The future of work: Exploring New Zealand’s working from home revolution
While the world has been forced to adapt to a series of new norms due to COVID-19 lockdowns, MIT School of Business senior lecturer Francesca Horsley argues that the concept of working from home (WFH) is nothing new and management should be developing a best practice response that addresses productivity, performance, health, safety, networking and creativity.
It's estimated more than forty per cent of New Zealand employees worked online for periods during the two COVID-19 Alert Level 3 and 4 lockdowns in April and early May 2020. This meant moving quickly from centralised work locations to full-time tele-working.
In the September 2021 Research Monograph Series, Horsley presented Working from home – the new normal? In it she explores recent COVID-19 developments, reviews initial research and critiques the current response of New Zealand organisations.
“I'm interested in organisational studies, psychology as well as sociology,” she says. “I’m interested in how these topics affect us through changes during the pandemic. The pandemic is a classic example of changing behaviours, which would never have been seen before.”
Horsley teaches business heritage, management and organisational behaviour at MIT
In the research abstract, she explains how COVID-19 has triggered and accelerated change for organisations. It has meant transformation of processes for employees, managers and educationalists; where rapid upskilling has been essential, a reconfiguration of teaching styles required with the greater utilisation of platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
“I’m fascinated by the relationship between employers and employees with WFH, so when the Business School was given the brief of topics relating to COVID-19, I thought that could be perfect,” she says.
The lecturer is currently collaborating with an MIT graduate on a further piece of research on WFH, this time the impact of WFH on the domestic lives of women employees with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
“I'm interested in the home and the idea of home-space compared to office-space. When work demands clash with home life, such as childcare, domestic duties, and cultural practices – what are the ramifications? I look at these shifts in society because they’re significant. What does it mean for us in terms of relaxation, domestic nurturing?”
An ongoing, unresolved issue has been the response of management to reframe organisational and cultural contexts required by WFH. Traditional management-employee relationships are inadequate when face-to-face interactions move to remote management. Similarly, the new environment challenges co-worker collaboration and communication.
“Managers have had all the power up till now. We look at New Zealand, in particular, where most of our management structures are hierarchical - we don't have many flat structures and so the power has always devolved downwards,” says Horsley.
“If you're looking at working remotely it’s much more on the flat structure and you're passing a lot of the responsibility or autonomy to the worker and trust comes into it. There’s a paradigm shift,” she says.
Francesca Horsley concludes the monograph by stating that while the practice of WFH is set to become the new normal working environment; managers and HR practitioners are failing to develop a model of best practice that addresses productivity, performance, health and safety, networking and creativity and other continuances that are readily available in the traditional office setting.
“I enjoyed the whole intellectual pursuit of writing this monograph and I'm interested in this sociological change that's happening. I think it's a story about WFH, which is nothing new, it’s been around since the 1970s. It shines a light on some basic issues involved, like trust and innovation.”
If you would like to read Working from home – the new normal? You can find it here. To explore more in the Research Monograph Series, you can find the other monographs here.
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