By Laurel Spector (21-22)

Due to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and accelerating technological advancements, many organisations have shifted to a remote style of employment. The pandemic made a permanent change to the way many businesses will operate forever, as all the benefits of remote working surfaced. For individual employees the positives of remote work include a more flexible lifestyle and less time/cost commuting to work. On a business level, organisations no longer needed provide their employees with office spaces, which can be costly, and could hire candidates from a more diverse background as the talent pool increased.

However, because of the shift, organisations must figure how to manage employees on a telecommuting basis and maintain their well-being, stability, and productivity. Two central types of remote work emerged, being synchronous remote work and asynchronous remote working type. A remote employee who works in synchronous style has set hours they log into telecommuting platforms (i.e. Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams) and are expected to respond immediately. For example, a remote worker who has consistent, daily scheduled meetings works synchronously. Conversely, one who works asynchronously has more flexibility of choosing their own work hours and are not expected to respond to work demands immediately. A freelance worker is an example of an asynchronous worker—they create work hours that best fits their lifestyle and not required to work simultaneously with others.

To represent the vast new population of remote workers, there are new factors being studied in Industrial Organisational Psychology. Traditionally, organisations study factors that can affect employee and organisational outcomes, such as well-being, job satisfaction (an employee’s overall attitude and feelings towards their job), and turnover intention (how much an employee thinks about wanting to leave their current employment). These organisational outcomes are normally studied along with factors within the work (i.e. work stress, job control) to see how they can negatively or positively impact the outcomes.

Remote work has created new factors that affect how employees view and complete their jobs. One new factor that can impact organisational outcomes is referred to as workplace telepressure, or the impulse and preoccupation for employees to immediately respond to work tasks. This is issue especially influential within remote workers because of the heavy use of technology. The nature of remote work has employees rely on telecommuting platforms for completing work tasks. Remote employees with high levels of telepressure struggle to separate work demands and personal relaxation. The constant thoughts about work tasks are a problem because it prolongs feelings of work stress (Barber et al., 2019).

Traditionally, when studying remote work, it is compared to hybrid and in-person style of work. The aim of study was to have a sample taken from only fully remote workers and compare how the different styles (asynchronous and synchronous) can impact work outcomes. This study adds information to past studies that found general connections between telepressure and the organisational outcomes (job satisfaction and turnover intention). Additionally, explores if asynchronous or synchronous remote work type is more beneficial to both the employee and organisation.

To conduct this study, an anonymous survey was distributed over the course of three weeks across social media platforms (LinkedIn) and professional networks. Only fully remote workers could qualify for the survey, excluding hybrid and in-person workers. A total of 146 remote employees participated in the survey, where they completed the telepressure scale, job satisfaction scale, turnover intention (TIS-6) scale, and demographics (age, education, gender, income satisfaction, and country of residence). These data showed participants were mostly female, an average age of 39, had a university degree, and resided in a western country.

To clean and analyse these data, the statistical program RStudio was used. First, an analysis was completed to see if there is a relationship between telepressure levels affecting job satisfaction and turnover intention. Secondly, added in remote work type to explore if the different types (synchronous or asynchronous) of remote work affects employees’ relationship with their jobs. Other connections within the data were also examined to find more valuable findings.

The results discovered that remote employees’ telepressure levels do cause turnover intention levels to change. This means that the more remote employees think about work tasks during off work hours and feel the need to instantaneously reply, they are more likely to move to a different organisation. However, whether an employee works asynchronously (the more independent remote work style) or synchronously (set, scheduled work from home hours) made no substantial difference in how much they think about leaving their current organisation. Additionally, it was discovered that telepressure does not significantly change a remote employees’ job satisfaction. In other words, how much employees think about work tasks off hours does not have a major effect on how much they are satisfied with their job. Working either an asynchronous or synchronous style of remote employment does not influence the satisfaction levels either.

This present study added to necessary research to better understand the population of remote workers. The study explored how the different types within remote work could affect people who work from homes’ behaviours. This is important to study so organisations know which style is more beneficial to the organisation and their employees. It also supports past bodies of research that found employees who have high telepressure are more willing to leave their current job; the current study adds to this by showing the connection remains within the fully remote workforce.

Organisations can use this information gained to better understand how telepressure and work type affects the behaviours of their remote employees. Organisations should apply this by implementing programs to support lowering telepressure. For example, organisations could aid this by not requiring their employees to send emails unless they are working on the clock. Supervisors and employers could set examples by not sending emails during off work periods. Furthermore, companies could provide their remote workers with separate work phones to limit seeing work demands on their personal device. The second main findings show organisations can implementing either type of remote work should not affect employee outcomes. They can choose synchronous or asynchronous with knowing it should not significantly affect job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

By Amrita Labana (21-22)

There are ways to measure career progression, however, this research examines the barriers and enablers of south-Asian women’s career in England. The contribution of women today in labour market is much higher than few decades ago, (pwc, n.d.), this change to demographics of workforce is gradual. The change is gradual because there are certain barriers which make women’s progression difficult, till now, women representation in leadership, private and public sector is less.

The financial status of women in western culture has continued to change overtime, in 20^th century with more women entering the labour market. Earlier on, women held less paid occupation and the situation has progressively improved with more and more women becoming the part of organisation leadership position. However, some organizations consider women less committed to work and limits opportunities for progression in Organisational hierarchy (Jauregui, 2018). To add context to the above arguments, in Belgium as per law passed by the government (2011), imposing gender quotas for women in Public Organisations. With government initiatives and increasing amount of women representation in labour market, still women are underrepresented in the decision-making process in Organisations. Despite the gender law in place in Belgium although the number of women executives have increased over time, however, only 16% of positions in executive companies in large Belgian companies are held by women as comparative to men (Audrey, 2021). Although the number are increasing still the gender bias is evident in the Organisational Culture and this study will focus on South-Asian women. This example represents the women in western countries and this research dissertation will consider the plight of South Asian Women, the career challenges, and enablers. This research particularly focuses on south-Asian women, because of under representation of this group of women.

This aim of this study is to bring to light barriers and enablers that affect the career progression of women, in-depth interview of 14 south-Asian women were conducted and data was analysed using thematic analysis and the following themes emerged: the barriers are Gender bias and Microaggression, Microaggression and hostile Organisational Practices and Network of Relationships; the enablers are Mentoring and Coaching.

Through the lens of these barriers and enablers, the theoretical implications were discussed, and major findings mapped to key theories of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Social Capital, and Glass ceiling effect.

The methodology used for this study is qualitative, as there is little qualitative research on career aspiration of south Asian women. Thematic analysis was selected to be a suitable method to answer the research question, as it implies deductive analysis for integration of theories.

Semi-structures interviews of 14 South-Asian women were conducted employing open-ended questions and transcribed verbatim.  The qualitative research is helpful in providing rich description of complex events and experiences. Qualitative research is rigorous, systematic and have the capacity to integrate theories to the research agenda.

Interpretation of Results

South-Asian women experience unconscious biases, that have negative effect on their career progression:  Stereotyping and Gender bias enhancing the glass ceiling effect:

Gender stereotypes have prevailed in the society from centuries, and is transmitted through social, educational, and cultural socialization. Although most gender biases and barriers have declined over the years, but the gender stereo types continue to effect women’s carrier progression. The gender stereotypes can be defined broadly as organisational or cultural (Tabassum, 2021). Stereotyping against women can be defined as in-group and out-group stereotyping. Over the years workforce has always been dominated by men than women. Looking few decades back, women were considered incapable of being physicians, engineers, or leaders and till date women are underrepresented in few many of these fields (Filut, 2017). The race bias first identified by Patricia Devine is defined as unintentional influence of stereotype-based preconceived assumptions about a group occur when associating the member of the group, (Devine, 1989). The south-Asian women are subject to unconscious biases, it can be the underlying cause for transparent barrier faced by them.

Flawed diversity practices in male dominated organisation effect progression negatively: Taking into consideration, the theme of microaggression and hostile organisational culture and finding of study conducted by Hirayama and Fernando (2018) argues that organisational culture, i.e., their values, beliefs and expectations of perfect fit, influence women’s career advancement. Several women experienced micro aggressive behaviours specifically in the form culture bias and toxic work environment. Interestingly, existing research suggest that motherhood still limits the career progression of women even in the professions dominated by women for example nursing (McIntosh). Perhaps, motherhood definitively restricts women career development in corporate organisation.

Women consider mentorship and sponsorship enhance career progression

From the current research literature, it is evident that mentorship enhances women career progression as comparative to men.

The aim of this study is to investigate the challenges faced by south-Asian women while developing their career. It is never enough for women to have the necessary qualifications and competencies to progress. However, for their career progression women must work extra hard to prove their strong professional standing and to progress.  Women are challenged more to prove their abilities than male counterparts, and explicitly build a network of relations to succeed in workplace.

Over the past decade, there is significant change in organisations policies, today’s workplace is more is diverse and inclusive of women workforce, however, gender and cultural bias still exist to some extent. The reason for the cultural bias can be societal and this should be addressed at home first and then workplace. The basic intervention can include the diversity training in our schools than in organisations. We as society should address gender role sat social level and impart diversity education at secondary level. The first learning happens in our homes and society.