A 10 nation exploration of trustworthiness in the workplace

In the context of the workplace, and especially in today’s often fast-paced, cross-cultural and virtual work environment, a basic type of trust—“swift trust”—forms quickly based on cognitive processes and beliefs, or stereotypes, of another. Interpersonal trust is in large part based on these contextualized assessments of the extent to which another person is trustworthy. While trust across cultural boundaries has been examined, there is a lack of research investigating how trustworthiness is determined cross-culturally, especially with respect to what heuristics are used in the development of trust. The current project explored how trustworthiness is conceptualized and described for both colleagues and supervisors across 10 nations using the Stereotype Content Model. Qualitative descriptors of trustworthy supervisors and colleagues were coded based on the importance ascribed to warmth and competence, and these codes were used as the basis for cluster analyses to examine similarities and differences in descriptors of role-based trustworthiness. Both differences and similarities in the expectations of trustworthiness were found across the national samples. Some cultures emphasized both warmth and competence as equally important components to developing trustworthiness, some emphasized only warmth, while others emphasized only competence. Variations of trustworthiness stereotypes were found in all but two national samples based on role expectations for supervisors and colleagues. Data from the GLOBE project related to societal cultural practices and cultural leadership prototypes were drawn on to discuss findings.

Virtual Reality at the Service of People with Functional Diversity: Personalized Intervention Spaces

Virtual reality allows to generate an environment of great realism, while achieving the immersion of the user in it. The purpose of this project is to use this technology as a complementary tool in the rehabilitation of people with functional diversity. To do this, an application is being developed that will offer different environments that simulate situations in everyday life. Through its initial menu, the professional will be able to select the virtual work environment, with different configuration options to adapt each scenario to the user’s needs. This customization of the scenarios will allow such things as configuring the degree of difficulty of the activity to eventually adapting the elements of the scenario to the functional capacity of the user.

Why Telecommuting Became Redundant During the COVID‐19 Pandemic?

This paper reveals the facts that necessitated telecommuting in the 'new normal' virtual work environment. This is a cross-sectional study with a sample of executive-level employees working in the banking sector. Data were analyzed using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC). The findings reveal that the success of telecommuting during the COVID-19 pandemic depends on the nature of family responsibility, virtual work environment, virtual training, and self-management of the employees affected, while the work-life balance (WLB) is not significant. The decision-makers need to implement psychological training, skills-based training for managers, employees, and family members, and provide incentives to handle difficulties encountered in the pandemic situation. The present study proposes formulating a long-term policy that can successfully align with the new normal working conditions. This should encompass fundamental working rights under the virtual working environment, career development, and welfare of workers. To date, previous studies are based on the advantages of traditional telecommuting. However, this study considers employees’ perception of telecommuting in the COVID-19 pandemic; thus, the study fills the empirical gap in the research on telecommuting in the new normal working condition.

A Review of Employee Engagement and Strategies Implementation in Virtual Work Environment

This present work report represents the imperative and challenging Human Resource to strategize and maintain a good employee engagement in a virtual work environment. A little empirical and theoretical account of how employees and management can optimize their operational engagement by implementing situation-based strategy in the virtual work environment. It is a review and analysis (quantitative and qualitative) of employee engagement in this virtual world. However, Information Technology and Telecommunication Industry were already on this path of adaptation, but the new normal has made by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to this situation, a greater shift from a traditional work environment to work from home environment (virtual) has been seen. This paper is an analysis of both work environments and consists of some strategies to implement better employee engagement in this scenario. The paper also includes some secondary data for the analysis between both work environments and followed thematic analysis of data through the Delphi method of survey. The situation was analyzed and strategies are deployed for a better understanding of employee engagement and performance increasing.

Technostress and remote Virtual work environment among University Staff Members: A cross-sectional study

Background Technostress during the COVID-19 pandemic has become more prevalent as a result of the global preventive measures applied to limit the spread of infection. These measures included remote working from home in both public and private organizations.ObjectivesTo study Technostress and challenges of remote Virtual work environment among University Staff Members at Menoufia University, Egypt.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted over Menoufia university academic staff members in Egypt. The participants were chosen from both practical and theoretical colleges in Menoufia University using a multistage random sample. Tarfadar techno-stress questionnaire was used. Cortisol blood level was measured for all participants.Results: This study included 142 participants. The mean age of the group was 36.32± 6.41 years. 52.1 percent worked in practical colleges, and 60.6 percent were lecturers or higher. Their mean cortisol level was 15.61± 7.07mcg/dl. Participants who were females, reside in rural areas, held a lecturer or higher position, had poor work-environment Wifi, and lacked technical training had significantly higher levels of technostress subscales. Most of the technostress subscales were significantly correlated with age and blood cortisol levels. The predictors of work overload in multivariate regression were female gender and a work environment with poor WIFI. Female gender, theoretical colleges, being lecturer or higher and poor WIFI were the predictors for invasion. ConclusionAmong university staff members, Technostress was found to be evident. High levels of technostress were significantly influenced by age, higher professions, female gender, and a bad workplace environment.

Leadership matters in crisis-induced digital transformation: how to lead service employees effectively during the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has, besides the health concerns, caused an unprecedented social and economic crisis that has particularly hit service industries hard. Due to extensive safety measures, many service employees have to work remotely to keep service businesses running. With limited literature on leadership and virtual work in the service context, this paper aims to report on leadership effectiveness regarding employees' work performance in virtual settings brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the input–process–outcome (IPO) framework, this research investigates the effectiveness of leadership on service employees' work performance mediated by work-related tension, autonomy, and group cohesiveness. Furthermore, this study explores moderating effects of the service provider's digital maturity. To test the derived model, the authors collected survey data from 206 service employees who, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, unexpectedly had to transform to a virtual work environment. The authors analyzed the data using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).FindingsThe results indicated that it took task- and relation-oriented leadership behavior to maintain service employees' work performance in a virtual environment during crisis situations. Further, results indicated mediating effects of service employees' individual job autonomy and team cohesiveness; surprisingly, work-related tension did not impact employees' work performance. Results offered service businesses guidance on how to effectively lead in times of crisis when service employees predominantly work in virtual environments.Originality/valueThis is the first empirical study to show how leadership affects service employees' work performance in a virtual work environment during crisis times. Thus, the study contributes to the scarce literature on the impact of leadership in service firms that have to operate in such a setting.