PhD teleworking

Amongst some bosses there appears to be a mentality that if you are not in the office then you can’t be working. I suspect that this attitude comes from how they themselves operate if they are not in the office. Maybe their attitude towards teleworking says more about their own working practices than anything else. Thankfully, attitudes appear to be changing. There has been steep rise in the number of people who engage in 'teleworking' (i.e., people working from home). Teleworking is no longer the sole domain of the self-employed or low-paid outworkers. Many jobs do not lend themselves to working from home, however, academia is one profession that working from home can bring great dividends. Many people love the thought of a day at home working without gossiping colleagues, non-essential meetings, and constant interruptions. This may also be very attractive to those working on a PhD! Surveys have shown that teleworkers are 60% more efficient when compared to their officebased counterparts (Lawrence, 1999). One in twenty people in the UK now work at least one day a week from home (Welch, 1999a; Lawrence, 1999) and save themselves an average of two hours commuting time (Welch, 1999b). According to the Henley Centre, more than 50% of the workforce will be working from home by 2010 (Cook, 1999)

Tips on Working From Home When You are on the Autism Spectrum

In the COVID19 world, we have additional need and expectation to be able to work remotely. For many on the Autism Spectrum (AS) who have been adjusting to work environments this change can be a big disruption. Below are some tips for those of you on the spectrum working from home, to assist you in remaining calmer and being more productive. These tips may also prove helpful for those support AS people

Why working from home will stick

COVID-19 drove a mass social experiment in working from home (WFH). We survey more than 30,000 Americans over multiple waves to investigate whether WFH will stick, and why. Our data say that 20 percent of full workdays will be supplied from home after the pandemic ends, compared with just 5 percent before. We develop evidence on five reasons for this large shift: better-than-expected WFH experiences, new investments in physical and human capital that enable WFH, greatly diminished stigma associated with WFH, lingering concerns about crowds and contagion risks, and a pandemic-driven surge in technological innovations that support WFH. We also use our survey data to project three consequences: First, employees will enjoy large benefits from greater remote work, especially those with higher earnings. Second, the shift to WFH will directly reduce spending in major city centers by at least 5-10 percent relative to the pre-pandemic situation. Third, our data on employer plans and the relative productivity of WFH imply a 5 percent productivity boost in the post-pandemic economy due to re-optimized working arrangements. Only one-fifth of this productivity gain will show up in conventional productivity measures, because they do not capture the time savings from less commuting

Working from home around the world

The pandemic triggered a large, lasting shift to work from home (WFH). To study this shift, we survey full-time workers who finished primary school in 27 countries as of mid-2021 and early 2022. Our cross-country comparisons control for age, gender, education, and industry and treat the U.S. mean as the baseline. We find, first, that WFH averages 1.5 days per week in our sample, ranging widely across countries. Second, employers plan an average of 0.7 WFH days per week after the pandemic, but workers want 1.7 days. Third, employees value the option to WFH 2-3 days per week at 5 percent of pay, on average, with higher valuations for women, people with children and those with longer commutes. Fourth, most employees were favorably surprised by their WFH productivity during the pandemic. Fifth, looking across individuals, employer plans for WFH levels after the pandemic rise strongly with WFH productivity surprises during the pandemic. Sixth, looking across countries, planned WFH levels rise with the cumulative stringency of government-mandated lockdowns during the pandemic. We draw on these results to explain the big shift to WFH and to consider some implications for workers, organization, cities, and the pace of innovation

Working from home and management controls

The Covid-19 pandemic and the corresponding shift toward working from home (WFH) amplifies control problems within organizations and poses severe challenges for management control as employees’ tasks are difficult to observe under WFH conditions. We examine the association between WFH and action controls. Based on a survey among employees in a large international corporation, we find that under WFH conditions the organization more intensively uses standardization and planning participation. We also examine the association between WFH and employee outcomes. The findings suggest that WFH is associated with more time employees spend in meetings and a higher job focus. Overall, the study adds to the literature by exploring the association between WFH and the use of management controls in organizations

Fulfillment of Workers’ Rights in Remote Working: The Perspective of Labor Development Principle in Indonesia

The popularity of working from home or remote working is rising globally. In Indonesia, the existence of the internet underpins the trend of working from home since accessing this technology is effortless. However, existing regulatory provisions mostly govern matters regarding office work, while the rights and responsibilities between employers and employees in the remote working scheme have never been specifically regulated. This situation creates a huge gap between what is stated in a written law and law in action. This research aims to analyze the congruence of agreements with the fulfilment of rights of workers working from home from the perspective of legislation and the principles of labor development. This research employed sociological and legal methods. The research results indicate that the fulfilment of labors’ rights in both the agreement and implementation has not met the principles of labor development. The conflict of rights and criminal violations regarding this matter is obvious since workers’ rights governed in the legislation are not governed in the work agreement. Moreover, there is still incongruence between the regulations and implementation of the rights of workers regarding the portion of break/leave and overtime wages

What is wrong with working from home?

Although the benefits of working from home are numerous, Dr Esther Canonico outlines the challenges both employers and employees can come across

Working from home in European countries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

We use data from the EU Labour Force Survey for 8 countries and document the levels of working from home in the sample countries, industries, and occupations in the 2011-2019 period and its changes in 2020, the year when the COVID-19 pandemic started. We show that there are significant differences in working from home across countries, industries, and occupations and that working from home has increased almost everywhere in the 2011-2019 period and more significantly in 2020. Countries that had the lowest levels of working from home in 2019 enacted the most stringent stay-home and workplace closure policies and experienced the largest growth rates in working from home in 2020. Finally, we compute a measure of working from home capacity for the sample countries using the observed working from home levels