Working at home is a form of work where the work process takes place in premises that do not belong to the premises of the employer. Legislation determines that workers who work at home have the same rights and duties as workers who work on company premises. The work that can be done at home mainly includes office work, or in other words work with a computer screen, which presents many risks from the point of view of safety and health at work.
During the pandemic period, many companies would be forced, in the event of a complete interruption of the work process, due to massively ordered quarantines of employees or a reduction in work space and consequent high financial losses, to suspend their operations. The implementation of work at home enables the continuation of business operations.
In my thesis, I collected the most frequently mentioned positive and negative effects of working at home during the pandemic and in normal conditions through various researches and professional articles. Based on the collected data, I tried to find measures that could help facilitate the transition to working from home and reduce the incidence of its negative effects. The latter could potentially make it easier for employers to decide on the introduction of work at home, as there is still a certain amount of resistance to this form of work, especially on the part of employers.
A review of literary sources has shown that among the most common positive impacts on workers, which can be positive for employers as well when appropriate measures are introduced when transitioning to work at home, are primarily a reduced need for transportation to work, a greater possibility of retaining work in the event of a company relocation or worker or better employment opportunities, greater flexibility of working hours and easier coordination of work and private life.
Among the negative impacts, there is often a difficult control over the work done, which is closely related to difficult organizational work at home and teamwork and communication, which can lead to various psychosocial risks, a higher incidence of presenteeism and, last but not least, burnout due to increased workloads, which is for the employer additional cost. Long-term work at home also poses an increased risk for the development of various ergonomic risks if the workplace is not adapted to individual needs.
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