scholarly journals Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment *

2014 ◽  
Vol 130 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Bloom ◽  
James Liang ◽  
John Roberts ◽  
Zhichun Jenny Ying
Keyword(s):  
Call Center ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Attrition Rate ◽  
Travel Agency ◽  
Work From Home ◽  
Working From Home ◽  
Call Center Employees ◽  
Home Workers ◽  
Promotion Rate

Abstract A rising share of employees now regularly engage in working from home (WFH), but there are concerns this can lead to “shirking from home.” We report the results of a WFH experiment at Ctrip, a 16,000-employee, NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel agency. Call center employees who volunteered to WFH were randomly assigned either to work from home or in the office for nine months. Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9% was from working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days) and 4% from more calls per minute (attributed to a quieter and more convenient working environment). Home workers also reported improved work satisfaction, and their attrition rate halved, but their promotion rate conditional on performance fell. Due to the success of the experiment, Ctrip rolled out the option to WFH to the whole firm and allowed the experimental employees to reselect between the home and office. Interestingly, over half of them switched, which led to the gains from WFH almost doubling to 22%. This highlights the benefits of learning and selection effects when adopting modern management practices like WFH.

scholarly journals The Local Co-Working Hub: A Merging Solution

Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Bahareh Motamed ◽  
Kamyar Shirvanimoghaddam
Keyword(s):  
Travel Behaviour ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Personal Hygiene ◽  
New Normal ◽  
Work From Home ◽  
Working From Home ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The Future ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Current Scenario

The coronavirus pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges and has changed society; some of these changes seem temporary, and others seem permanent. The uncertainty of the duration of this pandemic has introduced changes without the knowledge of how permanent they are, and has raised awareness regarding a need for a shift to a new normal. This new normal will affect different aspects of our life routines and activities, such as travel behaviour, personal hygiene, socializing, and our working environment. In the wake of the global pandemic, which has been followed by lockdowns, curfews, social distancing, and working from home, the future of the office has turned into an open question, as COVID has changed our expectation of how, where, and when people can do their jobs. Big companies like Twitter and Facebook have announced that they are allowing employees to permanently work from home; however, some industry leaders are using the work-from-home experience to reimagine the role of the office in the future. What will the future office look like, and what can we expect of the workplace environment? In this paper, we propose a third solution, which is the merging of the current scenario of the classic office and working from home, which is entitled the ‘local co-working hub’. By studying the challenges and opportunities of each of the current approaches, the potential of the local co-working hub is highlighted.

scholarly journals Registration of Blood Exposure Accidents in the Netherlands by a Nationally Operating Call Center

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (10) ◽  
pp. 1017-1023
Author(s):  
Peter M. Schneeberger ◽  
Annemarie E. Meiberg ◽  
Janet Warmelts ◽  
Sander C. A. P. Leenders ◽  
Paul T. L. van Wijk
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Call Center ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Mental Healthcare ◽  
Incidence Rates ◽  
Hepatitis B Vaccination ◽  
Occupational Health Services ◽  
Healthcare Facilities ◽  
Call Center Employees

Objective.Healthcare providers and other employees, especially those who do not work in a hospital, may not easily find help after the occurrence of a blood exposure accident. In 2006, a national call center was established in the Netherlands to fill this gap.Methods.All occupational blood exposure accidents reported to the 24-hours-per-day, 7-days-per-week call center from 2007, 2008, and 2009 were analyzed retrospectively for incidence rates, risk assessment, handling, and preventive measures taken.Results.A total of 2,927 accidents were reported. The highest incidence rates were reported for private clinics and hospitals (68.5 and 54.3 accidents per 1,000 person-years, respectively). Dental practices started reporting incidents frequently after the arrangement of a collective financial agreement with the call center. Employees of ambulance services, midwife practices, and private clinics reported mostly high-risk accidents, whereas penitentiaries frequently reported low-risk accidents. Employees in mental healthcare facilities, private clinics, and midwife practices reported accidents relatively late. The extent of hepatitis B vaccination in mental healthcare facilities, penitentiaries, occupational health services, and cleaning services was low (<70%).Conclusions.The national call center successfully organized the national registration and handling of blood exposure accidents. The risk of blood exposure accidents could be estimated on the basis of this information for several occupational branches. Targeted preventive measures for healthcare providers and other employees at risk can next be developed.Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2012;33(10):1017-1023

scholarly journals Working from Home During Covid-19: Doing and Managing Technology-enabled Social Interaction With Colleagues at a Distance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Banita Lal ◽  
Yogesh K. Dwivedi ◽  
Markus Haag
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Work Lives ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Work From Home ◽  
Working From Home ◽  
Time Basis

AbstractWith the overnight growth in Working from Home (WFH) owing to the pandemic, organisations and their employees have had to adapt work-related processes and practices quickly with a huge reliance upon technology. Everyday activities such as social interactions with colleagues must therefore be reconsidered. Existing literature emphasises that social interactions, typically conducted in the traditional workplace, are a fundamental feature of social life and shape employees’ experience of work. This experience is completely removed for many employees due to the pandemic and, presently, there is a lack of knowledge on how individuals maintain social interactions with colleagues via technology when working from home. Given that a lack of social interaction can lead to social isolation and other negative repercussions, this study aims to contribute to the existing body of literature on remote working by highlighting employees’ experiences and practices around social interaction with colleagues. This study takes an interpretivist and qualitative approach utilising the diary-keeping technique to collect data from twenty-nine individuals who had started to work from home on a full-time basis as a result of the pandemic. The study explores how participants conduct social interactions using different technology platforms and how such interactions are embedded in their working lives. The findings highlight the difficulty in maintaining social interactions via technology such as the absence of cues and emotional intelligence, as well as highlighting numerous other factors such as job uncertainty, increased workloads and heavy usage of technology that affect their work lives. The study also highlights that despite the negative experiences relating to working from home, some participants are apprehensive about returning to work in the traditional office place where social interactions may actually be perceived as a distraction. The main contribution of our study is to highlight that a variety of perceptions and feelings of how work has changed via an increased use of digital media while working from home exists and that organisations need to be aware of these differences so that they can be managed in a contextualised manner, thus increasing both the efficiency and effectiveness of working from home.

Work characteristics, musculoskeletal disorders, and the mediating role of psychological strain: A study of call center employees.

2007 ◽  
Vol 92 (5) ◽  
pp. 1456-1466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine A. Sprigg ◽  
Christopher B. Stride ◽  
Toby D. Wall ◽  
David J. Holman ◽  
Phoebe R. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Musculoskeletal Disorders ◽  
Call Center ◽  
Work Characteristics ◽  
Psychological Strain ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Call Center Employees

Public servants working from home: Exploring managers’ changing allowance decisions in a COVID-19 context

2021 ◽  
pp. 103530462110555
Author(s):  
Sue Williamson ◽  
Linda Colley ◽  
Meraiah Foley
Keyword(s):  
Employee Productivity ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Jel Codes ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Work From Home ◽  
Working From Home ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Organisational Level ◽  
Large Sections

Before the COVID-19 pandemic forced large sections of the workforce to work from home, the uptake of working from home in the public sector had been limited and subject to the discretion or ‘allowance decisions’ of individual managers. Allowance decisions are influenced by factors at the organisational, group and individual levels. This research examines managers’ allowance decisions on working from home at each of these levels. It compares two qualitative datasets: one exploring managerial attitudes to working from home in 2018 and another dataset collected in mid-2020, as Australia transitioned out of the initial pandemic lockdown. The findings suggest a change in the factors influencing managers’ allowance decisions. We have identified a new factor at the organisational level, in the form of local organisational criteria. At the group level, previous concerns about employee productivity largely vanished, and managers experienced an epiphany that working from home could be productive. At the individual level, a new form of managerial discretion emerged as managers attempted to reassert authority over employees working remotely. These levels intersect, and we conclude that allowance decisions are fluid and not made solely by managers but are the result of the interactions between the organisational, group and individual levels. JEL Codes J81, J32

scholarly journals O7B.2 Pilot project for identifying psychosocial risk factors among senior physicians in the pediatric medical center of a university hospital center

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (Suppl 1) ◽  
pp. A62.3-A63
Author(s):  
Marie-Agnès Denis ◽  
Fabienne Dumetier ◽  
Ghislaine Poyard-Berger ◽  
Marie-Michèle Mantha-Belisle ◽  
Michel Vézina
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Health ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Medical Center ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Pilot Project ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
University Hospital ◽  
Junior Doctors ◽  
Warning Signals ◽  
Interview Guide

ContextAfter several warning signals coming from senior physicians working in a Department of pediatrics at a large university hospital, the Department of occupational health decided to assess objectively the psychosocial risks to which this personnel was exposed.MethodsA research team from the scientific unit of the Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec has developed an identification grid with markers that help understanding and limiting physical and psychological risks at work. This grid includes characteristics of the workplace environment and various aspects of management practices. It is based on theoretical models such as ‘Demand-Latitude-Support’ (Karasek & Theorell, 1990), ‘effort-reward imbalance’ (Siegrist, 1996), ‘organizational justice’ (Adams, 2000), and ‘prevention’ (Kristensen, 1999). The assessment involved an interview guide with a scoring system of data collected from credible persons familiar with the working environment.After adequate training in the use of the interview guide, an occupational physician and an occupational psychologist interviewed jointly each of 34 pediatricians and 3 managers and scored the 12 items of the guide according to specific recommendations. The data collected from the interviews were submitted to a thematic analysis.ResultsThe analysis showed that the working environment of the Department was not favorable to the return to work or work-life balance. Regarding management, the warning signals pointed to heavy workloads, lack of recognition, and communication problems. There were some protecting factors such as support from colleagues, some decision latitude (but limited possibilities of knowledge development) and, unevenly between wards, support from the hierarchy. The most negative indicators were reported by junior doctors and, as expected, by temporary personnel.DiscussionAccording to these results, group involving the assessment team, pediatricians, and ward managers will be formed to suggest improvements in the fields of human-resource management, communication, recognition, workloads, and occupational health.

scholarly journals Topophilia, Placemaking, and Boundary Work

2022 ◽  
Vol 6 (GROUP) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Janghee Cho ◽  
Samuel Beck ◽  
Stephen Voida
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Work From Home ◽  
Humanistic Geography ◽  
Working From Home ◽  
Long Term Impact

The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed the nature of work by shifting most in-person work to a predominantly remote modality as a way to limit the spread of the coronavirus. In the process, the shift to working-from-home rapidly forced the large-scale adoption of groupware technologies. Although prior empirical research examined the experience of working-from-home within small-scale groups and for targeted kinds of work, the pandemic provides HCI and CSCW researchers with an unprecedented opportunity to understand the psycho-social impacts of a universally mandated work-from-home experience rather than an autonomously chosen one. Drawing on boundary theory and a methodological approach grounded in humanistic geography, we conducted a qualitative analysis of Reddit data drawn from two work-from-home-related subreddits between March 2020 and January 2021. In this paper, we present a characterization of the challenges and solutions discussed within these online communities for adapting work to a hybrid or fully remote modality, managing reconfigured work-life boundaries, and reconstructing the home's sense of place to serve multiple, sometimes conflicting roles. We discuss how these findings suggest an emergent interplay among adapted work practice, reimagined physical (and virtual) spaces, and the establishment and continual re-negotiation of boundaries as a means for anticipating the long-term impact of COVID on future conceptualizations of productivity and work.

scholarly journals THE INFLUENCE OF ERGONOMIC ON WORKING FROM HOME ACTIVITIES

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Imtihan Hanom ◽  
Rachel Aleyda Rozefy ◽  
Hilmiyani Taqiyyah Filasta
Keyword(s):  
Virus Transmission ◽  
Physical Distance ◽  
Employee Safety ◽  
Work From Home ◽  
Corona Virus ◽  
Working From Home ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Government ◽  
High Flexibility

Work From Home (WFH) is a system chosen by the government in 2020 due to the spread of the Corona virus, with this system it is hoped that it can maintain social distance, namely reducing people's mobility, maintaining physical distance, and reducing crowds so that it is expected to reduce the risk of corona virus transmission. and employee safety. The WFH system has high flexibility, this is to support employee balance between work and life. The work system that changed to WFH in a short period of time made workers experience stressful conditions such as feelings of anxiety or worry for a long time, especially when they lived under the same roof with many people. In carrying out WFH, workers need a comfortable place to work to help focus on work. One of the things that play a role in creating a sense of comfort when working is the application of ergonomic rules. This study looks for any variables that can affect WFH activities and which variables most affect WFH activities. The application of ergonomics, especially macro ergonomics in WFH activities, is considered appropriate to be able to solve various problems in WFH activities. This study uses a descriptive qualitative method by conducting a study through distributing questionnaires to respondents who are doing WFH. From the results of the study, it was found that the comfort of workers in carrying out WFH activities is closely related to ergonomics in a residential house. The results of this study can be used as a reference for designing a suitable workspace for WFH activities, and as a reference for further research with a similar focus of study. Keyword: Interior, Ergonomic, Working From Home

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