Business View Oceania | March 2020

11 12 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA MARCH 2020 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA MARCH 2020 N ew technologies have made alternative work arrangements (e.g., remote work, flexible scheduling) possible and are dramatically changing the way work gets done. Their appeal is not difficult to understand considering their promised benefits. Workplace flexibility can reduce commuting time and congestion, allow global collaborations, and reduce business costs such as office overheads, making them appealing to policymakers and employers. For employees, these arrangements promise to facilitate work-life balance by providing greater control over how they allocate and spend their time at work and in their personal life. Despite these apparent benefits, many organizations fail to implement policies that promote alternative work arrangements or do so in a way that is not employee-friendly. Two of the often-cited arguments against these arrangements are stigma (e.g., employees who work from home are seen as less devoted or committed to their work) and productivity costs CORONAVIRUS: HELPING ORGANIZATIONS AND EMPLOYEES CULTIVATE AN AGILE WORK CULTURE OPENING L INES (e.g., employers do not trust that employees are efficient at home). However, when correctly implemented, alternative work arrangements can benefit organizations and employees. For example, Perpetual Guardian introduced a 4-day week and after eight weeks, observed a 30- 40% increase in employee engagement and a 24% improvement in work-life balance while job performance remained similar to when employees were working the standard 40 hours. Emerging research further suggests that alternative work arrangements are particularly beneficial for working mothers or low-income employees; these employees tend to be marginalized from high-paying jobs or promotions and are even labelled as “failed” employees because household and caretaker responsibilities prevent them from working long hours or undertaking unexpected travel. The outbreak of the Coronavirus is an unprecedented global event that has fundamentally altered how nations and organizations function as well as how employees use their time in and outside work. Within a very short period of time it forced many organizations to either enforce existing alternative work arrangements or create such work policies on the spot. These changes promise to have a critical impact on organizations and employees alike, yet the scope and scale of this impact is as of yet unknown. To this end we would like to conduct research to understand the effects of the Coronavirus outbreak by answering the following fundamental questions: • How did organizations navigate this change? • Did organizations with alternative work arrangements policies had a competitive advantage? • How has this change affected employee well- being and organizational performance? • How did employees and their families adapt to alternative work arrangements? • What are the short and long-term benefits of shifting to alternative work arrangements? • How did employees react to changes in their work schedule and work time structure? Project Overview To study these critical and timely questions, our team, consisting of Ashley Whillans—Assistant Professor at HBS and Laura Giurge—Postdoctoral Researcher at London Business School, is looking to work with organizations to conduct pre/post evaluation surveys to capture: • How organizations responded to the Within a very short period of time it forced many organizations to either enforce existing alternative work arrangements or create such work policies on the spot