Work from Home (WFH) and Covid-19: Encountering Ethical issues in New Normal

Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic is both a global health crisis and a worldwide economic threat. The worldwide lockdown of businesses and industries that were implemented and mandated to curb the spread of the virus generated a wide array of unique and fundamental challenges for both employees and employers across the globe. At the individual level, the shutdown affected employees were turned overnight into two categories (a) “work frozm home” employees, (b) “essential” or “life-sustaining” workers (e.g., emergency room medical personnel and supermarket staff). A large number of managers are struggling with the effective management of people working from home since a year now due to Covid-19 pandemic. WFH is the new normal for all the companies and firms globally, this translating into many workers feeling dubious and micromanaged by their bosses. The result of such poor management and trust issues at this time –for workers, families, and the economy-suggest the urgent need to help develop managers’ skill in this area. However, simply telling managers to trust their employees is unlikely to be sufficient. Rather, they need to learn new skills of delegation and empowerment to provide their workers with greater autonomy over their work methods and the timing of their work, which in turn will promote work motivation, better healthy and well-being and performance. This paper aims to introduce this new skill set which organizations need to start at the highest level possible. Managers who struggle with leading remote teams often have excessively controlling and low-trusting bosses themselves. This paper also aims to suggest strategies that can help managers and support them in a way to manage their employees more effectively from a distance.