10-POINT RECOMMENDATION PACKAGE FOR EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION & PERFORMANCE IN A LEGALISED REMOTE WORKING ENVIRONMENT: A LITERATURE REVIEW
Main Article Content
Abstract
As the world went into a compelled lockdown in 2020-21as a result of the pandemic, remote working (flexibility to work from anywhere, anytime) came as a rescue for the survival of the companies and the employees during unprecedented times but it removed the boundaries between work and family, work and home, professional and personal routine etc (termed widely as ‘work boundary conflict’) which has created challenges to employees and management alike. Despite the challenges and the fading away of the pandemic in 2022-23, several companies especially the multinationals with work force across the world are considering having remote working as the norm in their ‘future of work’ model. It is in this context that ensuring motivation and productivity amongst employees in such a work-boundary conflict has become the key focus point for managements across the world. Managers need to quickly adapt to the changing work model and are in a befuddled state as to what is expected from them, how to steer their actions etc. This literature review focusses to identify the key issues faced due to teleworking (time lag in recognition, stress & anxiety for employees, social isolation, skewed appraisals, implementation barriers etc.) and comes up with a recommendation package to the management to ensure motivation and productivity amidst this paradigm shift. Key recommendations include autonomy to workers, use of modern communication tools, management by objectives, focus on emotional intelligence of employees, constant feedback to employees, re-defining training needs etc. Objective of this paper is to act as a ready reckoner for management personnel. This paper also identifies certain gaps in the past researches viz. lack of focus on industry-specific or generation specific attributes of teleworking, limited use of quantitative techniques etc. These raise certain interesting questions and opportunities for future research in this area.
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References
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