WORK FROM HOME

                                                                       

The pandemic has changed the way people work, and more and more people are choosing to work from home (WFH). Unlike traditional work patterns, this approach has limitations and has had a significant impact on both organizations and individuals. It also brings many challenges to the work of HR practitioners. HR practitioners, as key players in strategic human resource management, need to take advantage of management innovations under the crisis to improve employees’ work flexibility and effectively address the impact of working from home.

 This study aims to address the need for employee skill improvement, psychological stress relief, work-family balance, and company culture reinforcement from an HRM perspective because of the impact of WFH work patterns during the COVID-19 crisis.

            The prevalence of working from home arrangements in firms has increased over the past decades due to advancements in information and communication technologies (Shamir and Salomon 1985; Baruch 2000). In the year 2009, more than twenty percent of German firms provide their employees the possibility to work at least a couple of days per month from home. This possibility to work from home increases employees’ autonomy in scheduling and organizing their work. Employees with higher autonomy have a stronger intrinsic motivation and are therefore willing to provide more work effort (Hackman and Oldham 1976) Moreover, by offering agreeable working conditions, firms can attract and retain highly skilled and hard-working employees.

Working from Home [WFH] has been rising for years, as more occupations use computers and telecommunications, more people have reliable home Internet connections, and more families have both parents working full time. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated this process by forcing a large fraction of the global workforce to switch to WFH at least temporarily. Compared to Working from the Office [WFO], WFH has the potential to reduce commute time, provide more flexible working hours, increase job satisfaction, and improve work-life balance (Neeley, 2021). However, little is yet known about some of the more fundamental consequences of WFH, including its effects on productivity and which factors play a role in making WFH more or less productive than WFO.

The study found that while WFH has some advantages during this phase, it also has different effects on people, such as conflicts with family from taking up home space, inability to adapt to telecommuting, and lack of support from leaders or co-workers, but the following four areas are the objective and rationale of this study’s discussion.

1. Employees who Working from Home (WFH) face a home-based work environment where they need to learn special office skills.

2. WFH can make people feel isolated and can also lead to psychological stress.

3. During an outbreak, home-based employees often face conflicts between caring for their families and working.

4. Home-based employees often ignore the potential incentives of culture under the COVID-19 crisis.

Reference;

•  J.Richard Hackman, Greg R.Oldham, (1976) Organizational Behavior and Human Performance.[online article]. From https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0030507376900167?via%3Dihub [accessed on 5^th Dec 2021]
• Tsedal Neeley, (2021) Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere. [online article]. Access From https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780063068308 [accessed on 4th Dec 2021) 
• Picture from - https://www.dreamstime.com/work-home-drawing