Chapter 2 Remote Working

2.1 What is Remote Working?

“Remote work refers to organizational work that is performed outside of the normal organizational confines of space and time. The term telecommuting refers to the substitution of communications capabilities for travel to a central work location. Office automation technology permits many office workers to be potential telecommuters in that their work can be performed remotely with computer and communications support” (Olson 1983)

Some of the first trials of remote working date back to the eighties as reported by Olson (1983). Since then, the spread and development of Information and Communication Technologies have brought about a significant increase in the popularity of remote work. Nowadays, it is possible to find fully remote jobs advertised particularly in IT and data science.

The current pandemic has forced millions of workers at home, making remote work a necessity rather than an option. An early study on COVID-19 and remote work reported that in the US the fraction of workers who switched to working from home is about 34.1%, while 14.6% were already working from home pre-COVID-19 (Brynjolfsson et al. 2020).

Not all types of work are suitable to be performed from home (Holgersen, Jia, and Svenkerud 2020), but one of the impacts of these dramatic circumstances can be a further increase of the remote work practice.

Computationally intensive tasks can be easily approached in a remote setting by accessing computing resources through the network. This document will guide you in accessing servers located in the Geographic Data Science Lab to perform heavy computations.1

2.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of Remote Work

One of the most direct consequences of remote work is changes in commuting behaviours, bringing about time saving and a potential reduction in traffic congestion and air pollution. These were among the main points stressed by the early advocates for remote working, but researches in transportation studies have shown conflicting results. Although reductions in number and length of commuting trips is reported in some of the earlies studies (Kitamura et al. 1991; Olson 1983), more recent research shows that the expectation that home-based telework reduces travel is not so apparent (Silva and Melo 2018) and time saving seems not to be a major pull factor (Bailey and Kurland 2002).

The higher flexibility afforded by remote working is mentioned as an advantage, particularly for those who would have not taken part of the workforce without such settings because of caring committments (Olson 1983).

Higher productivity of remote workers has been reported in some studies. However, it has to be noted that productivity and concentration at home are strongly dependent from environmental conditions (Bailey and Kurland 2002). Inequality in living conditions is clearly affecting the ability to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic.

One of the most cited drawbacks of remote working is professional and social isolation (Bailey and Kurland 2002), which can be also seen as making more difficoult collaborative work and collective workers actions.

2.3 Tips

Here a collection of tips that have been shared on the internet on how to avoid burn out and be effective while working from home:

References

Bailey, Diane E, and Nancy B Kurland. 2002. “A Review of Telework Research: Findings, New Directions, and Lessons for the Study of Modern Work.” Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior 23 (4): 383–400.

Brynjolfsson, Erik, John Horton, Adam Ozimek, Daniel Rock, Garima Sharma, and Hong Yi Tu Ye. 2020. “COVID-19 and Remote Work: An Early Look at Us Data.” Unpublished Work.

Holgersen, Henning, Zhiyang Jia, and Simen Svenkerud. 2020. “Who and How Many Can Work from Home? Evidence from Task Descriptions and Norwegian Job Advertisements.” Evidence from Task Descriptions and Norwegian Job Advertisements.(April 20, 2020).

Kitamura, Ryuichi, Jack M Nilles, Patrick Conroy, and David M Fleming. 1991. “Telecommuting as a Transportation Planning Measure : Initial Results of California Pilot Project Ryuichi Kitamura Reprint No . 58 of California.” Transportation Research Record 1285: 98–104.

Olson, Margrethe H. 1983. “Remote Office Work: Changing Work Patterns in Space and Time.” Communications of the ACM 26 (3): 182–87.

Silva, João de Abreu e, and Patrı́cia C Melo. 2018. “Does Home-Based Telework Reduce Household Total Travel? A Path Analysis Using Single and Two Worker British Households.” Journal of Transport Geography 73: 148–62.

  1. An other option which is widely implemented by companies, is the use of cloud computing infrastructures such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Salesforce’s CRM system, Microsoft Azure.↩︎