About this Research Topic

Background

During these unprecedented times, businesses and work organisations have made constant attempts to find new solutions to survive and thrive. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an immanent impact on changing society’s way of working. Working from home or hybrid working, for instance, has become the norm for many workplaces. Research on flexible work has evidenced both the positive aspects of this mode of working, such as increased flexibility and productivity, and the drawbacks, such as intrusion of the household and isolation. Work organisations have had to take into account this new mode of working in reorganising work practices, for example managing the performance of remote workers and coming up with new ways of keeping remote workers engaged. In this Research Topic, we aim to address the following questions: what have been the learning lessons for work organisations to implement following the COVID-19 pandemic? How have workplaces been re-built and re-imagined post-pandemic? What has been the relationship between management and workers’ agency and these changes?

Due to the remote nature of many workplaces, digital technologies are now an essential tool for working, enabling quicker and more pervasive interactions among workers and encouraging innovative changes in different work environments. For instance, online learning was introduced in the educational sector leading to several challenges such as a lack of IT infrastructure, a shortage of appropriate online resources, and a depletion of face-to-face interaction, offering this sector a huge learning experience.

Moreover, the recent global COVID-19 pandemic evidenced an increased number of sick leave, shedding light on the importance of health and well-being at work, which many HR managers have ignored. The previous workplace had a variety of undesirable characteristics, such as tight control mechanisms, lack of flexible working hours, and location. Thus, some might argue that the COVID-19 pandemic represents a ‘forced’ opportunity to re-imagine better work organisations. This is just one example of how external factors can disrupt organisational settings. For instance, many small businesses and self-employers have often faced high levels of uncertainty and demanding work conditions, forcing them to re-invent themselves and their businesses to continue to exist. Lessons related to their adaptability and flexibility can be employed by employees to manage themselves during these challenging times.

While a series of studies have explored the several changes and challenges occurring in work organisations during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, this Research Topic welcomes scholars exploring the emerging process of re-building and re-inventing workplaces activated by this external factor. “Re-building” and “re-inventing” involves a reflective practice towards past experience, enabling work organisations to keep best practices and re-create new ones. Although this process has been accelerated by the recent global pandemic, we welcome articles where this practice of re-building or re-inventing is activated by other factors too, including consultants and the self-employed who engage in a continuous process of re-imagining themselves so that their businesses survive and succeed.

We welcome articles that focus on (but are not limited to) one or more of the following themes:
• Flexible working and hybrid working;
• Examples of work organisations that forced workers to return to their offices;
• New advancements in managing health at work in the workplace;
• The resilience of workplaces/workers;
• The agency of management and of workers;
• Worker resistance and/or misbehaviour (direct, formal, or indirect) leading to changes in the workplace either to accommodate or control workers;
• Insights into workers' voices, e.g., the gains and losses that workers see from attempts to re-build the workplace;
• The process of re-building and re-inventing in SMEs and the self-employed;
• Re-building learning environments;
• Re-organising healthcare organisations;
• Re-building employees’ commitments;
• New ways of controlling and managing employees;
• New practices in the area of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion;
• Re-inventing teamwork;
• The role of migration in the changing workplace;
• The role of technology in the changing workplace;
• The effect of the changing workplaces on gender.

We welcome research-based articles, theoretical articles, and systematic review articles. We are particularly interested in papers that reflect on workers' and employers' voices and agency in relation to these themes.

Keywords: Re-building, re-inventing, changing workplaces, new work practices, post-Covid-19 organizations, resilience

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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