Technology adoption and worker engagement in remote working: Insights on inclusion

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic shook the entire world. All sectors, industries, organisations, and more importantly, people were affected by multiple restrictions implemented by their respective governing bodies. Federal lockdowns and all the emerging laws and regulations associated with them have forced organisations worldwide to transition their operations to remote environments. The implications from the organisations’ perspective vary from leadership to management, structure to operations, and training and development to policy making. However, from the employees’ perspective, the implications vary from general well-being to work engagement, satisfaction to motivation, and followership to trust. Nonetheless, remote work has other implications, such as productivity, the impact of social distancing, work-life balance, and isolation concerns. Therefore, this article aims to present critical thinking and comprehensively analyse the existing literature on remote working, transformational leadership, and work engagement contexts. Theoretical and practical gaps are discussed, and recommendations for future research could contribute to our better understanding of remote leadership and its practical elements. Remote working environments are believed to be permanent working arrangements for many organisations and employees; hence, scholars and practitioners must explore them to further depths.

The growing popularity of remote and hybrid work has changed the dynamics of how teams function and accomplish work tasks, creating opportunities to align work practices with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Remote work not only promotes labor market inclusion by eliminating barriers such as those of transportation but also reduces the carbon footprint associated with daily commuting. However, despite the advantages of remote work, researchers and practitioners point to the problem of unstable engagement among remote workers. This study examines the key factors influencing work engagement in remote and hybrid work models, looking at how these factors vary depending on the degree of remote work and the nature of the work. Based on a systematic review, 14 critical factors influencing engagement were identified, followed by the development of a questionnaire and the analysis of responses from 181 employees representing various remote work models. The results obtained in the survey indicate the universal importance that work–life balance, open access to organizational knowledge, and a personalized work environment have for building work engagement. At the same time, the extent of remote work, the form of employment, and team integration methods influence the importance of other factors, revealing differences between fully remote and hybrid employees. The findings underline that building effective strategies to foster engagement should be based on adapting the actions taken to specific work conditions.

Family farms are the main force that promotes the direct application of new agricultural technology to production. So what are the factors that affect the adoption of new agricultural technology by family farms, and can the adoption of new technology increase the operating income of family farms? Using cross-sectional data from 847 family farms, this study examines the determinants and impacts of multiple new agricultural technologies adoption on family farms’ income in China. To account for selection bias from both observable and unobservable factors, an endogenous switching regression model is employed to evaluate the effects of new agricultural technology on family farms’ income. The empirical results show that the adoption of new agricultural technology is affected by the endowment of farmers and the characteristics of family farms. After controlling for the selection bias, the adoption of new agricultural technologies has a positive and significant impact on family farms’ income. And the impact on the non-adopter family farms is much larger than adopter family farms. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that family farms with a larger area of arable land earn more from the adoption of new technologies than small farms. In all types of technology investigated, the new methods of pest control and the new chemical fertilizer technology have a relatively large impact on family farms’ income, while the new mechanical technology has the least impact on family farms’ income. The adoption of new technologies by family farms is more important for promoting the progress of agricultural science and technology. Therefore, it is necessary to take effective measures to overcome the obstacles to the adoption of new agricultural technologies and pay more attention to the use of new agricultural technologies to improve agricultural production efficiency.

The aim of the present study was to explore whether remote and on-site work stress during the COVID-19 pandemic was experienced with different severity. The second goal was to investigate stress conditions at both working modes. The study involved 946 individuals working in the education system and BSS sector in different Polish organizations. The following tools were used: the Brief Scale of Vocational Stress by Dudek and Hauk, the Polish version of the scales to measure work-family conflicts by Grzywacz, Frone, Brewer and Kovner, Meyer and Allen's Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment Scales in the Polish adaptation by Bańka, Wołowska and Bazińska, the Satisfaction with Job Scale by Zalewska. The analysis of intergroup differences revealed that remote work stress severity was significantly lower than on-site work stress severity. The regression analyses proved that work-family conflict and job satisfaction were significant predictors of remote and on-site work stress. Continuance commitment positively predicted on-site work stress. Both models turned out to be statistically significant. The variables included in the models explained 39% and 35% of the variability of the remote work and on-site work stress, respectively. Remote work is associated with lower stress severity than on-site work. For both types of work, the higher the level of work-family conflict, the higher the level of stress severity, but the higher the job satisfaction, the lower the stress severity. Continuance commitment is positively related to on-site stress, which means that people who work for an organization and see no alternative feel more stressed. Such an effect was observed only in the case of on-site work. The study findings are discussed in light of previous research, and implications for organizational practice are considered. Int J Occup Med Environ Health. 2023;36(1):96-111.

Purpose Contemporary organizations face a growing need for innovation while work is becoming increasingly digitalized. In such a context, employees’ innovative work behaviour (IWB) is crucial. However, little attention has been given to whether and how human resource management (HRM) practices can sustain IWB in remote work. Thus, this study aims to explore the relationship between performance management (PM) practices and employees’ IWB when job is performed remotely. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on signalling perspective of HRM, this study applies regression analysis on data collected through an online questionnaire administered to a sample of 647 Italian employees testing the moderating role of remote work in the relationship between PM and IWB. Findings The findings show that result- and new-competence-based appraisal promote IWB, regardless of the extent to which work is performed remotely. In contrast, remote work nullifies the role of employee involvement in the goal setting process, as well as the influence of compensation-oriented PM and developmental performance management. Continuous feedback emerges as the key PM practice sustaining IWB among remote employees. Research limitations/implications This study shows that remote work represents a key boundary condition in the relationship between PM and IWB. More specifically, the findings indicate that only certain PM practices − such as result- and competence-based appraisal and continuous feedback sustain IWB when work is extensively performed remotely. However, the reliance on a convenience sample of Italian employees limits the generalizability of the findings, indicating the need for cross-national and longitudinal studies to examine these relationships across different remote and hybrid work settings. Practical implications The findings suggest that organizations seeking to foster employees’ IWB should redesign PM systems by prioritizing results and competence development over task-based control. In remote work contexts, continuous feedback appears particularly critical. In addition, compensation-oriented PM practices do not inhibit IWB, whereas involvement of employees in goal setting becomes non-significant. Social implications This study suggests that some PM practices, particularly continuous feedback, can contribute to mitigate drawbacks of remote work, like for instance social isolation and work-related stress, thus supporting more sustainable and inclusive forms of work. Originality/value This study advances the literature on PM and IWB by identifying remote work as a key boundary condition. It also extends existing research on remote work by showing that practices known to support remote workers’ well-being − such as result-based appraisal, competence-based appraisal and continuous feedback − may likewise foster IWB, basically generating a signalling effect that encourages employees to be proactive and to generate new ideas and ways of working. In doing so, this study also provides guidelines to companies to redesign their PM systems.

A diary study of psychological effects of misinformation and COVID-19 Threat on work engagement of working from home employees

Orientation: During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, organisations, including higher education institutions, had to shift their thinking regarding traditional work models to new ones conducive to the lockdown.Research purpose: This study investigated employees’ levels of engagement during work-from-home (WFH) within a private higher education institution in South Africa in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.Motivation for the study: While some studies have looked at the effect of WFH on employee engagement, few studies could be located that look at this phenomenon within a private higher education setting.Research approach/design and method: This study adopted the positivistic research paradigm using a quantitative research approach. The target population included 133 personnel. Total population sampling was used, and the data were collected by administering an online survey using the 17-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). Descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), independent sample t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and effect sizes were used to analyse the data. A satisfactory response rate of 79% was realised.Main findings: The study found that despite the difficulties and anxieties brought about by the radical shifts to WFH, the personnel could still thrive and show high levels of engagement. This was attributed to positive drivers of engagement such as autonomy, psychosocial safety, convenience, social union, and most importantly, organisational support.Practical/managerial implications: Work-from-home is regarded as a viable work arrangement for the foreseeable future. Private higher education should take note of the suggestions put forward to improve, sustain and manage employee engagement successfully.Contribution/value-add: This study contributes to the body of knowledge surrounding employee engagement in the WFH context within the private higher education sphere.

Purpose In the last decade, there has been a growing consensus that expanding gender diversity in the workplace can improve productivity and work quality. However, the well-being of female workers continues to be a challenge for companies. This study aims to evaluate the influence of some work practices (remote work, participation, flex-time, and work autonomy) on work engagement and work-life balance of European workers in the logistics sector, distinguishing male from female workers. The analysis is grounded in the job demands-resources (JD-R) model and social exchange theory (SET). Design/methodology/approach To this end, we used a quantitative methodology, carrying out a multi-group analysis and applying the partial least square method to a sample of 4,806 European workers in the logistics sector. Findings The results reveal significant gender differences in the intensity of influence of work practices on work engagement and work-life balance. Participation and flex-time practices positively influence the work engagement of female workers, and remote work practices their work-life balance, but with less intensity when compared to male workers. The relationship between work engagement and work-life balance is negative, being more intense in the case of female workers. Finally, when the association between workplace practices and work-life balance is mediated by work engagement, there is a positive influence of remote work and participation in work practices in the case of female workers. Originality/value This study contributes to deepening knowledge about gender differences in the workplace by integrating the JD-R model and SET to reveal gendered pathways between workplace practices, work engagement, and work-life balance in the logistics sector. It demonstrates that workplace practices appropriate to workers' gender should be promoted to enhance work engagement and work-life balance, which are valued by workers and could lead to greater worker proficiency.

Remote work arrangements, facilitated through digital entrepreneurship and remote work platforms, represent employment inclusion strategy for persons with disabilities (PWD) who need to possess a certain level of digital entrepreneurial competencies (DEC) and knowledge of remote work platforms to participate in such arrangements. Contemporary academic literature on remote work opportunities for PWD lacks research specifically targeting the competencies required for remote work within this particular group. One approach to measuring the DEC and remote work competencies of PWD is through self-assessment of relevant competencies. Another approach involves assessing their actual competencies through knowledge and ability assessment. This study focuses on the self-assessment of DEC and remote work competencies among a sample of PWD in Serbia (n = 125), and explores their association with various socio-demographic and contextual factors. Statistical analysis included exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, and non-parametric tests to compare differences between groups. The results suggest a clear need for capacity building in remote work for PWD. Furthermore, certain socio-demographic and contextual factors were found to have a significant impact on perceptions of PWD remote work competencies.

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about significant changes in our work practices and our interaction with technology. As remote and hybrid working models gain prominence, our study endeavors to gain insights into how remote work impacts the well-being of employees. Methods A questionnaire was developed and administered to remote workers in Morocco, dissecting their experiences and challenges in the remote work landscape, to delve into the intricate connections between various aspects of remote work, encompassing technostress, burn-out, sleep quality, job recovery, and resilience determinants. The results were then analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Qualitative interviews were also conducted with 17 managers. Results According to the 380 received answers, workers were exposed to intensive use of technology, which has negatively affected their lives and performance, and increased their workload. An important insight of our study is that women’s perceived technostress was lower than that of men. Furthermore, technostress showed a significant positive effect on burnout and a significant negative effect on sleep quality among workers. Job recovery was associated with increased levels of resilience and engagement, suggesting an interesting potential to impact the well-being at work. Discussion-Conclusion Our study stands as a vital contribution to unraveling the intricate tapestry of remote work dynamics in Morocco. It underscores the paramount importance of addressing technostress, a facet of remote work often overshadowed by its convenience. It also highlights the significance of fostering work recovery mechanisms and nurturing interpersonal and intrapersonal well-being.

Working from home (WFH) has become increasingly common, and its impact on job performance is particularly interesting to researchers. Prior research has established a positive correlation between remote work and job performance, but the underlying mechanisms still need to be fully understood. This diary study addresses this issue by applying the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory and developing a mediation model that identifies two processes responsible for the positive and negative relationships of WFH (compared to working at the office or WATO) with job performance. The study was conducted in a public organization, and 203 employees engaged in hybrid work arrangements answered an online survey for eight consecutive workdays. Results showed that working from home (WFH) had an indirect positive relationship with job performance through daily concentration and work engagement. Instead, no significant indirect relationship of WFH with daily job performance through daily social isolation and tension was observed. However, a disengagement “effect” was found, as the indirect relationship of WFH with daily job performance via daily social isolation and work engagement was negative and statistically significant. Theoretically, this study supports a motivational mechanism linking WFH to job performance, does not support the health-impairment process triggered by WFH, and emphasizes the importance of considering the complex interplay between job demands and motivational states. From a practical standpoint, the study suggests that organizations implementing hybrid work should enhance employee motivation, for instance, by providing tools to improve employee concentration and addressing potential feelings of social isolation when working from home.

As mobile technology has advanced, awareness is growing that these technologies may benefit teaching and learning. However, despite this interest, the factors that will determine the acceptance of mobile technology by lecturers have been limited. This study proposed and tested a new model that extends the technology acceptance model (TAM) with three new variables: digital literacy, ICT anxiety, and ICT teaching self-efficacy. The TAM models the adoption of new technology based on measuring a users’ beliefs and attitudes to the technology. In particular, the TAM states that two factors influence a user’s use and perception of new technology. The first factor, perceived usefulness, is the degree to which a person believes that a particular technology will be beneficial to their lives. The second factor, perceived ease of use, is the measure of the degree an individual believes a particular technology is free from effort. Research has shown that a large portion of lecturers still resists the integration of technology into the classroom. Two aspects, in particular, have been consistently found to impact lecturers’ adoption of technology. The first aspect shown to influence the adoption of new technology is the beliefs held by the lecturers. Specifically, it is the perceived value of the new technology (perceived usefulness) and perceived effort needed to learn to use the new technology (perceived ease of use) that have been established as playing a major role in the adoption of technology. The second major aspect seen to influence adoption is the skill of lecturers to use digital technology (referred to as digital literacy) and the skill needed to integrate it into their teaching (teaching self-efficacy). The new model that was proposed and tested measured the impact of digital literacy, ICT anxiety, and ICT teaching self-efficacy, along with the well established factors of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, on lecturer’ acceptance of mobile learning. A survey was used to measure the major variables in this study. The research found that perceived usefulness, ease of use, digital literacy, anxiety, and teaching self-efficacy were critical factors in lecturers’ behavioral intentions to use mobile learning. The results of this study indicated the importance of these factors in the acceptance of mobile learning. From this model, educationalists are able to identify and develop strategies to support the successful introduction of mobile technology with in educational setting. This research has added to and clarified the existing literature into mobile learning. In particular, it recognizes the role that lecturers play in the future acceptance of mobile learning. It shows that the factors that influence lecturers’ adoption of mobile learning may differ from those of their students. It therefore highlights that these factors need to be considered when implementing mobile technology into the teaching environment. • Journal of Information Technology Education: Research Volume 13, 2014 Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is per- missible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact Publisher@InformingScience.org to request redistribution permission.

• WFH reshapes time use and well-being through home-bound recoupling. • Women report less stress, time scarcity, and better health when WFH. • WFH shows negative, non-significant effects on men’s well-being. • Social participation remains stable regardless of work location. • WFH may ease time pressures and promote well-being among women. The normalization of frequent, full-day working from home (WFH) marks a structural shift in the spatial organization of everyday life, with profound implications for time use and well-being. This article contributes to the growing literature on the social consequences of WFH by theorizing the home as a renewed site of socio-temporal anchoring. We propose the concept of home-bound recoupling to capture how WFH practices re-anchor everyday life to place, reshaping temporal experience and individual welfare. Focusing on four key dimensions of well-being – perceived time scarcity, stress, self-reported health, and social participation – we draw on representative data from the 2021 Swedish Survey of Time Use (subsample N = 625), collected shortly after the lifting of Sweden’s Covid-19-related WFH recommendations. We compare individuals engaged in WFH and working from the office (WFO) on a typical weekday, controlling for bounded time spent on paid work. The results reveal gender divergences: WFH is associated with improved well-being among women, who report lower time pressure, reduced stress, and better health relative to their WFO counterparts. For men, the associations are not statistically significant and, in most cases, trend in a negative direction. Social participation remains stable across work settings for both genders. We conclude that WFH can function as a gender-sensitive strategy for mitigating intensifying time pressures in daily life and enhancing everyday well-being. By conceptualizing WFH within broader processes of spatial recoupling, this study advances theoretical debates on digital labor geographies and the restructuring of home-space under post-pandemic conditions.

Purpose The persistence of remote and hybrid work has resulted in socially isolated supply chain workers working in functional groups to perform sometimes repetitive and unengaging tasks, under the auspices of performance dashboards. This study examines perseverance, a personality trait that may be a potential factor in stimulating helping behavior and improving workgroup performance. In addition, we also explore common logistics and supply chain management task structures, including goal-setting and task complexity as moderating influences. Design/methodology/approach This paper utilizes an online scenario-based vignette experiment designed in collaboration with a senior supply chain management executive to explore personality and situational factors that influence helping behavior among remote workers performing an unengaging supply chain task. Findings We find that, while a worker's perseverance is positively related to their likelihood of helping coworkers, this direct relationship is under competitive mediation through normative ability, in which we also find that perseverant workers tend to focus more on their own performance, even though assessing their normative ability is positively tied to helping behavior. Further, both of these dynamics are respectively amplified by participative goal-setting and, unexpectedly, task complexity. Practical implications As firms continue to struggle with return-to-office mandates, our results offer insights into how supply chain managers can improve workgroup performance among remote workers, particularly those tasked with unengaging and unrewarding tasks that remain commonplace in the logistics and supply chain management domain. Originality/value To our best knowledge, this is the first study to examine remote supply chain worker performance. Even as technology continues to advance, there are certain repetitive and unengaging tasks that cannot be simply automated. Our study offers a potential path for supply chain managers to improve remote worker engagement and workgroup performance on these tasks.

While research suggests that work centrality has a positive effect on work engagement and a negative influence on family satisfaction, these relations may differ as a function of one's work setting (onsite vs. remote working). In the present study, we examined the direct and indirect – through work-family conflict (WFC), family-work conflict (FWC), work-family enrichment (WFE), and family-work enrichment (FWE) – effects of work centrality on work engagement and family satisfaction. We also examined whether these effects of work centrality on work engagement and family satisfaction differed between onsite and remote employees. We used a cross-sectional survey design to test our hypotheses among a total of 432 employees, including 152 always working onsite and 280 working remotely. As expected, our results revealed that work centrality was positively related to work engagement and negatively to family satisfaction. Moreover, the indirect effects (IE) of work centrality on work engagement were significantly mediated by WFE, whereas the IE of work centrality on family satisfaction were significantly mediated by FWC, WFE, and FWE. Finally, the relations between work centrality and the outcomes (work engagement and family satisfaction) were stronger among onsite employees than among remote employees. These results revealed that remote working may act as a double-edged sword by buffering the negative effects of work centrality on family satisfaction but also limiting the positive effects of work centrality on work engagement. Organizations and managers should thus consider addressing employees' work centrality and work type in their efforts to promote employees' professional and personal well-being.