Effectiveness of virtual meetings in

remote work environment

John Nelson, Melvin Koshy, Muhammad Anaz

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. 3

2. OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH PROPOSAL ......................................................... 3

3. LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................ 4

4. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM...................................................................... 4

5. HYPOTHESIS .......................................................................................................... 4

6. DATA COLLECTION METHODS ....................................................................... 5

7. DATA INTERPRETATION & ANALYSIS ......................................................... 5

8. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 5

9. REFERENCES ......................................................................................................... 5
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1. ABSTRACT

The emergence of COVID-19 has presented employees and employers new challenges as
many employees and managers were forced to work in a remote environment by using virtual
mode of communication. For many reasons, managing virtual teams is different than
managing employees in a traditional face-to-face office environment. A remote employee is
one who is employed by a company, but works outside of a traditional office environment.
This could mean working from a local co-working space, from home, at a coffee shop, or in a
city across the world. Virtual workplace is a workplace that is not located in any one physical
space and usually in a network of several workplaces technologically connected via a private
network or the internet without regard to geographic boundaries. Employees are thus able to
interact in a collaborative working environment regardless of where they are located. A
virtual workplace integrates hardware, people and online processes through internet and
communication technologies. The study aims at finding the effectiveness of virtual meetings
by ascertaining the employee productivity in remote work environment.

Keywords

Remote work environment, virtual meetings, work-from-home, hybrid work culture,

employee productivity, family-work conflict, work engagement.

2. OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH PROPOSAL

The abrupt closure of many offices and workplaces this past spring ushered in a new era of
remote work for thousands of employees may portend a significant shift in the way a large
segment of the workforce operates in the future. Most employees who considered that their
job responsibilities can mainly be done from home say that, before the pandemic, they rarely
or never worked in virtual environment or experienced say work-from-home.

The scope of virtual meeting is increasing at a fast pace. Whether it is rural or urban
institutions, everyone is following with the technology and their vast scope. When an
institution adopts virtual meeting platform, they get other opportunities also like rapid data
sharing, comparison of reports, data presentations and data analysis. Due to the pandemic and
other economic situations, companies and other institutions are planning to shift from face-to-
face meeting to virtual meeting. In this research study, the aim is to find out the perception of
consumers towards the virtual concept and whether the concept of virtual meeting will have a
positive impact on the working environment.

While not seamless, the transition to virtual work environment has been relatively easy for
many employees, due to the necessity of the pandemic situation. The employees are able to
meet deadlines and complete projects on time, get their work done without interruptions, and
feel motivated to do their work. However, with some degree of remote working now a reality
for most, it’s a good time to share ideas and practices that can help maintain productivity.
“Novel working methods” refer to non-traditional work practices, settings and locations with
information and communication technologies to supplement or replace traditional ways of
working. They are being deployed in knowledge work context in order to increase employees
working motivation, job satisfaction and productivity. But, these benefits are not self-evident.
This paper aims to examine the task of measuring the expected benefits.
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3. LITERATURE REVIEW

The beginning of the pandemic produced unprecedented challenges for the events industry.
From multi-national companies to local markets, all businesses that relied on in-person
meetings were staggered and faced heavy losses. Work environment pushed through the
pandemic days by quickly pivoting to virtual events. Organizations embraced the benefits of
technology within a span of weeks, which would otherwise have taken years and the effect
was studied by several researchers.

Laihonen, H. [1] has pointed out that all organizational changes, work-from-home too has
some advantages and disadvantages. Usually, adopting this flexible way of working has been
presented as a planned choice that requires a period of design, preparation, and adaptation to
allow organizations to effectively support employees’ productivity and ensure them better
work-life balance. Ahmad al-rfou [2] studied extensively on the challenges of remote
working environment in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was found that companies
held at least one virtual meeting in 2020 and hardly anyone could have foreseen such a swift
and heavy dependence on event technology before the pandemic.

Teresa Galanti, et al. [3] studied the paradigm shift in work environs to work-from-home
during the COVID-19 outbreak. Results of their work portray that that the work-from-home,
non-self-employed population has grown manifold as fast as the rest of the workforce since
2005. Thomas J.George, et. al [4] has researched on the productivity and wellbeing of remote
workers. It was detailed that flexibility on the work style goes hand in hand with
accountability. It was understood that working remotely in most cases is a privilege, not a
right.

It was found by Bin Wang et al. [5] that social support was positively correlated with lower
levels of all remote working challenges, job autonomy negatively related to loneliness,
workload and monitoring both linked to higher work-home interference and workload
additionally linked to lower procrastination. Self-discipline was a significant moderator of
several of these relationships. We discuss the implications of our research for the pandemic
and beyond. Employees have been doing a nice job earning this privilege based on the
findings. It is predicted that a portion of the workforce will switch to remote mode of work
permanently in the future years. Numerous organizations have resisted remote working
because they felt it would lead to reduced productivity and innovation.

4. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

 To find the effectiveness of virtual meetings in remote work environment.

 To find out the effect of employee productivity in remote work environment.

5. HYPOTHESIS
 H0: Remote working environment boosts productivity of employee
 Ha: Remote working environment has no effect on productivity of employee

 H0: Employees prefer online meetings compared to face-to-face meetings

 Ha: Employees have no preference for online meetings or to face-to-face meetings
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6. DATA COLLECTION METHODS

The study is based on primary data and uses a sample of 200 people whose domain of work
ranges from IT, government administrative staff and design, planning nature of jobs where
online meetings are viable. The type of method followed for data collection is primary data
collection by online questionnaire which would detail the parameters for measurement of
productivity and efficiency of employee.

7. DATA INTERPRETATION & ANALYSIS

In this section, the data collected through questionnaire above will scaled appropriately and
hypotheses theories will be applied. Based on the results obtained, the results will be
interpreted.

8. CONCLUSION

The conclusion of the research will be based on the data collected and interpretation
thereafter. The various analyses performed in the above stages would aid in deriving a
conclusion post testing of hypothesis. The observations and limitations of the study will also
be discussed.

9. REFERENCES

[1] Laihonen, H., Jääskeläinen, A., Lönnqvist, A. and Ruostela, J. (2012), “Measuring the
productivity impacts of new ways of working”, Journal of Facilities Management, Vol.
10 No. 2, pp. 102-113.
[2] Ahmad al-rfou, “Remote Working Environment Challenges in the Context of the
COVID-19 Pandemic”, October 2021.
[3] Teresa Galanti, Gloria Guidetti, Elisabetta Mazzei, Salvatore Zappalà, and Ferdinando
Toscano, “The Impact on Employees’ Remote Work Productivity, Engagement, and
Stress”, October 2021.
[4] Thomas J. George, Leanne E.Atwater, Dustin Maneethai, Juan M. Madera, “Supporting
the productivity and wellbeing of remote workers: Lessons from COVID-19”, July 2021.
[5] Bin Wang, Yukun Liu, Jing Qian, and Sharon K. Parker, “Achieving Effective Remote
Working During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Work Design Perspective”, Journal of
Applied Psychology, November 2020.