7IBI Formative Assessment 2 Investigating a Business Issue from a Human Resources Perspective

Part 2: Literature Review

1.0 Introduction

In the modern workplace environment, the best practice should involve employees being appropriately positioned to focus on the appropriate timelines and disengaging at other times. This is intending to recover from work- associated stress and maintaining a high-level work-life balance. As noted in Rudnicka et al. (2020), different research works have focused on evaluating teleworking and flexible working strategies. This is precisely in line with the extent to which the employees are involved in managing their transitions and disruptions between their work and individual life. Taking into account the current COVID-19 pandemic as our focus, the existing research has focused on evaluating the extent to which working from home or remote working is a successful process in the modern business environment. Based on this background information, this report focuses on evaluating the available literature relating to the evaluation of the impact of remote working on customer care department productivity.

2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Background of the Remote Working

Based on the available literature, it is not clear the foundation of the remote working concept. Considering the Kurland and Bailyn, as evidenced in Tietze and Musson (2010) report, the foundation of remote working can be lined with the recent shift in working style influenced by the employees location and assigned work roles. This is opposed to Ellis (2016) study that had a more specific findings and established that remote working has existed in the past 10 years. The study identified as the source of the concept from the UK, where the staff working from home significantly increased to almost a fifth of the entire workforce to 15 million employees. Also, in a distinct context, Trades Union Congress (2013) report had compared male and female involvement in flexible working and pointed out that the number of employees engaged in active remote working has substantially increased in the past.

 Also, through a focus on the context of both the public and private sectors, the remote working background could be established. For instance, Wheatly (2017) report noted that senior management is not involved in the remote working with only the rest of the employees in lower hierarchies being engaged in the process in the public sector context. However, taking into account private sector operations, it is evident that they still operate in a non-formalised policy and strategy of enrolling in flexible working opportunities. Hence, it is appropriate to argue that the integration of flexible working depends on the organisation to organisation aspects.

2.2 Remote Working and Employee Motivation and Employees Performance

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