IMPACTS OF TELEWORKING ON THE PERFOMANCE & LEADERSHIP OF AN

ORGANIZATION.
Introduction
Teleworking is the act of working from home and making use of telephones emails and the

internet. The world of work was forever changed in the year 2020. This was brought about by

WHO’s announcing of a virus outbreak, the novel coronavirus. The world health organization

urged governments to follow the guidelines and protocols it had put in place and prepare for a

first wave of a public health emergency. Governments around the world drafted many drastic

measures one of which was the placing of Lockdowns.

As the stay at home measures were being enforced, a big part of the work force was

instructed to work remotely; if their work description allowed. I am sure this will go down in

history as the largest mass teleworking experiment ever.

Although the number of remotely working people was gradually increasing with time, I think

it is safe to say that the pandemic has hastened it. In a pandemic like scenario, teleworking

has certainly proved itself an important tool in ensuring the continuity of business. In a

normal scenario, it still brings out the advantage of reduced commuting time as well as an

opportunity for people to focus on work away from office distractions. We should also not

forget the better work-life balance teleworking has brought to the table.

However, there are also some risks associated with teleworking. A good example in this case

would be loneliness, mostly for those living alone. There is also the risk of losing contact

with fellow employees and this would be a disaster for work morale.
 COVID 19 EMERGENCE AND TELEWORKING

In the past, most companies evolved in regards to the gradually changing conditions of work

environments. An example of these conditions are competition, technological advancement

and globalization among others.

Focusing on the transition from an industrial to a more digitalized era, organizations have

needed to abort the long standing mechanistic approach and adopt more flexible structures.

The 2000’s has seen more and more work being done off-site in order to facilitate an ever

growing work force and provide better services. It is therefore safe to say that teleworking

has been making steady strides globally in many sectors. Breaking it down, the service

industry has the largest workforce working remotely followed by healthcare, finance,

insurance, finance and then the education industry (He, 2020).

However, there has always been a debate about teleworking. This debate is along the lines of

what is work and what is not as well as the risks and benefits of flexible working hours,

Under the old work conditions, teleworking was but a temporary thing but now with the

pandemic and all, it seems like it is here to stay. It is also not very clear for how long most of

the workforce is still going to be working from home.

Teleworking seriously came into being as measure put forward by WHO in order to curb the
spread of the virus and was successfully put to use by governments and organizations all
across the globe.

Since march 2020, more people around the globe have been working remotely. The downside
to this is that it could lead to professional isolation. Professional isolation can be said to be a
condition whereby one misses the everyday activities of his/her workplace. This could lead to
one not being an active participant in the sharing of information and co-learning. This could
negatively affect job performance since employees do not have physical support from
supervisors and fellow colleagues in problem solving.
Judging from the above argument, e-leadership requires facilitation of e-work conditions as
well as keeping the employees motivated towards the achieving of set goals. E-leadership
contain the development of clear cut abilities for the improvement of how an organization
functions remotely. Teleworking infrastructure existed even before the pandemic and hence
adopting this style of work has been easy for most companies.

Telework is a very wide concept that covers any paid work that is done at a distance. The
workers normally work remotely and autonomously. However, it is important to note how to
limit the notion of telework so as to avoid confusion with employees who work as freelancers
or at call centers.

LEADERSHIP MANAGEMENT AND TELEWORK ENVIRONMENTS

The definitions of leadership are a lot but generally we can agree that leadership is an

influence to achieve certain set goals. In a traditional work setting, this type of influence was

not only exerted by leaders but also employees through informal leadership. In Telework,

Formal leaders influence is felt the most. This is because they have to influence in order to

create effective virtual teams.

Before going any further, we should first note the following about leadership;

1) There cannot be leaders without followers

2) A person can only be a leader when others recognize him as a leader

3) Leadership is based on relationships

4) Effective leadership results in accomplishments of organizational goals

Going beyond the never ending debate on whether leadership and management should be of

the same construct or should be clear cut, in teleworking the differences between the two are

more distinct than in traditional work settings.

Teleworking brings more challenges for leaders than managers. In other
words, teleworking is more feasible and even improves the efficiency of the
traditional role of management (i.e., planning, budgeting, control and
establishing administrative procedures) than exerting effective leadership
(i.e., influence others to achieve organizational goals) through electronic
devices. According to Nayani et al. (2018), both leadership and
management are equally important in teleworking. However, adapting
traditional leadership practices to a technologically mediated environment
is more complicated (Pulley and Sessa, 2001). A distributed workforce must
be led by adopting new and more complex methods in communication,
performance management, training, and relationship building (Flood,
2019).
From the management perspective, teleworking can be favored by flatter
and more decentralized structures (Cortellazzo et al., 2019). The increase in
connectivity within the companies in addition to information availability
contributes to diminishing hierarchies and organizational boundaries,
leading to companies working by projects more than traditional activities
and thus, employees participate in the creation of value for the companies
(Cortellazzo et al., 2019). Owing to information availability, the power of
the company tends to be more distributed and less centralized, involving
employees in the decision-making process. This participative decision-
making helps leaders analyze and prioritize relevant information from the
large amount of available data, respond faster and more innovatively for
better decision making (Cortellazzo et al., 2019). Darics (2020) highlighted
that in a remote work environment, management and leadership functions
are combined and managers must manage performance and implement
solutions when needed and create and maintain a team identity by
establishing and sharing a vision, corporate values, and organizational
goals into a trusting working environment. Moreover, in teleworking,
considering a reduction in the social and interpersonal distance, leaders
should be more democratic with access to information and willing to keep
an open communication (Montgomery et al., 2016). In this context, the
adaptive structuration theory (DeSanctis and Poole, 1994) suggests that
many organizational phenomena including organizational leadership
transform when interacting with Advanced Information Technologies
(AITs). From this approach, AITs mediate leadership influence and create
an integrated mechanism of leadership and management. In fact, from a
management perspective, AITs can have various purposes, including
sharing information, planning, record keeping, or data analysis. From a
leadership perspective, effective leaders at e-leadership positions are
successful when they can use various AITs to achieve greater performance,
enhance employees’ job satisfaction while reducing the rates of turnover
(Montgomery et al., 2016)