The COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on how the traditional workplace is organized. Organizations around the world, including the ones in Curaçao, experienced in an accelerated manner a big push forward into teleworking, as a result of the government’s strategy to mitigate the spread of the virus by enforcing COVID-19 lockdown measures and applying a physical distancing policy. In order to comply with the imposed government measures, and ensure the continuity of economic activities, businesses started to facilitate remote working possibilities for their employees, thereby enhancing the value of telework. Telework is defined by the researcher as the possibility for an employee to work remotely from management or coworkers, outside the traditional office space, usually from home or alternative location, at least one day per week.
The purpose of the study was to provide insight on the impact of telework as a result of COVID-19 measures in Curaçao, and serves to stimulate discussions to address human resource challenges with regards to telework policy, management of teleworkers, and telework conditions. The study was carried out among teleworkers in the major service industries in Curaçao such as finance and accounting, professional services, information and communication. Data was collected from 129 respondents employed at 11 large companies. Findings were obtained from an organizational, managerial and employees’ perspective.
The respondents’ profile consisted of 33% males and 67% females, with the main representation in the age category of 35 to 44 years. A total of 52% of the respondents did not have previous telework experience prior to the COVID-19 measures, 36% teleworked occasionally, while 12% teleworked on a regular basis of which most in a managerial or executive level position. The latter is a sharp contrast with the 82.2% respondents who are presently teleworking, representing employees at all levels within the company. During the COVID-19 lockdown the percentage of teleworkers was up to 98%, which is eight times higher than the pre-COVID-19 era. A high intensity telework frequency was observed, meaning that 84% of the respondents work three or more days away from the office. Furthermore, when working from home, almost three-quarters of the respondents did not have a dedicated home-office.
The main challenges encountered at an organizational level when implementing telework were mostly technology related. Issues encountered at ICT level were due to a lack of devices such as laptops and mobile phones to facilitate remote work. Some employees did not have optimal internet speed at home, or in some cases did not have internet at home at all. In some cases, employees used their own devices, which carries with it a high risk of security breach. Another challenge was to keep employees connected, since tools such as video-conferencing and document sharing to communicate and collaborate which each other, were not in place from day one. Independently of the technical aspects, the surveyed companies did a good job though in providing telework guidelines for their employees, and setting clear expectations considering the time constraints.
With regard to distance managing, the main challenges experienced by managers were monitoring staff performance and exercising control in a telework environment. Researchers agree that managers who lead teleworkers find this generally more difficult than leading traditional teams. A possible reason for this, is that teleworkers tend to act as leaders themselves when teleworking. Teleworking removes some of the organizational power of the managers, enabling the employees to take the lead. This results in a change of power dynamics between manager and employee due to teleworking. Other challenges might be the lack of traditional attributes, such as a lack of nonverbal cues, norms of behavior and a sense of cohort, or not being able to detect if a worker is experiencing difficulties, working too much or not enough. Setting up a system to monitor staff performance was also an issue, because of the forced transition from ‘face-to-face’ monitoring to ‘output-based’ monitoring. Therefore, managing by results, denominated as “management by objectives” is critical especially in a telework environment. It requires guidelines by which managers can perform reviews, have clear performance goals, and have regular check-in moments with teleworkers, which in turn improves performance.
Challenges experienced in terms of work-life balance were related to a higher level of distraction from chores around the house and disruption by family members. A possible explanation for the high level of distraction is that 72% of all the surveyed teleworkers did not have a dedicated office space at home. Most of the teleworkers work at their kitchen table or in the bedroom, compared to only 28% who did have a home office. On the other hand, a positive effect on their work-life balance was that they could easily accommodate family responsibilities compared to when they are at the office. Telework in the context of COVID-19 did not lead to a deterioration of the productivity, job performance, and job satisfaction.
The impact of telework from an organizational perspective created a huge pressure on the department of Human Resources to deploy in a fast-track manner a telework policy, or at least partially draft guidelines in order to allow their employees to telework. The impact on a managerial level was to rethink the performance monitoring system, from a ‘behavior-based’ to an ‘output-based’ control mechanism. From an employees’ perspective, employees were forced to look for ways to create a workspace at their homes in order to minimize distractions, and adjusting their work and personal time to create a work-life balance that meet the basic requirement of both roles.
The opinion on telework at this point in time is generally positive among employees within the industries of interest. A great majority of the respondents indicated to have a strong preference for a hybrid model, meaning working partially at home and partially at the office. With respect to the respondents’ opinion on the future of work, an overwhelming majority of the respondents expects that telework will become the new normal in Curaçao. They believe that the traditional office at the company they work will change permanently, following the COVID-19 crisis.
Recommendations for policy makers to improve the organization’s telework policy would be to (a) consider a hybrid work arrangement whereby the employee works partially at home and partially at the traditional office; (b) establish a telework arrangement with the employees, whereby the roles, responsibilities and parameters for teleworking are specified, and (c) regularly evaluate the telework program once implemented.
Recommendations for top management of organizations in order to improve the telework conditions are: (a) facilitate training sessions to instruct teleworkers on the soft skills and behavioral aspects of teleworking, to set boundaries between work and family life, and improve effectiveness; (b) from an ergonomic point of view allow teleworkers to take office equipment home, or offer a lump-sum payment to teleworkers to purchase the necessary office furniture to set up their workspace at home; (c) ensure that teleworkers feel empowered to disconnect from work at specified times without negative implications.
Recommendations to managers with respect to managing teleworkers are: (a) lead by example to practice good time management; (b) establish telework ‘rules of engagement’ regarding communication norms, and (c) host regular virtual meetings to engage the team members and maintain a strong corporate culture.
Note from the researcher: the reported outcomes are based on the evaluation of telework based on a short timespan (March till September 2020), implicating that the findings may not be applicable for an extended period of time, as it is expected that telework evolves over time. Besides, the number of respondents and the scope of industries were relatively small to make a generalization about the impact of telework on the whole employed labor force of Curaçao. Nonetheless, the research findings provide valuable insight and contribution to policy makers, top management and managers, in order to achieve greater efficiency in telework.
About the researcher:
Yamilette Emerenciana started with the study of Master in Business Administration at the Inter-Continental University of the Caribbean late 2018, and finalized her study with success in December 2020. Companies who would like to know how Yamilette can contribute into their organization with regard to telework, please reach out to her at yemerenciana@icloud.com.