The possibilities and limits of telework in a bureaucratic environment: lessons from the public sector

Prepared for Home-Based Telework? The Relation between Telework Experience and Successful Workplace Arrangements for Home-Based Telework During the COVID-19 Pandemic

OBJECTIVE

This article focuses on the perceived effects of home-based telework during the COVID-19 pandemic with respect to five outcomes (job satisfaction, burnout, work-family conflicts, technostress, and social isolation) and how these are affected by workplace arrangements and telework experience.

METHODS

Cross-sectional survey data from employees in the IT, finance, and insurance sector collected during the COVID-19 crisis ( N = 808) were used for the study.

RESULTS

Outcomes are most negatively affected by feelings of surveillance and most positively affected by suitably equipped offices. Organizational teleworker support is most strongly related to job satisfaction. Experienced teleworkers report better outcomes, because of improved support, less perceived surveillance, and better equipped home stations.

CONCLUSIONS

Adaptation of management strategies avoiding surveillance and suitable setups of home offices to reconcile work and private spheres are key to well-being of teleworkers.

Benefits and Risks of Teleworking from Home: The Teleworkers’ Point of View

Using a qualitative research-based approach, this study aimed to understand (i) the way home-based teleworkers in France perceive and organize their professional activities and workspaces, (ii) their teleworking conditions, (iii) the way they characterize the modalities and the nature of their interactions with their professional circle, and more broadly (iv) their quality of life ‘at work’. We performed a lexical and morphosyntactic analysis of interviews conducted with 28 teleworkers (working part-time or full-time from home) before the COVID-19 crisis and the associated establishment of emergency telework. Our results confirm and complement findings in the literature. Participant discourses underlined the beneficial effects of teleworking in terms of professional autonomy, flexibility, concentration, efficiency, performance, productivity, and being able to balance their professional and private lives. Nevertheless, they also highlighted the deleterious effects of teleworking on temporal workload, setting boundaries for work, work-based relationships and socio-professional integration. Despite the study limitations, our findings highlight the need for specific research-based and practical strategies to support the implementation of a sustainable telework organization in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era.

A Qualitative and Longitudinal Study on the Impact of Telework in Times of COVID-19

Mandatory teleworking has become a major tool of public authorities for mitigating the spread of COVID-19 when work activity allows it. A lexical and morphosyntactic analysis was performed with 22 employees interviewed at home by phone on two occasions during and after a national lockdown (April 2020 and March 2021). The results indicate that the organizational changes initially implemented became sustainable and highlight a change in work practices. Changes in working time structure were observed and led to a feeling of intensification and/or increase in working hours. The preservation of the professional bond through informal exchanges required a deliberate communicative effort. The lack of face-to-face social relations deprived employees of both their usual ways of working and the meaning they found in them. Finally, the continuation of the health crisis (phase 2) and the multiple reorganizations generated a decrease in wellbeing (mental wear and tear). Employees feared that the company’s management would retain a working model based mainly on remote working.

How Is Telework Experienced in Academia?

An increasing number of academic institutions offer their staff the option to work from other places than the conventional office, i.e., telework. Academic teaching and research staff are recognized as some of the most frequent teleworkers, and this seems to affect their well-being, work performance, and recovery in different ways. This study aimed to investigate academics’ experiences and perceptions of telework within the academic context. For this, we interviewed 26 academics from different Swedish universities. Interviews were analyzed with a phenomenographic approach, which showed that telework was perceived as a natural part of academic work and a necessary resource for coping with, and recovering from, high work demands. Telework was mostly self-regulated but the opportunity could be determined by work tasks, professional culture, and management. Telework could facilitate the individual’s work but could contribute to challenges for the workgroup. Formal regulations of telework were considered a threat to academics’ work autonomy and to their possibility to cope with the high work demands. The findings provide insight into academics’ working conditions during teleworking, which may be important for maintaining a sustainable work environment when academic institutions offer telework options.

Effet du télétravail sur la santé psychologique et la performance des travailleurs durant la pandémie de la COVID-19

L’objectif de cette étude est d’examiner comment le recours généralisé au télétravail durant la pandémie de la Covid-19 a pu créer un contexte de travail spécifique influençant la santé psychologique et la performance des employés. Les résultats des analyses menées sur un échantillon de 3771 télétravailleurs canadiens ont révélé que le travail à distance a engendré des demandes additionnelles telles que l’interdépendance des tâches et l’isolement professionnel. Ces demandes ont eu des effets négatifs sur la performance en télétravail en augmentant la fréquence du stress perçu. Toutefois, la présence de ressources telles que le soutien organisationnel semble jouer un rôle tampon en modérant l’effet direct de l’isolement professionnel sur la performance en télétravail.

Managers and telework in public sector organizations during a crisis

Through the use of a narrative-interview approach and contingency theory as research methods, this study explores the teleworking behaviors of N = 41 public managers when remotely managing and leading their organizations as virtual bureaucracies during the Covid-19 lockdown. Its findings suggest that their role set was underscored by communal and supervisory tasks. Managers were confronted with environmental challenges of emotional nature (e.g., anxieties). But they also associated teleworking with improving their work-life balance and staffing work process. Simply put, teleworking was perceived with having both positive and negative organizational outcomes. Drawing from the implications of these findings, this study proposes recommendations for future research.

The Breath of the Metropolis: Smart Working and New Urban Geographies

The paper explores the potentialities of telework, a topic with rich literature published since the 1970s, which has become topical again with its forced application related to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. The paper carries out an analysis of the potential territorial impact—transport networks and geographies of living—of telework in the Italian national context. The analysis highlights the potential relevance of the application of telework in certain metropolitan areas that present urban poles where economic sectors with a high propensity for telework are centralised. This survey relates the large stock of tourist housing in the vicinity of large metropolitan areas to a potential demand arising from the change in housing preferences towards more pleasant contexts made possible by the application of telework. In conclusion, this work aims to contribute to the construction of a platform for the Italian context—lagging behind but with recent legislative measures on smart working—aimed at favouring the definition of research lines able to enhance the potential offered by the application of telework for environmental, social, and territorial sustainability objectives, and it also aims to outline possible territorial scenarios for the main metropolitan areas

Remote Working in a Public Bureaucracy: Redeveloping Practices of Managerial Control When Out of Sight

This article examines managerial control practices in a public bureaucracy at the moment of introducing remote work as part with a new ways of working (NWW) project. The qualitative study builds on 38 interviews with supervisors and subordinates conducted before the advent of COVID-19. By interpreting interviewees' conversations about current and anticipated future work practices in the changing work setting, we reveal tacit and hidden practices of managerial control that are currently prevalent in many organizations introducing remote working. Three constitutive moments of the organization's transformation to NWW are analytically distinguished: (i) how implicit becomes explicit, (ii) how collective becomes self, and (iii) how personal becomes impersonal. Our findings emphasize that the transition to NWW must take into account prevailing institutional logics and must reconnect to a fundamental and often neglected question: What does doing work mean within the particular organization? Negotiating this fundamental question might help to overcome supervisors' uncertainties about managerial control and provide clarity to subordinates about what is expected from them while working remotely. Finally, we discuss how the transition to NWW may serve as both an opportunity and a potential threat to established organizational practices while highlighting the challenge supervisors face when the institutional logics conflict with remote working.

Psychophysiological Reactivity, Postures and Movements among Academic Staff: A Comparison between Teleworking Days and Office Days

The aim of this study was to determine if psychophysiological activity, postures and movements differ during telework (i.e., work performed at home) and work performed at the conventional office. We performed twenty-four-hour pulse recordings and accelerometry measurements on 23 academic teaching and research staff during five consecutive workdays, with at least one day of telework. Additionally, we conducted salivary sampling during one day of telework, and one day of office work. Heart rate and heart rate variability indices, postural exposure and cortisol concentration were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance with Workplace and Time (i.e., before, during and after workhours) as within-subject effects. We found a significant interaction effect of Workplace and Time in heart rate variability indices and in the number of transitions between seated and standing postures. This shows more parasympathetic activity among academic teleworkers during telework than office work, which may indicate more relaxation during telework. They had an overall sedentary behavior at both workplaces but switched between sitting and standing more often during telework, which may be beneficial for their health.

The Implementation of a Remote Work Program in an Italian Municipality before COVID-19: Suggestions to HR Officers for the Post-COVID-19 Era

This case study describes the implementation stages and some outcomes of a remote work program that was adopted in an Italian municipality before the COVID-19 pandemic. This research used a qualitative case study approach, proposing a semi-structured interview with 14 staff members (six remote-worker employees, their respective managers, and two intermediate-level managers) about the experience with the remote work program. In addition, two researchers attended two preparatory program meetings. The evidence shows that, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work was mainly performed at home, for one or two days a week. Together with their manager, remote workers decided the tasks to perform remotely and the criteria to monitor remote work. Furthermore, employees appreciated the remote work program, perceiving themselves to be more productive in their work. Elements of this case study may be relevant for companies that aim to move from an emergency to a more planned remote work.

Who is Teleworking and Where from? Exploring the Main Determinants of Telework in Europe

Telework and ICT-based mobile work (TICTM) arrangements have emerged in response to technological changes driven by digitalisation, increasing flexibility within the labour market, and globalisation. As telework becomes more widespread, these flexible models of work are rapidly expanding to new categories of employees, changing the factors traditionally found to be important for telework eligibility. The aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of new profiles of teleworkers, examining main factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of different TICTM arrangements. We apply multinomial logistic regression models to a sample of more than 20,000 workers from the 6th European Working Conditions Survey. Our findings confirm the heterogeneity in the profiles of teleworkers, particularly distinguishing by TICTM arrangement. Occasional teleworkers are usually male managers or professionals, but a relevant percentage of highly mobile teleworkers are technicians and associate professionals, while clerical support workers amount to a large group of home-based teleworkers. The majority of occasional and highly mobile teleworkers are still men, but this can no longer be said of home-based teleworkers. The correlations between telework and permanent contracts, full-time jobs, and living in urban areas are weak, showing that TICTM is spreading into more precarious, temporary, and lower-paid jobs, especially among home-based teleworkers and highly mobile teleworkers.

New Technology, Work and Employment in the era of COVID-19: reflecting on legacies of research

The outbreak of COVID‐19 is having a drastic impact on work and employment. This review piece outlines the relevance of existing research into new technology, work and employment in the era of COVID‐19. It is important to be retrospective and undertake both a historically and theoretically informed position on the impact of new technologies in the current crisis and beyond. Issues of control, surveillance and resistance have been central to work on the impact of technology on work and employment and these themes have been identified as central to the experience of work in the current crisis.

Co-workers working from home and individual and team performance

The number of firms supporting work from home has risen dramatically as advances in communication technology have fundamentally transformed the way humans cooperate. A growing literature addresses working from home, but focuses only on individual workers, overlooking potential influence of co-worker engagement. Our aim is to study the influence of co-workers working from home on individual and team performance. We use unique data from a large-scale survey involving nine European countries, 259 establishments, 869 teams and 11,011 employees to show that the impact of working from home by co-workers on performance is considerable and has remained hidden in past studies because they did not account for co-worker effects. While working from home may be useful for some workers, it does bring issues for them as well. Specifically, we demonstrate that co-workers working from home negatively impact employee performance. Moreover, team performance is worse when more co-workers are working from home.

Toward a theory on workplaces for smart workers

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main features of smart work centers (SWCs) and show how these innovative offices would support the implementation of smart working and related changes in workspaces (“bricks”), technologies (“bytes”) and organizational practices (“behaviors”).

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, scientific literature is combined with white papers and business reports and visits to 14 workplaces, including offices designed as SWCs, co-working spaces, one telecenter, one accelerator and one fab lab. Primary data were collected through interviews with managers and users and non-participant observation, whereas secondary data included web-sites, brochures, presentations, press releases and official documents.

Findings

The authors developed research propositions about how the design of spaces and the availability of technology within SWCs would support the “bricks” and “bytes” levers of smart working. More importantly, the authors assumed that this new type of workplace would sustain changes in employees’ behaviors and managers’ practices, thus helping to overcome several challenges traditionally associated with remote working.

Research limitations/implications

The exploratory nature of the research only provides preliminary information about the role of SWCs within smart working programs. Additional qualitative and quantitative empirical investigation is required.

Practical implications

This study provides valuable knowledge about how the design of corporate offices can be leveraged to sustain the implementation of smart working.

Originality/value

This study advances knowledge on workplaces by focusing on an innovative design of traditional offices (SWC). It also lays the foundations for future investigation aimed at testing the developed propositions.

New Telework, Time Pressure, and Time Use Control in Everyday Life

This study explores how changing conditions for home-based telework affect the quality of life and social sustainability of workers in terms of time pressure and time use control in everyday life. Changing conditions concern the spread of telework to new types of jobs of a more routine character, involving new practices of unregulated work and anytime smartphone access. Empirically, we draw on survey data from a sample of 456 home-based teleworkers employed by six governmental agencies in Sweden. Results indicate that subjective time pressure is not associated with job type in terms of distinguishing between bounded case work and more independent analytical work. Time pressure is intensified by family-related factors, telework performed outside of working hours, and part-time work, and is moderated by the private use of smartphones. We find no significant associations between subjective time use control, job qualifications, and teleworking practice. Family situation and having small children at home reduce time use control. Also, high levels of smartphone use for work-related purposes are associated with reduced control.

Distrust: Not Only in Secret Service Organizations

In this article, we discuss the issue of distrust in the most extreme example of distrustful organizations: secret service organizations. Distrust may be a basic organizing principle in such organizations, but how is it produced and maintained? Inspired by actor–network theory, we analyzed the devices, codes, rules, and procedures used in secret service organizations, and then asked whether these devices, codes, rules, and procedures differ from those used in ordinary organizations. Based on our analysis, we make two contributions. First, we draw researchers’ attention to distrust that is intentionally built and maintained rather than distrust that is accidental and indicative of faulty management. Second, we identify the material manifestations of distrust. We argue that in future studies of trust and distrust in organizations, it will be necessary to focus on the technologies, physical objects, and quasi-objects. These, together with discourses, guarantee the stability of connections among organizational actions.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind in a New World of Work? Autonomy, Control, and Spatiotemporal Scaling in Telework

We draw on the geographical concepts of social space, territoriality, and distantiation to examine an apparent tension inherent in telework: i.e., using information and communication technologies to work away from traditional workplaces can give employees a greater sense of autonomy while simultaneously placing new constraints on the way they conduct themselves in settings that were previously beyond the reach of managerial control. We draw on a longitudinal case study of a Belgian biopharmaceutical company to show how technical and professional teleworkers developed broadly similar strategies of spatiotemporal scaling to cope with this tension. We conclude by considering how these scaling strategies allowed employees to cope with the demands of ‘hybrid’ work that is conducted both at home and in traditional settings.

The spatial implications of homeworking: a Lefebvrian approach to the rewards and challenges of home-based work

In this theoretical article we propose an approach to the spatial implications of homeworking derived from the work of social theorist Henri Lefebvre. By highlighting the processes involved in the inherently contested and (re)constructed nature of space in the demarcated home/work environment we draw on Lefebvre to suggest a collapse of this demarcation. We consider the impact of such a collapse on questions relating to the rewards and challenges of home-based work for both workers and their co-residents. In contrast to our approach to the spatial implications of home-based work derived from Lefebvre, we argue that a traditional, Euclidean conception of space risks ignoring the important, symbolic nature of social space to the detriment of both the effective research and practice of homeworking.