Teleworking and Job Performance among Academic Staff of Universities

Problems and Prospects

Abstract

The nature of work, workforce and environment is continually evolving resulting in the quest for more improved, efficient and effective work arrangements in all spheres of the economy. The Covid-19 pandemic which disrupted normal work routines worldwide, caused an accelerated embracement of work trends such as flexible work arrangements which hitherto were not fully utilized in the work environment. Flexible work arrangements are basically options that allow an employee to choose when and where to work normally outside the traditional typical pattern of arriving at the workplace by 8am and leaving at 4pm daily. Teleworking is one of the flexible working arrangement patterns that provides employees with greater freedom to alternate between the ordinary workplace and outside locations, mostly via the use of information and communications technology (ICT). Considering the unique nature of the work environment in the universities, being a workforce streamed by the role to academic staff and the current increased digitalization of workforce globally, this work seeks to find out if and to what extent teleworking has been embraced by academic staff in universities. While highlighting the various forms and general principles of teleworking, this paper equally seeks to appraise the effects of teleworking on organizational performance and the challenges faced by them as a result of either imbibing or not imbibing teleworking. It is recommended that more in-depth empirical field research be conducted on the effects of teleworking on organizational performance in universities in order to substantiate the claim that teleworking impacts positively on organizational performance.