Version 1
: Received: 1 August 2024 / Approved: 2 August 2024 / Online: 2 August 2024 (11:51:35 CEST)
How to cite:
Manteaw, B. O.; Boafo, Y. A.; Ayittah, B.; Adorliyah, C. Post-Pandemic Imaginations of Remote Work Futures in Africa: Learning from an Environment, Health, and Safety Perspective. Preprints2024, 2024080160. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202408.0160.v1
Manteaw, B. O.; Boafo, Y. A.; Ayittah, B.; Adorliyah, C. Post-Pandemic Imaginations of Remote Work Futures in Africa: Learning from an Environment, Health, and Safety Perspective. Preprints 2024, 2024080160. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202408.0160.v1
Manteaw, B. O.; Boafo, Y. A.; Ayittah, B.; Adorliyah, C. Post-Pandemic Imaginations of Remote Work Futures in Africa: Learning from an Environment, Health, and Safety Perspective. Preprints2024, 2024080160. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202408.0160.v1
APA Style
Manteaw, B. O., Boafo, Y. A., Ayittah, B., & Adorliyah, C. (2024). Post-Pandemic Imaginations of Remote Work Futures in Africa: Learning from an Environment, Health, and Safety Perspective. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202408.0160.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Manteaw, B. O., Bernard Ayittah and Cephas Adorliyah. 2024 "Post-Pandemic Imaginations of Remote Work Futures in Africa: Learning from an Environment, Health, and Safety Perspective" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202408.0160.v1
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered seismic shifts in how we work, and organizations behave. It has caused many organizations to transition from an office-centric culture to more flexible ways of working. This shift is necessitated by health conditions and the need for controls. It is also driven by the assumption that remote work or working from home offer a certain assurance of safety for employees against the threat of infection in highly vulnerable office conditions. The shift to remote work has so far been mainly experimental as most businesses continue to learn about what works and what doesn’t. There is also the assumption that all that matters for the efficient operability of a remote work regime is the availability and effectiveness of computing technologies and internet connectivity. Thus, once those supplies are in place remote work is expected to be fully functional and without problems. As learning continues about what works and what doesn’t, it has also become increasingly clear that beyond the threat of covid-19 and the relative safety that individual homes may offer, there are other vulnerabilities which are ignored or underestimated in the process. In most instances, the home environment of the employee, the conditions under which employees operate from home and the health and safety such environments provide (or not) are either ignored or underestimated in discussions around remote work practices. This paper highlights remote work as an emergent practice while exploring associated, but ignored, health and safety issues in employee homes.
Keywords
Remote work; Environment; health and safety; pandemic; learning
Subject
Public Health and Healthcare, Public, Environmental and Occupational Health
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
