inequalities between companies and employees. The widespread adoption of telework has also challenged HRD departments in helping employees to be satisfied with their 'new way of working'. From the post-pandemic perspective, challenges related to high-quality telework implementation and employee's satisfaction should be addressed. This study investigates how the Telework Quality Model core resources are related to teleworkers' job satisfaction, involving 1192 teleworkers from large companies (LCs) and small-medium enterprises (SMEs). A multi-group structural equation model was used to test the association between TQM core resources and teleworkers' job satisfaction. The results showed that the four core components of TQM were correlated with employee job satisfaction. Three of the four TQM resources were significantly associated with job satisfaction among both LCs and SMEs, while the functional remote workstation component was not associated with job satisfaction among SMEs. The TQM proves to be a valuable tool for HRD professionals, especially in the post-pandemic phase, when there is a need to overcome implementation limitations and develop high-quality teleworking.
