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Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a large portion of the workforce was unable to attend the physical workplace to attend their job.
Work from home, or WFH, is a concept where employees are able to perform their job from home. WFH enables employees to do their job while not being physically present in their designated workspace. [1] Digital transformation has enabled employees to work while being away from a physical workspace. This type of workstyle was implemented during the Coronavirus pandemic for many employees. [2]
Coronavirus and its outbreak have posed critical health challenges to the general public. Coronavirus, or Covid-19, is a virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). It has had two instances of outbreaks within the last 18 years. [3] On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern due to Covid-19 (2). In the early stages of 2020, countries such as China and the United States utilized a temporary restriction of travel in hopes of containing the spread of Covid-19. [3] It soon became apparent that travel restrictions were not enough to contain the spread, and therefore stay at home orders within the United States was issued in March, with California being the first state to mandate a state-wide order. [4]
With the spread of Covid-19 and stay-at-home orders, a large portion of the workforce was unable to go into the physical workplace to perform their job. To keep businesses afloat and continually provide goods and services, companies turned to work from home as an alternative to shutting down the business completely. [5] Employees were forced to adopt a remote space as their office from now on. No longer would employees be able to physically work alongside their colleagues. Instead, all communications had to be held online. Through a change in the physical office space, employees faced a different set of adversity.
With a sudden shift from normality to stay-at-home orders, employees were forced to work remotely. A new office environment meant employees had a new set of problems they must face. For some employees, they had experience with remote work and found little issues with the changing work environment. For others with less remote working experience, they faced a new challenge of figuring out how to do their job without being in their normal workspace. [6] Some other challenges employees faced were burnout, loneliness, mental health struggles, productivity problems, poor communication between an organization, and a new work-life balance.
For employees to work successfully while away from the physical workspace, employees need appropriate technologies to enable effective business practices. [2] Continuous advancements in technologies have enabled businesses to continue operating despite not being in a physical office. [7] Employees need appropriate software and hardware tools to ensure business practices run efficiently. [2] Remote work for office-based employees can contribute much of its operational success to email, instant messaging, document sharing, video conferencing, awareness services, and others. [4]
Zoom Video Communications is an American communications technology company. [8] Zoom looks to provide an easy and reliable platform for users to communicate with one another.[ citation needed ] They provide video telephony and online chat services through a cloud-based software platform to enable online communications. [8] Video conferencing calls are now held on Zoom and have the ability to hold mass meetings or just one on one conversations. [9] Zoom has enabled businesses to continue operations through four different types of versions. They offer a basic, pro, business, and an enterprise version to meet the demand of all types of businesses at different price points. All four were utilized during the pandemic, offering a varying number of participants that can be in a meeting, the option to record meetings, varying meeting minutes, and different price points. Each of these products is available by monthly subscription. [8]
Mental health is a person’s emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It can impact how individuals think, feel, and act and in turn will affect one’s decision-making. [10] With a shift to now working from home, employees faced a totally different set of problems they had to previously. Employees now faced new stresses, additional responsibilities at home, and a new work-life balance dynamic. [11]
New challenges threatened the mental mindset of many employees during the pandemic. Things such as health threats, potential layoffs, excessive workloads, social restrictions, isolation, change in the work-life balance, and lack of social support created new challenges for employees' mental health. [12] Economic downturn is linked to increased depression, anxiety, distress, and low self-esteem. As well, due to the economic downturn, many employees carried the burden that they could potentially become furloughed as well. Parents with children who experience school closures or lack of childcare are more likely to report symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder. [13]
Many Americans tried different methods to boost their mental health during the extraneous times of the pandemic. Common methods used to improve mental health included taking breaks from work, taking care of one’s body, connecting with others, and developing a hobby. Through these methods, office employees now working remotely were able to alleviate their stress. Companies tried to help their employees to by boosting pay, reimbursements for small expenditures, bonuses, schedule flexibility, and child care assistance. [14] [15] Companies such as Square and Pepsico understood the difficulties employees working from home now faces and attempted to make the difficult times a little easier on their employees.
Work-life balance is a term to describe an employee's time in and out of work. Inside operating hours, employees are working, and outside of work, employees have their own lives where they can do as they please. [16] During the pandemic, office workers faced new issues while working from home. Employees spent their working hours on a computer for the majority of the workday. Being at home during the workday presented new challenges for employees working from home.
For employees who had families, they faced the potential issue of getting sidetracked to do an assortment of tasks. Some examples include cooking meals, watching over children or pets, setting up remote school, and spending quality time with family. Family distractions could hurt the work and overall productivity of an employee.
Some employees found their work-life balance to prosper while working from home. Working from home cut out commute times, which gave employees more time for other things. As well, working from home could potentially eliminate issues that the workplace could not. While being at home, employees had access to friends and family. Due to this, spouses, children, or roommates could offer counsel, emotional support, or care during illness to ease fatigue. Through this, getting help from people outside of the organization proved to be beneficial as it allowed a disconnect from work.
For every individual, having a home as the physical workplace instead of an office brought new challenges as well as solutions for employees. Every individual had and continues to have different pros and cons of not being able to go to the office. Through this, employees’ new work-life balance being positive or negative is up to the individual.
With so many office-based employees switching to remote work due to the pandemic, the digitalization of the business world is changing the landscape of what is considered normal business practices. Normally, office-based employees would be in the physical office on a normal workday, but now with the ongoing innovation of remote offices, the future landscape of offices is changing. Covid-19 has accelerated the rate at which remote work is available. Going forward, most companies are anticipated to incorporate some type of hybrid work as well business trips are anticipated to be cut down 20% and be replaced by virtual meetings. [17]
Remote work, also called telecommuting, distance working, telework, teleworking, working from home (WFH), mobile work, remote job, work from anywhere (WFA), and flexible workplace, is a work arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work, such as an office building, warehouse, or store.
A virtual team usually refers to a group of individuals who work together from different geographic locations and rely on communication technology such as email, instant messaging, and video or voice conferencing services in order to collaborate. The term can also refer to groups or teams that work together asynchronously or across organizational levels. Powell, Piccoli and Ives (2004) define virtual teams as "groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed workers brought together by information and telecommunication technologies to accomplish one or more organizational tasks." As documented by Gibson (2020), virtual teams grew in importance and number during 2000-2020, particularly in light of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic which forced many workers to collaborate remotely with each other as they worked from home.
A health professional (or healthcare professional) may provide health care treatment and advice based on formal training and experience. The field includes those who work as a nurse, medical doctor, physician assistant, veterinarian, veterinary technician, veterinary assistant, pharmacist, pharmacy technician, medical assistant, physical therapist, occupational therapist, dentist, midwife, psychologist, or who perform services in allied health professions. A health professional may also be an expert in public health or community health.
Leaveism (leavism) is a term first coined in 2013 by Dr Ian Hesketh, a researcher at University of Manchester - in the UK, to describe the phenomena of employees using flexitime, annual leave, rest days and other leave entitlement schemes to have time off when they are in fact too unwell to go to work. He later extended this to include occasions whereby employees took work home and/or on holiday that they could not complete in paid working hours. Hesketh's research, which centred on well-being in the UK police service, sought to identify a lacuna in current thinking around absenteeism and presenteeism; of which there is a plethora of academic study and commentary. The aim of his studies was to highlight that the true extent of sickness absence may be masked by the practice of leaveism, and that there may be a hidden populace experiencing significant workload overload.
Activity-based working (ABW) recognises that people perform different activities in their day-to-day work, and therefore need a variety of work settings supported by the right technology and culture to carry out these activities effectively. Activity Based Working’s heavy emphasis on the creation of a culture of connection, inspiration, accountability and trust empowers individuals, teams and the organisation to perform to their potential. On a personal level Activity Based Working also enables each person to organise their work activities in a productive and enjoyable way that best suits what they need to do, and who they need to do it with. Although not normally driven by cost-saving as the business strategy, it can produce efficiencies and cost savings through the nature of collaboration and team work helping to work more effectively. Inspiring spaces that evolve from an activity-based approach are designed to create opportunities for a variety of workplace activities, from intense and focused work to collaborative settings, areas for impromptu meetings or more formal meetings.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching consequences beyond the spread of the disease itself and efforts to quarantine it, including political, cultural, and social implications.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected educational systems worldwide, leading to the near-total closures of schools, early childhood education and care (ECEC) services, universities and colleges.
Hazard controls for COVID-19 in workplaces are the application of occupational safety and health methodologies for hazard controls to the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Vaccination is the most effective way to protect against severe illness or death from COVID-19. Multiple layers of controls are recommended, including measures such as telework and flexible schedules, increased ventilation, personal protective equipment (PPE) and face coverings, physical distancing, and enhanced cleaning programs.
During a time of social distance and limited contact with others, social media became an important place to interact. Social media platforms are meant to connect people and helped the world remain connected, largely increasing usage during the pandemic. Since many people are asked to remain home, they have turned to social media to maintain their relationships and to access entertainment to pass the time.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the mental health of people around the world. The pandemic has caused anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in different population groups, including healthcare workers, patients and quarantined individuals, similar to earlier respiratory viral epidemics such as the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak, outbreaks of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and influenza pandemics. The Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee of the United Nations recommends that mental health support during an emergency should be driven by the core principles to "do no harm, promote human rights and equality, use participatory approaches, build on existing resources and capacities, adopt multi-layered interventions and work with integrated support systems." The COVID-19 pandemic also has an effect on social connectedness between people, trust in institutions and in other people, has caused changes in work and income, and is imposing a substantial burden of anxiety and worry on the population.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted hospitals around the world. Many hospitals have scaled back or postponed non-emergency care. This has medical consequences for the people served by the hospitals, and it has financial consequences for the hospitals. Health and social systems across the globe are struggling to cope. The situation is especially challenging in humanitarian, fragile and low-income country contexts, where health and social systems are already weak. Health facilities in many places are closing or limiting services. Services to provide sexual and reproductive health care risk being sidelined, which will lead to higher maternal mortality and morbidity. The pandemic also resulted in the imposition of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in places such as California and New York for all public workers, including hospital staff.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted healthcare workers physically and psychologically. Healthcare workers are more vulnerable to COVID-19 infection than the general population due to frequent contact with infected individuals. Healthcare workers have been required to work under stressful conditions without proper protective equipment, and make difficult decisions involving ethical implications. Health and social systems across the globe are struggling to cope. The situation is especially challenging in humanitarian, fragile and low-income country contexts, where health and social systems are already weak. Services to provide sexual and reproductive health care risk being sidelined, which will lead to higher maternal mortality and morbidity.
A systematic review notes that children with COVID-19 have milder effects and better prognoses than adults. However, children are susceptible to "multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children" (MIS-C), a rare but life-threatening systemic illness involving persistent fever and extreme inflammation following exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Open for Business is an Irish business series to guide Irish businesses as the country emerged from lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. First aired on 21 July 2020 on RTÉ One, it is presented by Richard Curran and Ella McSweeney, and is sponsored by Enterprise Ireland.
People with disabilities are at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 and have higher rates of mortality than non-disabled populations. This is especially true for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, individuals who reside in care facilities, and women with disabilities. People with disabilities are at greater risk of experiencing mental health issues related to the pandemic, such as feelings of loneliness and isolation. They may be at greater risk of domestic violence and abuse during the pandemic. People with disabilities are more likely to experience unemployment as a result of the pandemic and may require changes to the types of accommodations they require for work. Children with disabilities are experiencing disruptions to their educational programming. Remote learning poses a host of challenges for children with disabilities, including disruptions to physical and occupational therapies and access to assistive technologies.
Pandemic fatigue is the state of being worn out by recommended precautions and restrictions relating to a pandemic, often due to the length of the restrictions and lack of activities for one to engage in, resulting in boredom, depression, psychic numbing, and other issues, thereby leading one to abandoning these precautions and risk catching the disease. Pandemic fatigue can be responsible for an increased number of cases.
Zoom fatigue is tiredness, worry or burnout associated with the overuse of virtual platforms of communication, particularly videoconferencing. The name derives from the cloud based videoconferencing and online chat software Zoom, even if it used to refer to non-Zoom video conferencing platforms.
A Zoom town is a community that experiences a significant population increase as remote work becomes more popular, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The shift is expected to have significant economic implications. The name is a play on "boomtown" and the name of the web conferencing tool Zoom.
Suicide cases have remained constant or decreased since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a study done on twenty-one high and upper-middle-income countries in April–July 2020, the number of suicides has remained static. These results were attributed to a variety of factors, including the composition of mental health support, financial assistance, having families and communities work diligently to care for at-risk individuals, discovering new ways to connect through the use of technology, and having more time spent with family members which aided in the strengthening of their bonds. Despite this, there has been an increase in isolation, fear, stigma, abuse, and economic fallout as a result of COVID-19. Self-reported levels of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts were elevated during the initial stay-at-home periods, according to empirical evidence from several countries, but this does not appear to have translated into an increase in suicides.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools in the U.S. began closing down in March 2020. This was a historic and unprecedented upheaval of the U.S. schooling system, that forced schools to a near shut-down. At the very peak of school closures, they affected 55.1 million students in 124,000 public and private U.S. schools. The effects of widespread school shut-downs were felt nationwide, and aggravated several social inequalities in gender, technology, educational achievement, and mental health.
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