The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Digital Transformation of Workplace: The Social Representation of Home-Office

Abstract

In March 2020, with the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a pandemic and prescribing social isolation to combat this coronavirus, companies began to implement home-office, with employees working from their homes through Information and Communication Technology. Thus, this study aims to identify how Human Resources professionals in Brazil made sense of the home-office policy adopted by their companies during the COVID-19 pandemic, given that this country was severely impacted by this disease, which led to the implementation of social isolation for several months. In consideration of this, this research applied the Social Representation Theory, operationalized via the evocation of words technique and implicative analysis. In doing so, a positive and less comprehensive view of Human Resources professionals was identified vis-à-vis the academic literature in relation to the enactment of home-office via companies during the COVID-19 pandemic, which may be due to the time interval in which this research was carried out, the consequent impacts resulting from the implementation of the home-office at the time of data collection, and the very fact that most of the literature researched came from developed countries and not from the Global South where this research was carried out. Flexibility and Quality of Life were the dimensions most associated with the social representation of home-office according to Human Resources professionals. However, the productivity dimension related to working in a home-office showed dubious and inconclusive results. Finally, some challenging aspects related to this model of work raised by the scientific literature were not mentioned by the respondents, indicating a mismatch between the academic literature and the understanding of Human Resources professionals about the role of home-office during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Basics of Home Office (Re)institutionalisation from the Perspective of Experiences from the COVID-19 Era

“…The level of factors with potential impact on the productiveness of home offices and working platforms is derived from international research [35]. The research established the conditions required to attain the desired levels of productivity [36]. It was established that the impact of the remote work model on employee productivity and output capacity is determined by numerous factors, including the nature of the work, the profile of the employer and the industry, and the conditions at home.…”

Home-Office Managers Should Get Ready for the “New Normal”

“…Overall, 71% of companies have embraced remote work, with only 8% opposing it (Buffer 2023). Irrespective of the future trajectory of the home office, it stands as a valid alternative to on-site work (Crawford 2022), necessitating employer readiness for the "new normal" (Joia and Leonardo 2023;Raghavan et al 2021).…”