Remote work: major study launched
The traditional concept of office workers stuck at desks all day is changing.
An increasing number of workplaces are allowing employees to work remotely (teleworking) but very little is known about the practice in Australasia. A new project involving AUT researchers aims to learn more.
Organisations in New Zealand and Australia that use teleworking arrangements, either formally or informally, are being asked to come forward for the Telework Productivity and Wellbeing Project. The project is a collaboration between AUT’s New Zealand Work Research Institute; University of Melbourne’s Institute for Broadband Enabled Society and Cisco New Zealand.
Benefits to teleworking
Teleworking offers many potential benefits to organisations and their employees, such as improving individual productivity and wellbeing, as well as promoting environmental sustainability.
Technological advances have meant that telework has become an attractive and viable organisational choice to support work. This research project involves two aspects.
- To access workers’ experiences of teleworking, we are conducting an online survey of teleworkers from a range of organisational levels and job types.
- To obtain an organisational perspective on teleworking, we are conducting a small number of telephone interviews with managers in a range of organisations on organisational policies on telework and managers’ experiences managing a teleworking team.
The researchers are currently recruiting New Zealand organisations to participate in this study. Participation from employers would entail two to three interviews and an online survey of some of your teleworking staff.
Organisation's will learn important information
In return for an organisation’s participation in the study, we will provide them with a summary report of our findings, which can be used to benchmark the organisation’s current telework practice against that of other New Zealand organisations.
If your organisation is interested in becoming part of this research project, the researchers would like to hear from you.
Please contact the project research officer, Laurie McLeod, at lmcleod@aut.ac.nz.