As part of my research for my doctoral dissertation entitled “The Multiple Perspectives of Better Teleworking: A Mixed Methods Approach”, I am looking for volunteers in the Canadian public service to complete a survey on their experience with teleworking.
Your participation would involve completing one online survey, which should take no more than 15 minutes.
If you wish to complete the survey, please use this anonymous link https://uregina.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9LD8FFlaoFklr1k
Project Abstract
Teleworking — defined as flexible work arrangements, facilitated by communications technology, that allow knowledge workers to contribute to workplace objectives without requiring their physical presence in a central office or production facility — has been enhanced in recent years by rapid technological advances, though gained significant momentum in response to COVID-era public health requirements as knowledge workers in shared office spaces disbursed into ad hoc work-from-home arrangements. Beyond the imperatives associated with the pandemic, teleworking can contribute to increased productivity, lower costs, increased employee confidence, enhanced job satisfaction, greater staffing flexibility, and societal benefits such as reduced commuting congestion. On the other hand, teleworking may carry negative impacts such as lower productivity, higher cost, employee isolation, negative public perceptions, and reduced demand for retail services by office workers no longer congregating in urban centres.
In order to support a dynamic and sustainable economy and public sector in the digital age, public policy makers need a thorough understanding of the potential benefits and drawbacks of teleworking, and the factors that contribute to better teleworking arrangements. ‘Better’ — in this context — needs to be understood as a dependent variable construct assessed along two dimensions (as between teleworking arrangements in different organizational settings, and over time within an organization) and assessed from multiple perspectives: internal perceptions (i.e., employees and employers), external perceptions (i.e., the public and ‘political’ views), and objective measures.
This study aims to improve our understanding of teleworking through the development of a theoretical framework that considers the benefits and drawbacks of teleworking, the factors that contribute to better teleworking, and the actions that governments can take should they wish to incentivize and facilitate better teleworking. Acknowledging that firms and organizations across the economy — in the private sector, public sector, and non-profit settings — are attempting to manage teleworking, this research is primarily focused on contemporary Canadian teleworking experience in the public sector. This experience, from the government-as-employer perspective, will hold lessons for public sector agencies, for the government's role as policymaker, and through the model it sets for the broader society.
This research will take a sequential mixed-methods approach including (1) an analysis of Twitter data to gauge worker perspectives on teleworking, supplemented by a survey of Canadian public servants and interviews and a focus group with public sector employees to probe these perspectives more deeply; (2) a review of contemporary Canadian political perspectives on public servant teleworking derived primarily from mainstream media, parliamentary debates, and teleworking-relevant public policy actions taken by governments; and (3) government (as employer) and public sector union policy documents and position statements relevant to teleworking, supplemented with semi-structured interviews with Canadian public sector managers and union leaders to illuminate further how employers and employees are attempting to manage teleworking in the COVID era.
This proposal argues that aligning socio-technical theory with bounded rationality theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; Ajzen 1991) can help us understand the multiple perspectives of teleworking and serve as the basis for developing a theoretical framework that considers the benefits and drawbacks of teleworking, the factors that contribute to better teleworking arrangements, and potential government policy initiatives that can address the barriers to and opportunities for teleworking success. This framework will aim at supporting governments as both employers and as policymakers.
If you would like more information about this study, please feel free to contact me. Also feel free to reach out if you would like to receive an executive summary of the findings.
This project was reviewed and approved on 29 March 2023 by the University of Saskatchewan Behavioural Research Ethics Board, and is supervised by faculty member Dr. Justin Longo.
Thank you for your time, and for considering this request.
Sincerely,
Yasmine Wafa, Ph.D. Candidate
Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy,
University of Saskatchewan
Phone 306-994-2537
Email: ymw010@usask.ca
Faculty Supervisor:
Justin Longo, Associate Professor
Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy,
University of Regina
Phone 306-450-5345
E-mail: justin.longo@uregina.ca