ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 pandemic throughout the world, has acted as an opportunity for accelerating remote working as new normal for business continuity. The concept of remote working is no more a privilege, but a necessity to stay afloat in such difficult times.

Remote working/ Work-from-Home is a very new experience for Organizations of India and hence different perception of stakeholders in these organizations with respect to remote working is a matter of research, in order to device a mechanism that gel with the expectations of each and every stakeholders promoting employee wellbeing along with business continuity.

The present study examined the perception and extent of acceptance to remote working/ work-from-home concept, by the Line Managers of Indian Organizations supervising remote workers in Indian Organizations by thorough review of the previous literature published/ unpublished on the subject of “Remote Working”.

This paper provides a comprehensive list of pressing issues faced by the Line Mangers that must be considered while formulating and implementing remote working arrangements in Indian Organizations.

Keywords: Covid-19, Remote working, Perception, Acceptance, Line Mangers

INTRODUCTION

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed our lives in ways many never had thought before. It has brought economic uncertainties and compelled business organizations across sectors to adapt to a “new normal.” Economists are comparing the lockdown with the Great Depression of 1930s and global financial crisis of 2008-09. The WTO estimates world trade to fall by 13% to 32% in 2020.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed our experiences as customers, employees, citizens, humans and our attitudes and behaviors.

Since years, the ‘Remote working’ was part and parcel of work culture of Information Technology giants in India, but owing to poor infrastructure, poor networks and connections, lack of awareness and training among employees in using information technology at work, lack of top management commitment towards investment into technologies and last but not the least employee resistance to change, working remotely, was never seemed an appropriate and accepted way of working in Indian Organizations.

In accordance with enforcement by Government of India and as coping strategy in the times of crises, leading Indian Organizations such as Facebook, Google, NTPC Limited, State Bank of India and Bank of Baroda have started adopting remote working amid Covid-19 outbreak as a strategic tool enabling sustainable business growth.

RATIONALE OF STUDY

Past literature have focused on remote working in IT Sector of India, advantages and disadvantages of remote working to individuals and organization, perception of employees who work remotely, flexible working and work life balance, emphasis on comparisons between virtual and non-virtual workers, but there is scarcity of research remote working in Indian Non-IT organizations and on managerial perceptions with respect to remote working that determines leader member exchange process having individual and organizational impacts.

Several Research Literature and Surveys of Consultancy Organizations such as Deloitte, Mercer, PWC, KPMG, Ernst &Young have studied impact of Covid-19 Outbreak on organization functioning, practical workforce strategies adopted by organizations in response to global pandemic and employee concerns about Covid-19 and remote working. But, there exists limited literature on manager’s perception and inhibitions associated with remote working, which is the ultimate deciding factor for the acceptance and satisfaction with remote working.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The objective of this review paper is to study Line Mangers perceptions on remote working experience amid Covid-19 crises and gauging extent of satisfaction with remote working among management cadre supervising virtual employees in Indian Organizations.

Many organizations have allowed their employees to work from home as immediate response to Covid-19 Crises, due to government pressures as well as in response to competition in terms of business continuity from other firms, without addressing the challenges and implications inherent to this type of intervention. Work-from-home

arrangements will likely expand beyond the tech world — and beyond the pandemic. Time has come for managers to look beyond hours clocked in and physical presence in office, instead with positive focus on getting the work done and keeping the employee morale high. A unique contribution of this study is that it has responses from managers working in different organizations and varied departments of those enterprises which are considered to be one of the significant contributors in generalizing the findings of this study for better adaptation to remote working arrangements in Indian Organizations.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A comprehensive search of the literature was conducted to develop and prepare this review paper. Peer-reviewed journals and articles, theses and dissertation studies, newspaper articles, books, were examined to study, search, and prepare the review of the existing literature. The literature review began with general computer searches on origin and implementation of telecommuting and other perception studies associated with work from home followed by thorough study of ProQuest Digital Dissertation and EBSCO host academic peer-reviewed articles, articles available in the Google Scholar and Research Gate Portals. Last, but not the least, compiling Covid 19 Related Surveys conducted by leading management consultancies like KPMG, Mercer, E&Y and PWC etc.

COVID-19 OUTBREAK AND ITS IMPACT ON INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS

The Covid-19 is a global pandemic crisis which can be best prevented through frequent sanitization and social distancing. Covid-19 has proved to be the biggest force towards adoption of work from home practice in India despite the reluctance of the Indian Companies. Implementation of Work from Home due to lockdown was the first experience without comprehensive preparations. The Covid-19 corona virus proved to be an accelerator for one of the greatest workplace transformations of

lifetime for private and public sector organizations of India. The COVID-19 crisis forced the organizations to accelerate business with reduced costs and manpower.Covid-19 crises compelled organizations to review and change and be more open to new ways of working: in particular, in adopting remote working as a mode of employment.

REMOTE WORKING/WORK FROM HOME- POPULAR FINDINGS

Back in to the 1970s, nonstandard work arrangements such as part time and contract work as well as temporary employment have allowed workers to experience flexibility in their employment relations (Kalleberg, 2000). Current trends in work widely accept flexible work arrangements (FWA), such as flextime (e.g., trust-based working hours) and flexplace (e.g., home-office). The current developments in the area of working in times of Covid-19 crises have been grouped under the headers “working beyond working time”, “working beyond the internal workplace”, “working beyond detailed instructions” and “working beyond two-party relationships” (Risak 2017a: 20).

Advances in information technology, globally dispersed and diverse workforce, more women in the workplace, dual career families and the increased desire of employees to balance work and family are key factors that have amplified the popularity of flexible work arrangements. Thus, physical location of a working place is gradually losing its importance (Baltes, Briggs,Huff, Wright, & Neuman, 1999; Caillier, 2013b) leading organizations to innovate, that is, to develop and adopt new practices.

Flexible work arrangements or Flexi work is an Umbrella term under which flexibility in the location (flexplace) and in the timing of work (flextime) can be subsumed (Hill et al., 2001). Researchers highlighted three key elements associated with flexible work arrangements: technology, location and organization associated with remote working (see e.g., Beer, 1985; Di Martino and Wirth, 1990). Flexible Work arrangement are prevalent in various forms such as telecommuting (Nilles, 1994),

flexible work (McCloskey and Igbaria, 1998), virtual work (Handy, 1995) and Work from Home (Nilles, 1975). Telecommuting refers to Working from Home only instead of commuting to office premises (Golden, 2009). Teleworking refers to working away from the office which can be home or another location (e.g., client office, airport, coffee shop) for certain days of the week, spending the rest of the time in the office (Golden, 2009). The 21st century is characterized by new anytime, anywhere work culture (Van Horn & Storen, 2000). This is termed as “Remote working” or “Work from Home”. Remote working is considered as an alternative way to organize work away from the physical settings of Office. It is all about absence from the traditional office for a portion of the work week, while interacting through communication technology.

Research in the area of telecommuting started in the 1970s, when Jack Nilles coined the terms telecommuting and directed the first telework demonstration project with partial funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The introduction of pilot telework programs in and by the 1990s many states, governments and private sector organizations had executed WFH. The 1990s saw a proliferation of tele working, and more recent reports indicate that tele working has become one of the most prevalent bases of flexibility programs (World at Work, 2015), with the expectation that the practice will become even more commonplace in the near future (Society for Human Resource Management [SHRM], 2014).

Work from Home is a conceptualized process where an employee can perform his assigned responsibilities from the comfort of the home. It provides the flexibility in working hours to the employee with ease to accomplish the assigned jobs of the employer in the comfort of his/her home accessible by using business technologies such as Virtual Private Network that provide the safest method to give employees access to the same network resources that they would have in the office, Electronic Document Management (e-DMS) that provides a repository of important documents and files in digital format making it easy to search and retrieve, Broadband Internet connections/ Wifi, Video-conferencing that provides online platform for conducting official meetings and presentations.

Flexible work arrangements can be seen as a paradox (ter Hoeven & van Zoonen, 2015). Telecommuting affects individual workers, organisations, and the community in various ways. The study (Khoury, 2009) found that working from home not only benefits employees by eliminating their daily commutes, it also increases productivity and leads to healthier lifestyles. A meta-analysis of 46 studies by Gajendran and Harrison (2007) demonstrated that working from home lowers work–family conflict and that the benefits increase for those who work from home more frequently. It was found that telework positively effects employees’ the work-life balance (Maruyama, Hopkinson, & James, 2009).At the same time, there is some risk of overlap between work and private or family life – that is, work–home interference – because of longer hours of work and the combination of paid work and other responsibilities, which may result in increased work–family conflict. Some studies shows that remote working not only reduces expenses on office infrastructure but also reduces Carbon footprints. Few researches suggests that almost 80% of telecommuters feel a greater commitment to their organizations (Telecommute Connecticut, 2002), whereas others highlight working remotely can adversely impact employee commitment and organizational identification due to feelings of detachment. According to a survey by SAP Concur, 69% of

the workforce in India believes their productivity has increased while working remotely. On the other end, various studies have suggested that professional isolation may leave remote employees feeling excluded in terms of office interactions (Golden et al., 2008; G. Vega & Brennan, 2000). For instance, various authors have argued that virtual working arrangements

can lead to constraints on social interactions between employees (Baker, Moon, & Ward, 2006; Golden et al., 2008).Past studies highlighted that teleworking might decrease organizational commitment and increased stress because the challenges involved in developing identification and commitment toward one’s organization are magnified when one is working remotely (Thatcher & Zhu, 2006; Wiesenfeld, Raghuram, & Garud, 1998.At the same time, employees in companies that offer dependent benefits and flexible working options reported lower absenteeism, higher morale, higher job satisfaction, higher employer loyalty and lower turnover rates

(Galinsky and Stein 1990; Thompson et al. 1999; Roehling, Roehling, and Moen 2001).

Despite the compelling reasons to consider remote working, such arrangements still lack support and utilization in the Indian Organizations in practice, the most frequently cited barriers to remote working in India include: 1) Rigid organization culture 2) employers not convinced of the economic benefits of this new way of contact less working- a lack of universal understanding or recognition by employers of the potential monetary advantage of remote working arrangement, most of the managers believe that the benefits of working remotely accrue to the workers but not the Company 3) the existence of a management style that associates physical presence with performance and is therefore not conducive to managing remote workers effectively (Van Horn & Storen, 2000).

Work from home concept was started by Software Companies like IBM, TCS, Infosys etc. as part of their employee wellbeing and work life balance practices. Technology giants in India have encouraged the majority of the staff to opt for work-from-home in the times of covid-19 crises. Jack Dorsey CEO, Twitter, announced that their employees can work from home permanently even after the Covid-19 pandemic ends. Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google told employees that the remote work policy will be extended till 2021. TCS, India’s largest infotech and outsourcing company with around 450,000 employees, reported recently that it

would move 75% of its employees to work from home permanently by 2025. Clearly, for the IT sector, the transition to Work from Home is smoother than others, given the fact that training needed for remote working is already in place. In India, the proportion of remote workers is higher in services and among non-profit and non-governmental organizations, but below average in the Non-IT Sectors (National Studies for India by ILO, 2015).

The strong work ethics can be a hindrance when adopting new work policies in Indian Organization that do not correspond with traditional notions of an ideal worker.

Evidences suggest that employers consider subordinate’s absence from the workplace as lack of devotion to work (Williamsn et al., 2013; Kossek, Thompson, & Lautsch, 2015). The inferences and attributions supervisors make about telecommuters are often made spontaneously, without their intent or knowledge of doing so (Elsbach, Cable, & Sherman, 2010). For example, telecommuting tends to signal an employee’s prioritization of personal and family concerns above work, regardless of the employee’s actual motive for telecommuting which can be co-morbidities family reasons child care in absence of day cares etc.

Golden & Veiga, 2008 have illustrated in their research importance of high-quality superior subordinate relationship for those employees who telework frequently. Different values guiding managers in public and private sector organizations are one of the factors influencing managers acceptability to remote working. While managers in private sector organizations named values like profitability and innovativeness as most important, managers in public sector organizations put values like formal work procedures and accountability. Trend with respect to telecommuting shows many levels of management do not understand telecommuting principles (Ryan, 2002) , yet allow telecommuting within their organizations. Managers also face the increasing complexity of managing blended workgroups comprising virtual and non-virtual members, which creates challenges for coordinating and motivating these employees (Van Dyne et al., 2007).

Organizations trying to control their flexible working employees through traditional means (e.g., bureaucratic or outcome-based control) will face substantial difficulties (Ashford et al., 2007).The traditional ‘command and control’ style of management is not really possible with remote working, and many managers fear this loss of control. In fact, to reclaim their power the supervisors may increase direction and control of work procedures or even increase the surveillance of subordinates (National Study for India, 2019).The effective management of flexible working employees is a challenge for their supervisors because of the complexity of flexwork and other forms of virtual work regarding social and spatial separation and increased ambiguity of the work situation (Golden & Raghuram, 2010). Go, (2016) in his research has pointed out that Work from home creates a big gap in communication between superior and

the subordinates. Work from Home provides employees an opportunity to work as and when they want to start, but at the same time is a matter of concern for Managers to gage remote employee’s commitment to work and contribution to productivity.

The existence of different perceptions is expected to generate organizational and behavioral consequences (Birkinshaw et al. 2000). Thus, the recognition of different perspectives of multiple stakeholder’s (Managers, remote workers and traditional office goers) is an important and relevant concern for the success of any new implementation in high power distance culture prevailing in the Indian Organizations.

Given the rise in managers engaged in remote work, it is somewhat sur­prising that existing research on remote working has been restricted in its scope, mainly focused on the perspectives and outcomes of remote working to employees only, neglecting the perspective and outcome of remote working on managers, who supervise them on a day-to-day basis.

METHODOLOGY

This study is a review paper based on the previous researches related to factors associated with and consequences of remote working selected on the basis of the easy accessibility.

The purpose of study is to gain an understanding on line manager’s experience of supervising remote working and their interpretation of those experiences to gage overall satisfaction. Based on the items of various perceptions measurement scales developed from qualitative data in the previous studies, related to telecommuting, the four important subsections related to remote working namely Operational Issues, Organizational Issues, Technological Issues and Interpersonal Relationship Issues were impressed upon in the present study.

INTERPRETATION AND DISCUSSION

Considering Dummy Sample Size of 80 line managers following is the interpretation of findings obtained from thorough review of previous literature, highlighting the perception of managerial cadre with respect to remote working, the extent of acceptance of remote working and satisfaction from remote working, as far as managerial cadre is concerned.

OPERATIONAL ISSUES RELATED TO REMOTE WORKING

1. Infrastructure, operational efficiency and Work Culture of Indian Organizations do not support remote working