Online Work Research Articles

Gender Equality and Development: Indonesia in a Global Context

Gender equality in Indonesia is approximately at the level you would expect given the country’s level of development. Indonesia has more gender inequality than some neighbouring countries and less than others; and less than in the vast majority of Muslim-majority nations worldwide, regardless of income level. Women’s economic participation is, however, low relative to Indonesia’s level of development. Female labour force participation is low as many women leave the workforce when they get married and have children, particularly in the formal sector as formal sector employers do not generally offer flexible workplace conditions that would increase their ability to retain female employees. Social norms that position mothers as the main caregiver play an additional important role in women’s low economic participation. Public information campaigns that challenge people’s perceptions of gender norms are likely to be an important component of efforts to increase women’s economic participation. Greater female economic participation has payoffs in terms of increased household incomes. By contributing to household income and reducing economic stress within the household, greater female labour force participation is also likely to reduce family violence and so lead to happier home and family lives. A focus on increasing women’s economic empowerment would be farsighted as the country looks to recover from the pandemic and lay the groundwork for a dynamic future.

Building awareness, interest, and readiness towards college course through work immersion

Work immersion is required before graduation for senior high school students that aims to prepare the students for college life, particularly for humanities and social sciences (HUMSS) students. Despite the restriction in face-to-face classes and prohibiting industry-based experience, teachers need to build the students’ awareness, ignite their interest and uplift their readiness for college courses. So, teachers decided to implement work immersion via a blended modality wherein students experience school-based and online work immersion. This study aimed to build the HUMSS students’ awareness, interest, and readiness for college courses. A practical action research design was utilized to measure the variables before and after the work immersion implementation. Hence, survey questionnaires and interviews were the data collection tools employed to collect both quantitative measures and qualitative descriptions of experiences. The findings show that the students have low awareness, interest, and readiness for their preferred college courses before implementing work immersion in a blended modality. However, after two months of implementation, all variables become high and significant differences exist before and after the implementation. The work immersion using a blended modality effectively increased students’ awareness, interest, and readiness for college courses. However, they suggested having more webinars and activities, more learning materials, frequent face-to-face interactions, parents’ involvement during the webinar, and a student committee for communication.

The COVID‐19 pandemic and caring masculinity: New prospects or a wasted opportunity?

AbstractThe early data regarding gender implications of COVID‐19 suggest that men are more likely to die as an effect of infection while women are those who suffer the social consequences of pandemic as they dominate in care‐oriented professions and bear the consequences of increased caring needs at home. The latter includes caring for children, who, in many (European) countries have been subjected to homeschooling. However, the lockdown resulted in the fact that also men (usually white‐collar workers from middle class) changed their work organization and habits and have started working from home. Some studies suggest that this specific situation results in the increase of involvement of fathers into caring activities at home. Hence, the main goal of our paper is an attempt to answer the question if pandemic opened new opportunities for larger involvement of men in caring activities. The study will locate research outcomes in the context of gender regime in Poland in order to investigate if lockdown, online work and care responsibilities enabled to challenge or to reproduce existing gender relations, with a special focus on masculinities patterns. It will be done by analyzing data from Poland, namely, semi‐structured qualitative interviews collected in two waves – during spring lockdown 2020 and during late autumn and winter 2020/2021 with men and women working online at home and caring for underage children. By doing so, we expect to add more nuanced, crisis‐related theoretical understandings of caring masculinity concept.

Personal Predictors of Online Teaching - Experiences of The Teachers in Serbia in The Covid Regime

The pandemic of the COVID-19 virus initiated a rapid organizational transformation of teaching at all levels of education and its implementation in a virtual environment. In this context, teachers’ perceptions of the predictors of online teaching largely determined the quality of its current implementation, but also the character of its further application in the future. Using the survey method, research was carried out with the aim of examining the attitudes of teachers in Serbia about personal predictors of online teaching and their determinants, in the past two school years. Personal predictors of online teaching are operationalized through the cognitive and affective competence of the teachers, as well as through organizational and technical support. Six hundred and seven teachers, who teach in the first three cycles of education, from all districts of the Republic of Serbia, participated in the research. Regarding all personal predictors considered, teachers evaluate cognitive competence as the most important predictor of the implementation of online teaching, then affective competence and finally, organizational and technical support. As the results of the research suggest, a significant influence of the dominant online experience, of the applied online platform, work experience and educational cycle on teachers’ perceptions of affective competence as a predictor of online teaching were determined, while the perceptions of organizational and technical support were significantly influenced by the place where the school was located and the applied online platforms. The obtained results may have implications for pedagogical practice and professional development of teachers in terms of consideration and awareness of the role of various personal predictors required for the successful use of modern educational technology.

“I am surprised that it works so well”: clinicians’ views on delivering psychological assessments and therapy to young people in a fully-digital mental health service"

PurposeMany mental health clinicians have delivered services digitally in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Emerging research suggests that, despite some initial discomfort, therapists appear to adjust to remote working. The purpose of this study is to explore the views of clinicians working within a fully digital organisation towards digital service provision.Design/methodology/approachClinicians (N = 52) providing digital mental health assessments and treatments at Healios anonymously completed a mixed-methods questionnaire.FindingsIn all, 85% of participants enjoyed working remotely and 71% thought they would continue to work online over the next 5–10 years. Of the participants, 40% reported low confidence in online work’s efficacy before working remotely, but 96% reported confidence at the time of questionnaire completion: suggesting confidence increased with experience. An exploratory “inverted” factor analysis generated a two-factor solution, grouping clinicians into two factors based on key views. Factor 1 was predominantly characterised by satisfaction with training received and factor 2 by quality of technical experiences (encountering problems less often and greater personal confidence in resolving them). Qualitative feedback described some benefits of, and barriers to, digital service provision. Clinicians reflected on a perceived change in cultural norms, with more openness to digital services following the COVID-19 pandemic. On a personal level, teletherapy was viewed more favourably with increased personal experience.Originality/valueClinicians’ confidence in providing services digitally is discussed, with reference to how this may be affected by extent of remote working experience and availability of technical support. Staff well-being within the digital workspace is also discussed.

Toward a model of global citizenship in business education

The world is rapidly changing because of ecological, social, geopolitical changes and digital transformation. For example, the global pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation and encouraged more online learning and working. Furthermore, reducing the speed of climate change is one of the major issues of our time. To be able to deal with major changes in our environment, employers, employees, and students (future employees) need to readjust how they evaluate their business, organizational activities, and education. Business schools have the responsibility to prepare the students with skills and values to engage in this rapidly changing environment. This means a change from the traditional profit maximization approach only to, among others, the development of global competencies and a global mindset. The development of a comprehensive framework for Global Citizenship in business education will therefore help organizations and educators alike. Based on an extensive literature review and an empirical study through focus groups and in-depth interviews of the professional field and educators a model of Global Citizenship for business education and practitioners is presented. The model of global citizenship consists of components encouraging the development of global competencies and attributes. These competencies and attributes are needed for (international) professionals to act as responsible global citizens.

Psychometric Properties of a Newly Online Work Aptitude Test: Faxtor’s Endurance and Speed Test

Psychometric Properties of a Newly Online Work Aptitude Test: Faxtor’s Endurance and Speed Test

Frequency of Work-Related Neck Pain in Freelancers

The use of electronic devices like tablets, smartphones, desktop and laptop users has been increased to a lot of extent from past few years. So, the workers are more prone to be affected by neck pain, shoulder pain and other forms of musculoskeletal problems, due to lack of awareness about bad posture and ergonomics about workstation in their environment. Objectives: To find out the frequency of work-related neck pain in freelancers. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study containing of questionnaire based online survey in which the data were collected by asking the participants to fill the form online. There were 100 participants who were actively working in this field from last 6 months and all of them were having neck related problems. The data was analyzed using statistical packages of social sciences and different tests were performed including Chi-square and standard deviation and square tab. Results: Statistics show that 27% of freelancers were suffered from neck and shoulder pain, 43% suffered from neck pain along with other symptoms and followed by headache in which 34% rarely suffered from headache, 38% suffered from moderate headache and 28% from severe headache. Emotional findings show that 44% faced frustration, anger and sadness to some extent. Conclusions: The neck discomfort due to working online increases with sitting still for more than 1 hour, making physical activity difficult as well as making lifestyle change. A significant Association was found between lifestyle changes due to neck pain, neck pain intensity with online working.

The impact of online office on social anxiety among primary and secondary school teachers-Considering online social support and work intensity.

The COVID-19 has had a major impact on the global education system. In order to ensure the normal implementation of education courses, governments and education departments around the world have taken corresponding emergency measures. Based on data from 384 validated questionnaires, this study explored the effects of teleworking practices, work intensity, and online social support on social anxiety among primary and secondary school teachers. The results found that teleworking was more likely to cause social anxiety among teachers, while work intensity could promote social anxiety and online social support could reduce the probability of social anxiety. Work intensity can weaken the influence of partner support on social anxiety. Moreover, the model path coefficients differed across work styles. Based on the results, this study proposes some policy recommendations in order to provide theoretical guidance for improving social anxiety among primary and secondary school teachers and promoting the quality of educational work.

Workplace flexibility, work-family interface, and psychological distress: differences by family caregiving obligations and gender.

Drawing on data from the 2008 U.S. National Study of the Changing Workforce, this study (1) examines the associations between access to three types of flexible working arrangements-flextime, flexplace, and culture of flexibility-and psychological distress, (2) tests the mediating roles of work-family conflict and work-family enrichment, and (3) investigates whether these relationships differ by workers' childcare or elder-care obligations as they intersect with gender. Results show that a flexible workplace culture, but not access to flextime or flexplace, is associated with lower psychological distress. Work-family conflict and work-family enrichment partially mediate the relationship between culture of flexibility and psychological distress. In addition, the negative effect of culture of flexibility on psychological distress is stronger among workers sandwiched between preschool childcare and elder-care compared with those with neither caregiving obligations, a pattern especially pronounced among women. We discuss these results and their implications for organizational practices and worker well-being.

Music therapy through the screen with children with autism: Reflections on the differences between in-person and online improvisation

Ferdinando Suvini, Agostino Longo and Marco Giusti have been working together many years and are collaborating in the Florence Music Therapy Training Course and in the First Specialization Training Course on Music Therapy and Autism (2022). This interview, in which Marco interviews Ferdinando and Agostino, addresses different subject areas in the field of music therapy during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to discuss the need to modify intervention techniques when transitioning from in-person to online work. Starting from some reflections on the literature about online Improvisational Music Therapy (IMT), both pre-COVID and during the pandemic, we discuss whether IMT could be a feasible method for online work with children and young people with autism. Special attention is given to the treatment guidelines for working with children with autism. In order to better clarify some specific themes, some clinical examples of children and young people with autism are included. The aim of this interview is to illustrate and explore different intervention methods involved in the transition from in-person to online music therapy, with a specific group of patients. The clinical examples show that it is possible to maintain the principles presented in the treatment guidelines for IMT with children with autism, even if online work demands adaptations and modifications to the proposed techniques. The main purpose of the reflections set forth is to explore and understand how IMT changes when moving from face-to-face work to online.

Socially distanced artistic careers: Professional social interactions in early, established, and late career stages during COVID-19

The impact of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts sector resulted in acute, drastic drops in employment, revenue, and events. Career maintenance and persistence in the arts during this period involved substantially altered practices, particularly in terms of professional social interactions, which are known to be essential in artistic occupations. This research uses interview data from 66 U.S.-based arts graduates during the first year of the pandemic to establish how those in early, established, and late career stages experienced their professional social interactions. The findings show that the massive shift from in-person to almost solely online work and connectivity led to a drastic decrease in professional social interactions. Findings show that early career artists have the least social capital, established artists have the most, and late career artists begin to lose social capital unless they actively maintain it. Additionally, the “event-ized” nature of scheduling and attending work interactions digitally reduced feelings of community and collegiality.

Finnish Remote Leadership in Home Care during the Pandemic

This study was conducted as part of the national The More Remotely – work in social and health care is changing project (2019-2022). The purpose of this qualitative study was to clarify how functional remote leadership works from the perspective of superiors and to gain new information on the functionality and development needs of remote leadership. The data consisted of the material collected via a group-based themed interview, memoranda written by members of the training groups and assignments submitted by the participants. The data were analyzed through material-driven content analysis. The results show that remote leadership is based on the same principles as good leadership in general: communality, trust, interaction and clear ground rules. When these sections are in order, remote leadership works. Positive sides of remote leadership that emerged include faster, real-time sharing of information and the decoupling of work from a specific place. Work was seen as more efficient and productive. The greatest challenges to remote leadership are problems related to technology, such as failing programs and devices, constant changes and a lack of guidance. Remote leadership was seen as increasing anonymity and distance within the workplace. Superiors felt that physical meetings were needed to support remote leadership. Central development proposals included familiarizing people with the culture of remote leadership and increasing knowledge and use of various programs and devices. There is also a need to clarify the ground rules, scheduling and practices of remote conferences and to constantly gather feedback on the functionality of remote leadership. Teaching about remote leadership as part of basic studies in the social and health care field would prepare future professionals to being led remotely. Keywords: remote leadership, home care, technology, remote meetings, Finland

Supervisor beware: Contemptuous feedback harms low performers and taxes working memory of rejection sensitive persons

In this independent constructive replication and generalizability study, we revisit Melwani and Barsade’s laboratory study on receiving contempt in a work context. They found that recipients of contempt had better task performance than the recipients of neutral, angry, or no failure feedback. They also found social status moderates this link, such that the low-status recipients of contempt performed significantly better than high-status recipients. The present study revisits the emotional feedback and performance link by focusing on objective task performance in a supervisor–subordinate setting. Participants ( N = 124) were randomly assigned to one of three scripted negative feedback conditions (neutral, anger, and contempt) and interacted with the team using an online messenger platform. Participants completed three copyediting tasks and received three rounds of negative written feedback. Results indicated that contempt led to a distinct pattern: subjects with low baseline performance on copyediting tasks consistently performed worse in the contempt condition than those in other conditions. We also extend the replication by showing how working memory is taxed differentially across feedback conditions. We found that rejection-sensitive participants incurred greater working memory deficits when receiving contempt. Our results inform research on Golem and Underdog effects and can also have implications for inclusive management practices in online work.

Making Offline and Online Work Procedures for Vision Glasses Optical Store in Surabaya

Vision Glasses is a Surabaya-based eyewear shop selling high-quality, affordable glasses, lenses, and eyewear accessories. This thesis intends to discuss the existing managerial issue in Vision Glasses, namely work performance. This research employs theory of constraints and the theory of work procedure by Boutros & Purdie. After collecting the data from the owner and employees of Vision Glasses, the writer discovers that Vision Glasses needs to apply a work procedure which contains rules or guidelines such as the policy, customer-service ethics, and division instructions for the employees and as a guideline for the company to discipline the employees or deal with internal conflict.

Remote Work is a Trend with Staying Power: How Employees and Managers Can Succeed in this Brave New Word

I have been working remotely—in one form or another—since 2005. My boss at the time allowed our team to work 1 day from home if we kept it hush-hush. It wasn’t until 2015 that my employer moved to a formal telecommuting policy, allowing 3 days of remote work. Suddenly, after 15 years of navigating the DC Metro traffic scene daily, I only made the trek to work 2 days a week. My quality of life improved in ways I couldn’t have imagined. The pandemic spurred an entirely new arrangement—starting in mid-March 2020, our entire company was fully remote, staying that way for the next 2 years. Things changed for me again in January 2022 when I became the managing director of Origin Editorial, a remote-only company. Finally, after more than 2 decades in the workforce, I had complete control over how and when I worked. In this article I’ll share with you the true value of remote work, how to maximize its effectiveness, and the best strategies for managing a remote team. A NASA Physicist Advocates for Telework In 1973, NASA physicist Dr. Jack Nilles coined the term “telecommuting,” which he defined as “the substitution of telecommunications and/or computers for commuting work.”1 Dr. Niles was particularly interested in how telecommuting could address several societal and business concerns such as commuter traffic, healthcare costs, and worker productivity. As a remote worker himself, he made a persuasive case for the arrangement in his 1994 book titled The Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff. Despite Dr. Nilles’s […]

Working Online During the Contemporary COVID-19 Pandemic.

Within the psychoanalytic school there has been substantial and ongoing debate about the efficacy of teleanalysis. However, as a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the online work with which the Jungian analytic community has now had to engage, this paper initially focuses on analysts' actual experiences of working by teleanalysis. These experiences highlight a range of issues like "Zoom fatigue", "online disinhibition", dissonance, confidentiality, the frame and working with new patients. Alongside these issues, there were ample experiences by analysts of both productive psychotherapy apace with analytic work involving transference and countertransference phenomena, all indicating that a genuine and good enough analytic process can occur with teleanalysis. An overview of the research and literature both prior to the pandemic and as a result of it, confirms the validity of these experiences so long as analysts are cognizant of the specifics of such an online modality. Conclusions to do with the question, "what have we learned?", alongside training, ethics and supervision issues are subsequently discussed.

Hospital pharmacy response to the COVID-19 pandemic: experience from a regional referral center in the United Arab Emirates

BackgroundThe recent SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic has resulted in significant morbidity and mortality worldwide. The healthcare systems, including pharmacies, faced unique challenges, such as managing an overwhelming patient influx, clinical workforce management, transitioning to remote or online work, medication procurement and several others. The purpose of this study is to describe our hospital pharmacy’s experience dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and to present solutions to the challenges that arose.MethodologyWe retrospectively reviewed and consolidated strategies, interventions, and solutions that were implemented by our pharmaceutical institute in response to the challenges that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study period was from March 1 to September 30, 2020.ResultsWe reviewed and organized our hospital pharmacy response to the COVID-19 pandemic into different categories. In inpatient and outpatient satisfaction surveys, physicians and patients expressed a high level of satisfaction with pharmacy services. The close collaboration between the pharmacy team and other clinicians was demonstrated through the number of pharmacist interventions, participation in the COVID-19 guidelines reviews, involvement in local and international research, and innovative solutions to inpatient and outpatient pharmacy medication management challenges.ConclusionsThis study highlights the crucial role that our pharmacists and pharmaceutical institute played in ensuring continuity of care during the COVID-19 pandemic. We implemented several key initiatives, innovations, and collaborations with other clinical disciplines to successfully overcome the challenges faced.

Refugees in the Digital Economy

The current scale and duration of displacement prompts renewed urgency about livelihoods prospects for displaced people and the role of humanitarian organisations in fostering them. This special issue focuses on how aid organisations, together with the private sector and other actors, have worked to include refugees in new forms of online work within the web-based digital economy. Building on comparative analysis and a comprehensive review of the field of digital livelihoods among the forcibly displaced, in this introductory article we argue that including refugees in this digital economy is currently neither a sustainable form of humanitarian relief nor is it a development solution that provides large-scale decent work. We show how digital livelihoods approaches have gained a special footing in the middle ground between short-term economic relief and long-term development. Indeed, digital economies seemingly offer a variety of ‘quick-fix’ solutions at the transition from humanitarian emergency towards long-term development efforts. While digital economies harbour significant potential, this cannot be fully realised unless current efforts to include refugees in digital economies are complemented by efforts to address digital divides, uphold refugees’ rights, and ensure more decent working conditions.

Connecting without Protecting

The global spread of online work opportunities has inspired a new generation of market-based aid that connects forcibly displaced people to a transnational internet economy. Because refugees face barriers to making a livelihood online, aid organisations and private enterprises support them by building bridges across digital divides, connectivity problems or skill gaps. They thereby become intermediaries and brokers that facilitate connections between refugees and online income opportunities, which often lack decent working conditions and adequate protections. Because digital livelihood initiatives lack the power to reshape these conditions and the value of work in the internet economy, they fail to become mediators with a transformative impact. The result is that the internet economy reshapes livelihoods provision far more than aid can reshape its disempowering effects, despite successes in driving forward refugees’ digital inclusion. Based on more than three years of research including interviews, field visits and surveys, this article foregrounds the current risks that result from the inclusion of refugees into precarious forms of online gig work. To ensure a decent future of work for refugees in the internet economy, the current push for digital livelihoods will require an equally strong push for stronger protections, inclusive regulations and rights.