Don’t Call It Smart: Working From Home During the Pandemic Crisis

Abstract

The recent COVID-19 pandemic and related social distancing measures have significantly changed worldwide employment conditions. In developed economies, institutions and organizations, both public and private, are called upon to reflect on new organizational models of work and human resource management, which - in fact - should offer workers sufficient flexibility in adapting their work schedules remotely to their personal (and family) needs. This study aims to explore, within a Job Demands-Resources framework, whether and to what extent job demands (workload and social isolation), organizational job resources (perceived organizational support), and personal resources (self-efficacy, vision about the future and commitment to organizational change) have affected workers’ quality of life during the pandemic, taking into account the potential mediating role of job satisfaction and perceived stress. Using data from a sample of 293 workers, we estimate measurement and structural models, according to the Item Response Theory and the Path analysis frameworks, which allow us to operationalize the latent traits and study the complex structure of relationships between the latent dimensions. We inserted in the model as control variables, the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the respondents, with particular emphasis on gender differences and the presence and age of children. The study offers insights into the relationship between remote work and quality of life, and the need to rethink human resource management policies considering the opportunities and critical issues highlighted by working full-time remotely.

Smart Working and Well-Being before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scoping Review

“…Indeed, the implementation of smart working requires adequate management policies with particular attention to the reorganization of work and personnel management [ 3 , 72 ]. It would be necessary for organizations to utilize human resource management more effectively, implementing a more inclusive and differentiated approach to support employees, and thinking about the workers’ different needs to better balance work and private life [ 30 ]. The digitization of work processes and tools is not a mechanical and automatic process.…”

“…Workers, after all, must be adequately trained and have adequate resources to be able to offer good performance [ 38 ]. The literature [ 30 ] about the JDR Model and smart working demonstrated that job demands (workload and social isolation), organizational job resources (perceived organizational support), and individual job resources (self-efficacy, vision about the future, and commitment to organizational change) have affected workers’ quality of life during the pandemic. Whoever manages the human resources of an organization is therefore called on to implement new practices, aimed at reinforcing the workers’ engagement even when the work methods change, motivating them to adopt proactive behaviors and positive attitudes, achieving results in line with the expectations of the organization [ 38 ].…”

“…The use of the JDR Model and smart working literature [ 19 , 30 ] led to the formulation of some research questions: What are the drivers of job well-being and strain? How do the employees perceive smart working implications on their well-being?…”

Workplace infection control measures and perceived organizational support during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan: a prospective cohort study

“…Research has reported that high POS relieves work stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout; it increases job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and work productivity. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Increasing POS would, therefore, be of great significance to employees and organizations-even under the special circumstances of the pandemic. POS has been found to be increased by several antecedent factors.…”

“Why couldn’t we do this more often?”: exploring the feasibility of virtual and distributed work in product design engineering

“…Though there is plenty of discussion about the effect of COVID-19 on knowledge workers in general (Wu and Chen 2020 ; Barbieri et al 2021 ; Gibbs et al 2021b ; Kniffin et al 2021 ; Laumer and Maier 2021 ; Madariaga et al 2021 ), and studies which aim to explore impacts in specific industries (Brewin 2020 ; Pamidimukkala and Kermanshachi 2021 ; Škare et al 2021 ), we could not find evidence in the previous studies to pinpoint the simple but challenging fact that we uncovered in our interviews: product design is a mix of Tangible and Intangible Design activities, and while is it possible to complete many Intangible Design activities remotely, it is near impossible to complete the Tangible Design activities from home. Managers should consider implementing tools that allow employees to replicate Tangible activities in the digital world and collaborate seamlessly from a distance.…”