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Mukhopadhyay, B.R. and Mukhopadhyay, B.K. (2020). How to effectively manage remote work during COVID-19 phase? The Sentinel, Editorial, 18th March
To cite: Mukhopadhyay, B.R. and Mukhopadhyay, B.K. (2020). How to effectively manage remote
work during COVID-19 phase? The Sentinel, Editorial, 18th March
To cite: Mukhopadhyay, B.R. and Mukhopadhyay, B.K. (2020). How to effectively manage
remote work during COVID-19 phase? The Sentinel, Editorial, 18th March
How to effectively Managing Remote Work during COVID-19 phase?
Dr. Boidurjo Rick Mukhopadhyay and Prof. (Dr.) B K Mukhopadhyay
Disruption also creates opportunity. Case
counts of COVID-19 all over the world is
growing every day. A Japanese cosmetics
company called Shiseido asked 8000 employees
to work from home out of concerns over the
virus outbreak, similarly in London companies
like Crossrail, OMD and Chevron have asked
employees to work from home. Even for
companies that are struggling recently, e.g.,
Hitachi whose sales fell by 33% last year, have
asked employees to work from home in this
phase. Tencent in China, popular for video
games, social media and e-tail have asked
mainland employees to work remotely as well.
At the same time, we need to acknowledge the
practical challenges of companies who would
struggle to operate entirely virtually simply
because of the very nature of their businesses.
Examples may range from Starbucks, real-
estate, dining to Walmart.
Workplaces, schools and Universities across 80
countries where the slow-but-steadily invading
virus have already impacted decisively turned
to remote working with travel bans and work-
from-home regulations in place. While for the
To cite: Mukhopadhyay, B.R. and Mukhopadhyay, B.K. (2020). How to effectively manage remote
work during COVID-19 phase? The Sentinel, Editorial, 18th March
education sector, blended learning or
technology enhanced learning or online
learning are not new concepts or practice, alike
the digitally managed app-based virtual
companies (particularly dominant in China,
e.g., Alibaba, DiDi, Meituan, ele.me, etc.) but it
is quite a new challenge or opportunity for
many other sectors and traditional work-based
organisations in an Economy. For those
interested in organisational behaviour, this
new practice of working remotely raises
questions on changing team working
dynamics, choice of communication modes,
personal anxiety and attitude, virtual
leadership, IT management, and overall impact
on team performance.
Employees can get exclusively task-focused in
this period given the solitude and lack of a
working environment around peers. While
goal-oriented action is generally good for
productivity, but detachment and loneliness
sourcing from disconnectedness from peers
could lead to fall in engagement and worker
motivation. Leadership, consequently,
becomes all the more important in this period.
It is also a time where leaders need to rethink
their personal preferences for particular staff
and be there for ‘everybody’, better evaluation
of in-group and out-group dynamics and
accordingly allocate tasks and responsibilities
based on employee skills and maintain overall
balance.
All employees, given their current level and
engagement, needs timely access information
and required resources. This is possible
virtually. Leaders also need to schedule virtual
meetings with clearly defined goals and
short/medium objectives during this period.
While keeping tabs on employees and
micromanaging needs to be avoided, it would
be equally prudent to keep track of everybody’s
work progress and needs from time to time.
Facetime, video conferences or even good ol’
phone calls could be better than long and
frequent emails. Keeping up employee
motivation and engagement levels should not
be any different for virtual workplaces, if not
more when everybody is anxious about the
impact of virus.
Appreciation for little things go a long way.
Instead of reiterating the importance of goal
alignment and weekly work objectives for the
newly formed virtual teams in this period,
appreciation and acknowledgment of team
progress during distress times could help
humanise a workplace and leader-follower
interactions. People working from home can
have family around, with little kids playing
around in an informal setting. Leaders need to
appreciate efforts put in consciously by the
employees to keep the work progress up while
being in a home environment.
For certain businesses like real estate though,
where agents need to tour properties with their
clients have faced a heavy setback. Similarly,
hourly paid workers don’t get paid, those in
retail, manufacturing, ride-hailing, dining,
healthcare, food delivery. For them, working
from home isn’t really a feasible option. Real
estate deals in countries where a large
percentage of population is under quarantine
or have travel ban have become severely
problematic. For leaders in this industry, they
will need to project the likely increase in
demand for property visits or purchases when
things get back to normalcy when they do. It
will inadvertently put added pressure on
agents, properties, renovation agencies, interior
decorator firms, and overall time management
ability of firms in this industry. Therefore, it is
also a good time to build up good virtual
portfolios of properties and its features where
clients could find out most details that they
need, as one step towards coping with a
problem due to arrive tomorrow.
The climate economists who have been
promoting remote work might find this phase
interesting and useful to build further case in
point. Employees who don’t go to the office are
not using and paying for commute, thereby
leaving less carbon footprint. On the other
hand, there will be an increased business for
hand sanitizers, as it for masks today, when
employees are told to return to the office when
things get back to old normal’. While this may
be a time for no commutes, fairly flexible
schedule, home cooked lunch, more time with
To cite: Mukhopadhyay, B.R. and Mukhopadhyay, B.K. (2020). How to effectively manage remote
work during COVID-19 phase? The Sentinel, Editorial, 18th March
family, walking around in the house to de-
stress when work pressure goes up
employee’s mental health has however to be
prioritised by leaders.
It is possible for us to work from anywhere
today. In the US, about 29% employees did
their jobs remotely in 2018, according to
the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Among
workers ages 25 and older, 47% of workers
with a bachelor’s degree or higher worked
from home sometimes, according to BLS
data, compared to just 3% of workers with
only a high school diploma. For
Universities, lessons are shared virtually.
Recently in China, almost all mainland as
well as Sino-foreign colleges have their
teaching staff deliver lecture videos, live or
recorded, via zoom or skype and also
setting up platforms where class resources
can be shared by all learners. However,
when it comes to assessment and
evaluations, it can get quite practically
challenging as how teachers would
evaluate group work, presentations and
provide formative feedback.
Technology remains the key in this period and
clearly there is an added pressure on R&D and
company IT services that leaders are aware of.
It is important to not put added pressure on
existing technology while ensuring everybody
can access and use it as much as it is needed for
a given workload level. This month, JPMorgan
Chase had asked 10% (out of a total of 127,000)
of their employees to work from home, thereby
allowing the company to test its plan for office
closures. Amazon followed the same step and
their employees were asked to log in remotely
using company VPN. It is nothing new that
companies use VPNs dependent on traffic over
the public Internet. This is primarily because
public internet is an unreliable transport that
can develop problems as connections are made
from different parts of the world. This trying
time can test whether existing corporate VPNs
are up to the challenge of suddenly supporting
a large remote workforce.
There can be problems of VPN overloaded
from spikes in traffic, e.g., if Amazon’s 750,000
employees all simultaneously connect to the
corporate VPN, it will very likely crash. This
could pose significant challenge when
technology cannot be used because it has been
overloaded and crashed. Similar to VPNs,
pressures can mount on video conferencing
applications who will bear new pressures in
this period. Therefore, a careful proportionate
use of technology must be maintained. Not too
much or too little.
Finally, while considering these measures in
place during the remote-working phase, it
could be an opportunity to identity newer ways
to evaluate how effective remote work can be
for your organisation and record the steps.
Once things get back to normalcy, the data
would allow managers to reflect what worked
and what didn’t, and most importantly why.
This could build new organisational
knowledge.
... In a relatively short period of time, the COVID-19 pandemic has already caused significant changes in users' experiences globally in emerging new habits, promoting remote work, and changing consumer behaviour (Mukhopadhyay, 2020;Sheth, 2020). This crisis led to some essential requirements for technology, as users have different needs and have also acted differently during it. ...
... The COVID-19 pandemic has already caused major changes in users' behaviour around the world (Mukhopadhyay, 2020;Sheth, 2020). Various researchers have studied behaviour and user experiences during the outbreak in many fields including the use of new technologies, examined the types of changes that have been made, and have tried to determine if they are temporary or will persist after the crisis has finally ended (Kumar et al., 2020). ...
... However, there are some studies investigating the impact of contactless payment technologies on different populations. In (Mukhopadhyay, 2020;Sheth, 2020), the authors studied the effect of COVID-19 and they concluded that the coronavirus pandemic has caused significant changes in users' behaviour. Likewise, our results showed that the changes in users' behaviour due to COVID-19 occur in three forms related to the contactless payment technology: user usage, user belief, and user preference. ...
Article
Contactless payments are being increasingly used with people demonstrating their interest in the payment technologyby waving or tapping their cards and devices at point-of-sale (POS) terminals across the world to make purchases. Eventhough the shift to contactless payments systems was already taking place before the COVID-19 outbreak, it is essential tostudy if the current crisis has accelerated this transformation. In this study, an online survey was used to examine the experience ofutilizing contactless payment technology in Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 outbreak. We also investigated the factors thatcould affect this experience. The results showed that positive experiences in utilizing contactless payment technology have increased after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the study showed that health safety and hygiene were the mainreasons for using contactless technology for payment during the coronavirus crisis, while the security of transactions was the mainconcern in not using it for payments.
... The sudden shift to WFH imposed a new Normal for both employees and administration. The vast majority of employees and managers were also experiencing WFH for the first time [8]. The employees shifted to a new work environment guided by more self-discipline and commitment compared to the classic work environment where the employees may have to record their attendance every day and perform under the direct supervision of their manager. ...
Conference Paper
Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, countries hurried to offer unprecedented levels of emergency support to keep companies afloat, protect jobs and incomes and prevent the economy from collapsing. The Kingdom of Bahrain has adopted a vast range of preventive measures aimed at ensuring social distancing. Schools closed, private and public organizations switched to remote working. The quick and urgent shift to remote working policy has an impact on public organizations. A national study carried out by the Bahrain Institute of Public Administration (BIP A) in 2020 identified undercover Unemployment which is low productivity among employees working from home (WFH). Similar observations were reported within the context of COVID-19 and were explained with specific characteristics of WFH and its emerging challenges. This study investigates the factors behind the (UU) in the public organizations during the pandemic. Moreover, it proposes managerial solutions to public organizations towards sustainability and advocacy during the pandemic. Qualitative study used 12 semi-directive interviews have been conducted with public organizations' employees working in ministries in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The findings of this study will provide insights on the different reasons for (UU) during the pandemic. The results can assist managers and public organizations design constructive strategies to improve employee's productivity and reduce (UU) during the pandemic.
Chapter
Full-text available
Managing the associated consequences of the increasing demand for organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is one of the common phenomena of concerns among professionals and scholars in the fields of Industrial/Organisational Psychology and Human Resource Management. Emotional stress, job creep and work-family conflict occupy prominent positions on the list of risks and costs associated with OCB. The prevalence of stress in the Industry 4.0 work environment, for instance, is enormous, and its causes are linked to personal and organisational factors. Currently, corporate organisations hanker for productivity, performance and profitability more than before, and market competition is increasing. Meanwhile, Human Resources (HR) remains an important asset for businesses to survive and exceed the expectations of stakeholders, especially customers and investors. Hence, employees’ ability to cope with the inevitable organisational pressure is sacrosanct, as employers seek to employ and retain only individuals that are endowed with high levels of psychological capital (PsyCap). PsyCap is therefore believed to be an effective mechanism for coping with the associated consequences of the increasing demand for OCB.
Chapter
Managing the hygiene measures in the grocery retail sector has gained more and more importance during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sector faces a great challenge to keeping further spread as low as possible while not restricting people in their daily routines. Research focuses on what restrictions have been taken into action. However, less attention has been paid on the effects of the shopping experience of customers. The author develops an application that allows the reduction of the number of people in a shop while at the same time avoiding long queues and loss of time, exploiting the possibilities of digital technologies. Problems that have not yet been resolved despite hygiene measures and their effects are discussed. The developed application provides a basis for further development and conception of prototypes using digital technologies.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.