This article is written by Andrew Choquette, Senior Program Advisor, ESDC, Canada.

  • The problem: Remote work has moved employees out of the eye of management
  • Why it matters: How employers react to that can make the difference between a happy or unhappy workforce
  • The solution: Building relationships fosters trust, leading to better workplaces

As public servants, we’ve seen the line between our working and private lives steadily blur over the pandemic. Yet, traditional working practices are still in force.

Though we talk of it as though it were invented last year, remote working has been growing in popularity since the mid-1990s. As it has grown, a widening body of research on the subject shows that remote working can provide both employer and employee with mutual flexibility.

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British professor of human resource management, Lynette Harris, finds that it can be a “liberating form of employment”. For employees, remote working allows for a better work-life balance. Employers can maintain the productivity of their workforce, improve employee retention, and reduce overhead costs, such as office space.

Dealing with the new normal

So what happens when one’s private and professional lives are merged, but not by choice? In this scenario, your private home is your office, which means any sort of work-life balance is at stake. This can be particularly disruptive for some employees, such as working parents. They are saddled with many other duties that normally take place outside the home, such as homeschooling and day care, to name just a few.

Added to this is the impact improvements in technology have not just on our lives, but also the amount of work we do away from the office, as US business ethics experts Joanne Ciulla, Clancy Martin, and Robert Solomon note. This creates a risk of overextension and burnout.

As a public servant working for the Government of Canada, I’ve worked remotely through the Covid-19 pandemic. In my work, I can see this leading to ethical issues. But what might seem like privacy concerns, legal questions and technical matters arising from the nature of remote working actually turn out to be matters of trust.

What this pandemic has revealed through forced remote working is both the strength and weakness of relational bonds between employer and employee. We need to ask which psychological, technical, and policy factors are sustaining those bonds.

Work contract vs psychological contract

Traditionally, the contract between employee and employer has defined their expectations of each other in terms of an exchange of time, skill, and labour for compensation. But they also enter into an implicit psychological contract.

If, as Harris notes, the psychological contract “is a reflection of the understandings between employer and employee about their respective contributions to the employment relationship”, then the terms of this are not always obvious or clear. What happens when employers abuse that contract, or the employee feels pressured to work extra hours so as not to potentially imperil their employment?

What this pandemic has revealed through forced remote working is both the strength and weakness of relational bonds between employer and employee.

This “implicit contract is never fixed nor stable”, Harris adds. The employee-employer relationship weakens if the employee perceives a lack of engagement and support from their employer, or if the employer expects a particular level of self-management from the employee.

An intrusion into our lives

By moving the office into the home, the employer has already “committed a major intrusion in an individual’s domestic life”. Studies indicate that employees often have an expectation that their employer will abide by the implicit rules of the psychological contract and respect the employee’s domestic situation.

But there are no safeguards. Employers may be less interested in the well-being of an employee’s family, and instead expect the employee to always be ‘on’ for the sake of more productivity.

These terms need to be explicit, especially during a pandemic where jobs are at risk and employees risk exploitation by their employers. Otherwise, as J.B. Cuilla writes in ‘The Exploitation of Need’, the option is: “if you don’t like working here you are free to leave” or "if you don’t like it, you can go work elsewhere”. As you will see, for the public service the terms are not explicit.

It’s about trust, not privacy

For employees, trust rather than privacy lies at the heart of the issues created by remote working. According to American philosopher Robert C. Solomon and Chilean politician Fernando Flores, there are several forms of trust: simple, basic, blind, and authentic.

Employer-employee relationships are based on authentic trust, often developed in a traditional office space, where the physical presence of both parties enables the growth of a relationship bond. However, what happens when you are no longer physically present with your employer? If you have a good relationship with them, based on authentic trust, then one would suppose it would naturally carry over into the virtual space of remote working. But is that true?

By moving the office into the home, the employer has already “committed a major intrusion in an individual’s domestic life”.

US advisory firm Gartner finds that between April and June 2020, passive tracking of remote workers increased from 16% to 26% in two months. But the use of monitoring software implies that as an employee, you are not trusted and that your motivation and commitment is dubious.

Trusting, not tracking

But tracking software or a remote working policy can also create loyalty. US philosopher David Soles writes that: “while obedience can be demanded, loyalty cannot”. Technology allows employers to exercise control over the explicit work contract based on the visibility of employees. Even forms of technology that aren’t designed for monitoring, such as messenger apps and email, can put pressure on the implicit psychological contract and make the employee feel like they must be “always on”.

But the privacy concerns that arise from remote working begin with trust issues. Trust is emotional, dynamic and ultimately conditional on a bond between people. Do I trust my employer not to invade my privacy? Does my employer trust that I will not be loafing on the job? Without good answers to these questions, the bonds of trust between employer and employee will be insecure and this will affect the quality of work, undermine information security and ultimately run down the operational capability of the organisation.

In the years to come, trust will be essential to establishing transparent policies and protocols for remote working. Employers need to use technology to enable trust and policies to ensure that labour relationships, whether physical or virtual are stable and enduring. — Andrew Choquette

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