Galanti, T., Guidetti, G., Mazzei, E., Zappalà, S., & Toscano, F. (2021). Work from home during the COVID-19 outbreak: The impact on employees’ remote work productivity, engagement, and stress. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 63(7), e426. Web.
Galanti et al. (2021) studied the effects of family-work conflict, social exclusion, a distracting environment, workplace autonomy, and self-leadership on employees’ productivity, organizational commitment, and stress while working from home. They found that during the pandemic, employees’ family-work conflict and social withdrawal were adversely connected to working-from-home performance and productivity, but self-leadership and independence were favorably associated. Working from home stress was adversely related to family-work tension and social isolation, unaffected by self-leadership and autonomy.
The authors conclude that during the COVID-19 epidemic, individual and work-related factors limit and assist in working from home (Galanti et al., 2021). This study enriches our understanding of working remotely and the well-being of remote teams during the COVID-19 epidemic, which has significant emotional and health repercussions. Furthermore, the consequences of this study are significant because they give information about the demands of employees forced to adjust to full-time working from home. Therefore, the paper helps explore the effects of working remotely on productivity, which is one of the research questions.
Radocchia, S. (2018). 50% of the U.S. workforce will soon be remote. Here’s how founders can manage flexible working styles. Forbes. Web.
Radocchia’s (2018) article describes the research that predicted that half of the active workforce would work remotely. Still, many of today’s top enterprises provide full, partial, or remote employment options. Anytime employees use a flexible workspace off-site, they may be working remotely. The author claims that multiple industries and sizes of businesses should permit workers to choose when and where they work. Working remotely ultimately affords employees more freedom and flexibility (Radocchia, 2018). With the rise of technology such as videoconferencing applications, groupware, and cloud services, people have been connected, allowing them to complete projects and have meetings anywhere, at any time.
However, organizations are starting to see the importance of remote work in attracting and retaining top talent and staying competitive. Maintaining a good work-life balance is a significant priority for many workers. Employees can achieve a better work-life balance and add hours to their days by saving the time they would have spent on a lengthy commute. The article is helpful for the research since it provides insights into the recent acceptability of remote working and how it can benefit employees with specific data.
Soga, L. R., Bolade-Ogunfodun, Y., Mariani, M., Nasr, R., & Laker, B. (2022). Unmasking the other face of flexible working practices: A systematic literature review. Journal of Business Research, 142, 648-662. Web.
Soga et al. (2022) describe the research’s conceptual structure and disclose the additional costs of flexible working practices and their implications for workers, managers of digital innovations, organizations, and society due to the fast development of remote working options. The authors specifically emphasize the gaps in the understanding of remote working issues. Moreover, they offer a comprehensive strategy for overcoming the challenges, encompassing health, legal, and geographical elements, and future research prospects.
The authors claim that organizations should minimize the blind copying of techniques from other settings, emphasizing the need to study various contexts to deepen the existing knowledge of remote working. For example, managers might benefit by viewing the learning curve in businesses as a significant technical support issue rather than presuming that employees are already technologically savvy (Soga et al., 2022). Finally, the authors underline that a few studies have looked at the adverse effects of changes in digital innovations used for remote working on employee behavior and work. Hence, the study is relevant for the research since it reviews the limitations that might emerge when describing the downsides of working remotely.