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Transport‐related equity is gaining increasing attention, highlighting the need for a system that is equitable, accessible, and affordable for all. From a spatial perspective, the spatial distribution of transport infrastructure plays a key role in mitigating socio‐spatial inequalities. Since Covid‐19, teleworking has become more prominent across sectors, raising questions about the equity implications of remote work. This study examines the spatial distribution of commuting burden (CB), as the ratio of travel costs to wages, across the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and tests the hypothesis that telework increases inequality in CB distribution rather than alleviating it. We analyse CB before and after increased telework adoption, integrating occupational typologies, wage levels, and telework potential at the civil parish level. Generalised commuting costs are estimated using travel time and distance by mode, fare structure, and value of time. An adapted Palma index assesses the equity impact of telework on CB distribution, identifying areas of compound burden or benefit. The findings confirm that despite a general decline in average CB under the telework scenario, inequality increases, as measured by the Palma index. High‐wage workers in skilled occupations, predominantly located in more central or well‐connected areas which already have a lower CB, gain disproportionate advantages from telework. Conversely, low‐wage workers in peripheral areas face both higher CB and limited telework capacity. This suggests telework, in its current distribution logic, exacerbates rather than mitigates socio‐spatial disparities. The study underscores the need to embed telework within equitable urban planning frameworks that address the structural causes of socio‐territorial fragmentation.

Abstract The nature and scale of the shocks to the demand for, and the supply of, home childcare during the COVID-19 pandemic provide a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of the division of home labour and the determinants of specialization within the household. We collected real-time data on daily lives to document the impact of measures to control COVID-19 on UK families with children under the age of 12. We document that these families have been doing the equivalent of a working week in childcare, with mothers bearing most of the burden. The additional hours of childcare done by women are less sensitive to their employment than they are for men, leaving many women juggling work and (a lot more) childcare, with likely adverse effects on their mental health and future careers. However, some households, those in which men have not been working, have taken greater steps towards an equal allocation, offering the prospect of sharing the burden of childcare more equally in the future.

Full days worked at home account for 28 percent of paid workdays among Americans 20–64 years old, as of mid-2023. That's about four times the 2019 rate and ten times the rate in the mid-1990s. We first explain why the big shift to work from home has endured rather than reverting to prepandemic levels. We then consider how work-from-home rates vary by worker age, sex, education, parental status, industry and local population density, and why it is higher in the United States than other countries. We also discuss some implications for pay, productivity, and the pace of innovation. Over the next five years, US business executives anticipate modest increases in work-from-home rates at their own companies. Other factors that portend an enduring shift to work from home include the ongoing adaptation of managerial practices and further advances in technologies, products, and tools that support remote work.

The COVID-19 has grandly shaken all organizations, creating a complex and challenging environment for managers and human resource management (HRM) practitioners, who need to find ingenious solutions to ensure the continuity of their companies and to help their employees to cope with this extraordinary crisis. Studies addressing the impact of this crisis on HRM are sparse. This paper is a general literature review, which aims at broadening the scope of management research, by exploring the impact of the COVID-19 on HRM. It identifies the main challenges and opportunities that have arisen from this new pandemic and it offers insights for managers and HRM practitioners into possible future organizational directions that might arise from these opportunities.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) increasingly enable employees to work from home and other locations ('teleworking'). This study explores the extent to which teleworking reduces the need to travel to work and the consequent impacts on economy-wide energy consumption. The paper provides a systematic review of the current state of knowledge of the energy impacts of teleworking. This includes the energy savings from reduced commuter travel and the indirect impacts on energy consumption associated with changes in non-work travel and home energy consumption. The aim is to identify the conditions under which teleworking leads to a net reduction in economy-wide energy consumption, and the circumstances where benefits may be outweighed by unintended impacts. The paper synthesises the results of 39 empirical studies, identified through a comprehensive search of 9000 published articles. Twenty six of the 39 studies suggest that teleworking reduces energy use, and only eight studies suggest that teleworking increases, or has a neutral impact on energy use. However, differences in the methodology, scope and assumptions of the different studies make it difficult to estimate 'average' energy savings. The main source of savings is the reduced distance travelled for commuting, potentially with an additional contribution from lower office energy consumption. However, the more rigorous studies that include a wider range of impacts (e.g. non-work travel or home energy use) generally find smaller savings. Despite the generally positive verdict on teleworking as an energy-saving practice, there are numerous uncertainties and ambiguities about its actual or potential benefits. These relate to the extent to which teleworking may lead to unpredictable increases in non-work travel and home energy use that may outweigh the gains from reduced work travel. The available evidence suggests that economy-wide energy savings are typically modest, and in many circumstances could be negative or non-existent.

The flexibility allowed by the mobilization of technology disintegrated the traditional work-life boundary for most professionals. Whether working from home is the key or impediment to academics’ efficiency and work-life balance became a daunting question for both scientists and their employers. The recent pandemic brought into focus the merits and challenges of working from home on a level of personal experience. Using a convenient sampling, we surveyed 704 academics while working from home and found that the pandemic lockdown decreased the work efficiency for almost half of the researchers but around a quarter of them were more efficient during this time compared to the time before. Based on the gathered personal experience, 70% of the researchers think that in the future they would be similarly or more efficient than before if they could spend more of their work-time at home. They indicated that in the office they are better at sharing thoughts with colleagues, keeping in touch with their team, and collecting data, whereas at home they are better at working on their manuscript, reading the literature, and analyzing their data. Taking well-being also into account, 66% of them would find it ideal to work more from home in the future than they did before the lockdown. These results draw attention to how working from home is becoming a major element of researchers’ life and that we have to learn more about its influencer factors and coping tactics in order to optimize its arrangements.

The new world of work is being characterized by the emergence of what are, apparently, increasingly autonomous ways of working and living. Mobile work, coworking, flex office, platform-based entrepreneurship, virtual collaborations, Do It Yourself (DIT), remote work, digital nomads, among other trends, epitomize ways of organizing work practice that purportedly align productivity with freedom. But most ethnographical research already reveals many paradoxical experiences associated with these new practices and processes. Indeed, it appears that with autonomy comes surveillance and control, to a point where, as Foucault observed way back, subjectivity and subject become synonyms, and the current pandemic both strengthens and makes visible this situation. In this introduction to the special issue we make a foray into this situation, using four open and related themes developed in the five papers we selected: managerial control and technology; surveillance and platform capitalism; time and space; and new organizational forms and autonomy. Paradoxical movements are identified for each of them, before we conclude by reflecting on a grounding paradox which appears at the centre of this special issue and the themes it covers.

In the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home (WFH) became of great importance for a large share of employees since it represents the only option to both continue working and minimise the risk of virus exposure. Uncertainty about the duration of the pandemic and future contagion waves even led companies to view WFH as a ‘new normal’ way of working. Based on influence function regression methods, this paper explores the potential consequences in the labour income distribution related to a long-lasting increase in WFH feasibility among Italian employees. Results show that a positive shift in WFH feasibility would be associated with an increase in average labour income, but this potential benefit would not be equally distributed among employees. Specifically, an increase in the opportunity to WFH would favour male, older, high-educated, and high-paid employees. However, this ‘forced innovation’ would benefit more employees living in provinces have been more affected by the novel coronavirus. WFH thus risks exacerbating pre-existing inequalities in the labour market, especially if it will not be adequately regulated. As a consequence, this study suggests that policies aimed at alleviating inequality, like income support measures (in the short run) and human capital interventions (in the long run), should play a more important compensating role in the future.

A rising share of employees now regularly engage in working from home (WFH), but there are concerns this can lead to ‘‘shirking from home.’’ We report the results of a WFH experiment at Ctrip, a 16,000-employee, NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel agency. Call center employees who volunteered to WFH were randomly assigned either to work from home or in the office for nine months. Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9% was from working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days) and 4% from more calls per minute (attributed to a quieter and more convenient working environment). Home workers also reported improved work satisfaction, and their attrition rate halved, but their promotion rate conditional on performance fell. Due to the success of the experiment, Ctrip rolled out the option to WFH to the whole firm and allowed the experimental employees to reselect between the home and office. Interestingly, over half of them switched, which led to the gains from WFH almost doubling to 22%. This highlights the benefits of learning and selection effects when adopting modern management practices like WFH.