Challenges and opportunities of remotely working from home during Covid-19 pandemic

Physical Activity Behavior During and After COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders—A Longitudinal Study in the Austrian, German, and Italian Alps

“…As in our study, Moura et al ( 103 ) observed that individuals in Brazil who worked from home during the pandemic were less likely to be physically inactive. Benefits of working from home include shorter travel times to work and more leisure time which can also be used for PA ( 104 ). The findings in our study and in the study by Constandt et al ( 58 ), that less time during lockdown led to a drop in exercise, additionally support the previous suggestion.…”

Reflections on COVID-19 and internal evaluation in a humanitarian non-profit

“…Once we started working from home in mid-March 2020, instead of isolating us from our colleagues, Red Cross rapidly invested in online collaboration tools and communication platforms. As occurred across workplaces globally ( Al-Habaibeh et al, 2021 ), we went from fairly minimal use of Skype and telephone to heavy daily use of digital technology including MS Teams for videoconferencing, document sharing and task maintenance as well as embedded use of collaborative blackboards for group mind-mapping and problem solving. Although we were working from home, our interaction with a diversity of colleagues increased.…”

“…Before the pandemic, we had made minimal use of technology such as Sharepoint or videoconferencing. The technology was a sharp learning curve, which we had to adopt quickly ( Al-Habaibeh et al, 2021 ). The technology facilitated better collaborative opportunities with staff nationwide and it was exciting to see their high levels of maintained engagement, buy-in and cooperation.…”

“…Instead, we worked longer hours to counter our perceived lack of productivity and ended up providing significant hours of free labour – noting that this is absolutely not condoned organisationally. We found it difficult to manage our busy schedule of online meetings alongside helping our children with their remote education (see also Al-Habaibeh et al, 2021 ). It was hard to lead a meeting or maintain a train of thought when either being interrupted, expecting to be interrupted or feeling bad for ineffectively catering to everyone’s needs.…”

“…While this body of literature provided a valuable foundation for understanding factors of effective virtual teamwork, the rapid, unanticipated movement of our whole team into the remote space signified an unprecedented and disruptive situation that is more accurately captured by the literature on virtual teams that has been published specifically about the pandemic. This literature examines how teams rapidly pivoted to working remotely without the luxury of well-planned change management processes and how this movement impacted wellbeing and group functioning ( Al-Habaibeh et al, 2021 ; Şentürk et al, 2021 ; Wang et al, 2021 ; Whillans et al, 2021 ; Yang et al, 2022 ).…”