Telework Adoption Research Articles

Telework and its effects on mental health during the COVID-19 lockdown.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many governments promoted the adoption and development of telework to reduce some of the consequences of the current health crisis on the economy and favor social distancing. The aim of this web-based cross-sectional study was to assess the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on job organization, exploring the effects of lockdown measures on the psychological distress and perceived well-being of workers experiencing telework. A web-based cross-sectional survey has been used to collect data. The participants answered the questionnaire from April 1 to April 30, 2020. The questionnaire consisted of three sections, which investigated: 1) demographic and occupational variables, 2) lifestyle and habits variables, 3) psychological distress and perceived well-being. The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) has been used to evaluate psychological distress and the 5-item World Health Organization Well-Being Index (WHO-5) to explore subjective well-being. Psychological distress was associated with educational level, with habits, and with reporting poor well-being. Poor well-being was associated with a higher job demand during pandemic, lifestyle and habits variables, and psychological distress. This is one of the first studies exploring the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown measures on the perceived well-being and psychological distress of workers experiencing telework. It is mandatory to pay more and more attention to the mental health of teleworkers, considering the increasing diffusion and adoption of this type of work organization.

Housing space and ICT usage: A cross sectional case study in the Netherlands

Information and communication technology (ICT) has reshaped the definition of the home by increasing flexibility in selecting residential locations, which can provide safe and comfortable environments for work, communication and leisure. However, few studies have comprehensively focused on the relationship between housing space and ICT usage. The present study collects survey data in the Netherlands and uses a zero-inflated negative binomial regression to analyse the relationship. Results show that (1) houses located in highly or strongly urbanised area are positively related with the duration of teleservices and general ICT usage; (2) detached, semi-detached and town houses are positively related with the duration of telecommuting; (3) flats are positively related with the adoption of telecommuting, the duration of teleservices, and the adoption and duration of teleleisure; and (4) the number of rooms is positively related with the adoption of telecommuting and the duration of general ICT usage but negatively related with the duration of teleleisure. Finally, the relationships between ICT usage with different housing space attributes and travel are discussed to support the policy making of transportation, environment and housing spatial layout.

Teleworking during the Covid-19 Crisis in Italy: Evidence and Tentative Interpretations

The paper investigates the determinants and discusses the consequences of the switch towards Italian high-tech firms’ teleworking due to the COVID-19 crisis. Teleworking is important to reduce traffic congestion and increase the sustainability of cities, and as such, it is important to understand what helps the successful transition of firms to telework. COVID-19 crisis represents a natural experiment that allows studying organizational ability to adapt to unexpected environmental changes rapidly. The study is based on a survey conducted in mid-April 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown among Italian manufacturing firms’ managers in high-tech sectors. The final sample is composed of 179 observations. Using path analysis, we model the organizational e-readiness as a mediator of the firm’s technological and organizational characteristics in the rate of adoption of teleworking. Teleworking is also modeled as dependent on human resources and from the exogenous shock represented by COVID-19 lockdown. While teleworking has been imposed by COVID-19, organizational readiness plays a key role in shaping the rate of teleworking adoption during emergencies.

Lunch Interrupted! COVID-19 and Japan’s School Meals

On April 22,2020 a crowd gathered at the Fujikata Racetrack in Tsu City, Mie Prefecture, Japan With the anxiety of the COVID-19 pandemic swirling about them, citizens ventured from their homes donning facemasks Once at the racetrack they formed a "socially distant" line and waited for the gates to open Residents were not waiting to see a race Rather, they had come to do their grocery shopping While nearby city markets and green grocers were still open for business, these citizens had come in hopes of snagging a bargain and also supporting their community This was not your typical farmers' market the produce was gathered from unfulfilled school lunch orders With schoolyards shuttered due to the pandemic, the fresh ingredients ordered months ago had nowhere to go, and rather than let the food go to waste, the community and local government intervened Even with the schools closed, school lunch helped to unite a community

Adoption of Telecommuting and its Impact on Traffic Congestion, Energy Consumption and Emission levels in India

Adoption of Telecommuting and its Impact on Traffic Congestion, Energy Consumption and Emission levels in India

Long-Term COVID-19 Impacts and the U.S. Workforce of 2029

While ensuring employment opportunities is critical for global progress and stability, workers are now subject to several disruptive trends, including automation, rapid changes in technology and skill requirements, and transitions to low-carbon energy production. Yet, these trends seem almost insignificant compared to labor impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. While much has been written about the pandemic’s short-term impacts, this study analyzes anticipated long-term impacts on the labor force of 2029 by comparing original 2029 labor projections to special COVID-adjusted projections recently published by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Results show that future demand for nearly every type of labor skill and knowledge will increase, while the nature of work shifts from physical to more cognitive activities. Of the nearly three million jobs projected to disappear by 2029 due to COVID, over 91% are among workers without a bachelor’s degree. Among workers with a degree demand shifts primarily from business-related degrees to computer and STEM degrees. Results further show that the socialness of labor, which is important for both innovation and productivity, increases in many more industries than it decreases. Finally, COVID will likely accelerate the adoption of teleworking and slightly decrease the rate of workforce automation. These impacts, combined with a shift to more cognitive worker activities, will likely impact the nature of workforce health and safety with less focus on physical injuries and more on illnesses related to sedentary lifestyles. Overall, results suggest that future workers will need to engage more often in training and skill acquisition, requiring life-long learning and skill maintenance strategies.

Air Quality Implications of COVID-19 in California

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected human health and the economy. The implementation of social distancing practices to combat the virus spread, however, has led to a notable improvement in air quality. This study compared the surface air quality monitoring data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA)’s AirNow network during the period 20 March–5 May in 2020 to those in 2015–2019 from the Air Quality System (AQS) network over the state of California. The results indicated changes in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) of −2.04 ± 1.57 μg m−3 and ozone of −3.07 ± 2.86 ppb. If the air quality improvements persist over a year, it could potentially lead to 3970–8900 prevented premature deaths annually (note: the estimates of prevented premature deaths have large uncertainties). Public transit demand showed dramatic declines (~80%). The pandemic provides an opportunity to exhibit how substantially human behavior could impact on air quality. To address both the pandemic and climate change issues, better strategies are needed to affect behavior, such as ensuring safer shared mobility, the higher adoption of telecommuting, automation in the freight sector, and cleaner energy transition.

The Digital Economy Lights Up

The effect of the COVID-19 crisis on the digital economy has been profound. How and whether the widespread adoption of teleworking, telehealth and remote learning will continue after the crisis subsides is a matter for policy debate. Digital inclusion will, in any case, be important. This issue of the Journal publishes four public policy papers, two of which arise from the NBN Futures Forum in February 2020. The other two provide contrasting views on the rising influence of China on the Internet. The issue also contains five more technical papers and a historical reprint. The Journal welcomes contributions on telecommunications and the digital economy.

Teleworking effect on job burnout of higher education administrative personnel in the Junín Region, Peru

This research aims to determine the effect of the adoption of teleworking on the development of job exhaustion of the higher education administrative staff in Junín during the crisis of COVID-19. The applied and correlational research was carried out with the participation of 300 administrative workers of higher education by applying a questionnaire of 40 questions. The results obtained show that having teleworking skills reduces emotional fatigue and depersonalization since the collaborator can self-regulate his behavior when faced with stressors. Likewise, these skills generate a positive effect on personal fulfillment, allowing the teleworker to achieve a satisfactory personal fulfillment of having said skills. On the other hand, telework conditions generate a hidden effect on emotional exhaustion, depersonali-zation and personal fulfillment; therefore, this dimension does not contribute to the reduction or increase of the mentioned dimensions. The work-life balance dimension does not generate any effect on any of the factors. It is concluded that the development of skills for teleworking is a relevant factor to achieve personal fulfillment in teleworkers, while teleworking conditions do not reduce job burnout.

Why Some SME’s in the Czech Republic Adopt Telework and Others Not?

Abstract The paper examines the SME’s in the Czech Republic from the perspective what makes them to adopt telework using the data from the research made in 2017. The research includes 1018 SME’ s. The purpose of the study was to try to find out alignment between telework and some organizational constraints. We hypothesized that employer adoption of telework would depend on the size of the firm, the duration of telework adoption, foreign owner, IT level, and on the implementation of project management. Our empirical evidence showed that telework correlated with the foreign owner participation and the duration of the adoption of telework, with the IT level and with the adoption of project management. It does not correlate with the size of the enterprise and the duration of the adoption of telework.

Telecommuting Adaptation in Malaysia: Demographics, Beliefs and Practices

By surveying 201 telecommuters in Klang Valley, the study examines the employees’ profiles, beliefs and practices regarding the adoption of telecommuting in Malaysia. While our findings seem generally in line with the existing literature in the western context, we reason that the practice of telecommuting remains nascent in its forms and thus requires further research in the Malaysian context.

I lavoratori "agili". Chi sono? Quanto guadagnano?

A higher flexibility of the organization of labor has been attained worldwide by the adoption of telework, also called smart working or telecommuting, which is a results-oriented approach overcoming the traditional use of working spaces and hours. Telework can generate positive wage differentials between smart and traditional workers, as a result of greater work productivity and lower office costs for firms, that translate into wage premia to incentivize working from home, and/or of higher compensations as a disincentive to shirking. Telework has also received increasing attention in Italy, where it is however implemented at a slower pace. In this paper, we pin down the characteristics of telework and of its implementation in Italy, and investigate the extent of wage differentials between teleworkers and traditional workers using the Italian Labor Force Survey. We find a positive wage premium for telework of about 3.7%, raising up to 4.1% for white collars.

The attitude of managers toward telework, why is it so difficult to adopt it in organizations?

The telework adoption by organizations is aimed to offer practical value for all members, in facilitating their work and life. However, a large number of organizations are not adopting telework practices. This study aimed to contribute in the current understanding of what factors influence the attitude of middle managers toward telework adoption in their companies. A technology acceptance models approach was adopted to identify how middle managers’ attitudes toward telework impact their adoption; and Structural Equation Modelling was used for analyzing information. Results show that managerial practices, self-efficacy of employees and information security tools improvement in organizations affect the attitude of middle manager toward adoption.

Relationship between the Financial Indicators and the Implementation of Telework

Abstract In most European countries, teleworking or homeworking is used in various forms that differ from one another by its legal regulation. The paper examines the SME’s in the Czech Republic from the perspective what makes them to adopt telework using the financial indicators. We hypothesized that employer adoption of telework would depend on some economic factors. The empirical evidence showed that a typical company that uses telework is a company with higher ratio of liabilities and therefore lower ratio of equity, a lower ratio of fixed assets, higher sales, lower inventory, higher labour productivity and higher value added per employee, higher return on equity, higher personnel costs, higher average wages. Within the analysed enterprises, 16 indicators were assessed; the 9 indicators showed the difference between companies that use telework and companies that do not use telework. The research shows a typical company that uses telework.

Does new information technology change commuting behavior?

We estimate the long-run causal effect of information technology, i.e., Internet and powerful computers, as measured by the adoption of teleworking, on average commuting distance within professions in the Netherlands. We employ data for 2 years—1996 when information technology was hardly adopted and 2010 when information technology was widely used in a wide range of professions. Variation in information technology adoption over time and between professions allows us to infer the causal effect of interest using difference-in-differences techniques combined with propensity score matching. Our results show that the long-run causal effect of information technology on commuting distance is too small to be identified and likely to be absent. This suggests that, contrary to some assertions, the advent of information technology did not have a profound impact on the spatial structure of the labor market.

Analysis of telecommuting behavior and impacts on travel demand and the environment

The discussion of whether, and to what extent, telecommuting can curb congestion in urban areas has spanned more than three decades. This study develops an integrated framework to provide the empirical evidence of the potential impacts of home-based telecommuting on travel behavior, network congestion, and air quality. In the first step, we estimate a telecommuting adoption model using a zero-inflated hierarchical ordered probit model to determine the factors associated with workers’ propensity to adopt telecommuting. Second, we implement the estimated model in the POLARIS activity-based framework to simulate the potential changes in workers’ activity-travel patterns and network congestion. Third, the MOVES mobile source emission simulator and Autonomie vehicle energy simulator are used to estimate the potential changes in vehicular emissions and fuel use in the network as a result of this policy. Different policy adoption scenarios are then tested in the proposed integrated platform. We found that compared to the current baseline situation where almost 12% of workers in Chicago region have flexible working time schedule, in the case when 50% of workers have flexible working time, telecommuting can reduce total daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and vehicle hours traveled (VHT) up to 0.69% and 2.09%, respectively. Considering the same comparison settings, this policy has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas and particulate matter emissions by up to 0.71% and 1.14%, respectively. In summary, our results endorse the fact that telecommuting policy has the potential to reduce network congestion and vehicular emissions specifically during rush hours.

Organisational adoption of telecommuting: Evidence from a developing country

AbstractEven though telecommuting has been a growing phenomenon in the more advanced world over the past 2 decades, businesses in Africa and more specifically West Africa are yet to adopt the practice, hence providing a gap for research into telecommuting in a developing country such as Ghana to be filled. The study sought to investigate the technological, environmental, and organisational factors that influence telecommuting adoption and to also examine the potential benefits of adopting telecommuting in the operations of Ericsson Ghana.Technology–organisation–environment (TOE) framework was used as the guiding lens. The study, from the critical realism perspective, adopted the qualitative research approach. Hence, Ericsson Ghana was selected as the case. Miles and Huberman's transcendental realism data analysis approach was used for the case study.This study's findings established that the staff and the company as a whole benefited from the adoption of telecommuting practices. The study also identified some factors that influence the adoption of telecommuting. Contribution is therefore made by the findings of the study to the body of knowledge by probing into strategies and guidelines for implementing telecommuting in Ghana and to a larger extent West Africa. Arguably, few studies have been conducted on telecommuting from a developing economy's perspective using the TOE framework. Again, this study provides the guideline for policy discourse in relation to telecommuting adoption in Ghana.The originality of this study lies in the ability to identify an organisation in a developing country such as Ghana, which has institutionalised telecommuting practices for a case study.

Unsticking the status quo

PurposeManagerial mindset and cognitive bias can be barriers to any transformation strategy. In the case of telework, most employees express willingness to telework, yet, few firms formally enable it during regular business hours. The status quo is a daily commute to the traditional workplace. The purpose of this paper is to test framing interventions designed to harness cognitive biases through choice architecture.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon behavioral strategy and prospect theory, this paper presents two studies: quasi-experiments with 146 senior business students and experiments in the field (replication using random assignment and extension) with 84 senior decision makers. Both studies use a one-way between-subjects design and chi-square analysis.FindingsFindings support the proposition that, although cognitive biases can act as barriers to transformation, they can be re-framed through strategic interventions. Specifically, in both studies, there was a drastic increase in adoption simply by changing the way the choice was presented. Findings in the lab were cross-validated in the field. Observed shifts in preferences provide evidence that embedding the right reference point within communications can frame a decision choice more favorably. Findings also support that a bias for an implicitly perceived status quo can be overruled through an explicitly stated reference point.Research limitations/implicationsIt is an assumption of behavioral strategy that most individuals simply respond to the gains/loss framing without being influenced by other psychological or contextual factors, and though these effects dissipate through aggregation, it is a limitation nonetheless. Indeed, using an individual construct to explain an organizational phenomenon is a well-debated topic in the field of strategy, with proponents on both sides. The distinguishing factor, here, is that behavioral strategists are only interested in results at the aggregated level.Practical implicationsPractitioners attempting to roll out telework adoption, or any transformation, now have proven strategies for designing frames of reference that intervene against and harness the power of loss aversion and the status quo.Social implicationsThis paper measures micro processes that have an effect at the macro level. It explains systematic aversion to adoption as an aggregation of decision-making behavior that is seemingly subconscious. In doing so, it highlights the impact of bounded rationality perpetuated through social systems, while measuring effective interventions designed to make systematic behavior more predictable.Originality/valueA novel contribution is made in designing/testing a new frame for systematic resistance to change that frames the status quo as the losing prospect. In this frame, the perceived loss is in the choice not to change, and loss aversion proves to be an effective tool for facilitating systematic change.

Impacts of Telecommuting on Nonmandatory Activity Participation: Role of Endogeneity

Telecommuting has been regarded as an alternative work arrangement that provides higher levels of resilience and flexibility for the workforce. To provide a robust estimation of telecommuting activity, it is important to understand the extent of telecommuting and the underlying factors that contribute to telecommuters’ decisions. One line of discussion in behavioral decisions (including telecommuting) is the endogeneity issue, also referred to as simultaneity in cause and effect. The question is whether certain activity travel behaviors are the causes of telecommuting adoption or telecommuters are manifesting such behaviors because they telecommute. For instance, are people traveling more or farther because of the higher spatial–temporal freedom brought by telecommuting, or are they choosing to or having to telecommute because they already have those activity arrangements (e.g., take care of kids) in place. Exploring such interrelationships between the choice to telecommute, activity travel plans, and other personal and household decisions is the major motivation for this research. Structural equation models were developed. Results showed that adding feedback effects to the full model improved the goodness of fit of the model, and this improvement is statistically significant ( P-value = .032). Furthermore, it could be inferred that a decision to participate in nonmandatory activities has significant positive impact on propensity to telecommute, and it is more in favor of a full-day telecommuting arrangement (versus a part-day arrangement). This study used the 2010–2011 regional household travel survey data from the New York metropolitan region.

Telework in Public Sector Organizations: The Slovak National Library

Reforms of government and public administration combined with use of information and communications technologies (ICT) have brought many innovations in public sector, including telework as a form of organizing and performing work out of the employers´ premises. This structural change in work organization aims at increasing efficiency and in some cases, economy, too. The authors used qualitative and quantitative approach based on original survey data from own research, including data collected within the LIPSE project. Main findings point out the factors that influence the use of telework in the conditions of Slovakia in a selected public sector organization, e.g. the social, technological and inter-institutional dynamics factors playing a vital role in telework adoption.