Management Perspectives

Early researchers presented modern society as a system in which work and home were independent systems (Bales & Parsons, 2014; Parsons & Bales, 1955), wherein the structural separation of roles, responsibilities, thought process, and emotions was possible. Workload did not affect family life and vice versa. However, with the advent of modern technologies, even personal hours are converted into business hours. People bring their work home, and often, are unaware that they are overworking. And then there comes the concept of flexible workspaces like teleworking facilities.

wherein a person gets to work remotely from a location of their choice. The term ‘telecommuting’ or ‘telework’ was coined by Jack Nilles in 1973, a former NASA engineer who was working on projects to optimise work in the middle of the national energy crisis. ‘Tele’ in telework means ‘distance’; thus the term telework means working from a distance (Nilles, 1994). It has been nearly 50 years since then, and work from home became one of the most prominent modes of working owing to the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. Telework, telecommuting, remote work, or work from home are variants of the same concept wherein an employee has the option to complete his tasks from the comfort of a place of his choice.

This method of work was considered a westernised adaptation of work by many, and had little prevalence in India. Companies were scared to implement work from home on a large scale owing to changes in infrastructure required, technical support, and impart of training. However, COVID-19 guidelines helped the companies finally make the swift transition possible. The benefits of telework are immense both for the organisation and for the worker. These include savings in terms of real estate cost, lower relocation costs, better employee productivity, and facilitates business continuity, whereas for the teleworker, the advantages could be narrowed down to lesser commuting woes, travel time saved, more family time, and enhanced work efficiency and productivity.

The lack of social relationship, and sharing workspaces could imbibe a feeling of solitude and isolation in teleworkers (Tavares, 2016; Crawford et al., 2011, Gajendran and Harrison, 2007). However, the concept of telework is also evolving.

In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies are offering conditional teleworking facilities to their employees. ‘Conditional’ telework means certain, pre-requisite conditions are mandated on the teleworking employees. Researchers like Fairweather (1999) have proposed an alternative arrangement wherein workers can telework for a certain period and also spend some time in office to lower the feelings of isolation. This helps in more utilisation of the office space and also helps employees stay in touch each other. This could help in curing the social isolation, anxiety issues, office politics, and other mental health issues of the employees.

Companies like TCS are considering the aforementioned option of operating at 25 per cent capacity, wherein everyone could be asked to visit office premises on a certain number of days during a week (Anand, 2020). Another emerging form of teleworking is remote working, in which, the employee has to be present in the same district or state as their office. However, in this case, the employees neither gets to visit the office nor does he/she get to stay with their family, and might end up feeling isolated and depressed. Additionally, there could be issues in terms of the company not being able to provide technological assistance in remote places. We call these models of working as ‘conditional’ telework since they require the fulfilment of certain prerequisite condition.

Though designed for the benefit of the employee, conditional telework can end up causing harm to the mental health of the employee. The extant literature posits social isolation and stress as the mental health risks to telework, but there could be many more factors that might lead to the failure of this model in future.