Solution
An Evaluation of the Impact of Remote Working on Customer Care Department productivity. A case study of XXX organisation in UAE
1.0 Background
1.1 Research Context
In the last decade, remote working, also identified as virtual working has been substantially prevalent. This is affirmed by Mulki et al. (2009) report referencing the Fortune 500 organisations inclusive of Procter & Gamble, IBM, Accenture, and AT&T, which are all multinationals who have currently worked on the elimination of the traditional offices. It is even projected that telecommuting and remote working arrangements will increase in the future as they respond to the current globalisation, customer demands, and the costs and time for commuting. Since this report has focused on the United Arab Emirates organisation, Aboelmaged and Elamin (2011) note that organisations positively benefit from individual freedom, cost reduction, and increased productivity through remote working. The rationale of this report is informed by the ILO (2020) report that notes that remote working is the best strategy of promoting a high-level diversity in modern organisations. Based on the report’s findings, 68% of the global workforce, including 81% of employers, are in existence in countries with recommended or required workplace closures. As a result, the majority of the organisations have been working to make remote working an alternative or a temporary working arrangement. In the UAE, where XXX operates, the available studies have only evaluated the remote working from a general perspective (Lin & Azar, 2019; Kemp & Rickett, 2018). Few studies have focused on assessing the remote working in modern organisations and the extent in which the organisations are productive and success in their roles.
1.2 Rationale of the Investigation
As noted in Deloitte (2020) more than 2.7 billion or approximately 4 out 5 employees globally are transitioning to the global workforce environment. As a result, modern organisations have been promoted to put in place arrangements for implementing remote working. Further, Deloitte (2020a) report pointed out that the organisations’ failure to embrace the remote working arrangements would lead to approximately 25 million people being pushed out of employment by 2020. This translates to an approximately $3.4 trillion loss in income. In the UAE case, The National News (2020) note that 31% of the employees are currently rethinking on their work-life balance with 22% actively sourcing for new occupations with 17% focusing on switching their job roles. Apart from the identified aspects of costs and time factor, Personnel today (2020) report introduced the concept of customer care departments’ productivity and noted that organisations’ productivity is directly impacted by the extent to which organisations offer flexible working opportunities to the employees. Through remote working, the customer care department can operate with minimal worries about their appreciation by the organisation and also their effectiveness in their assigned roles. In this regard, the current report will focus on evaluating the extent in which the remote working for the employees working in the customer care department in XXX can best operate through remote working. This is by accessing the benefits incurred and also the potential challenges from the remote working.
2.0 Research Question, Aim and Objectives of this Research
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