In the 21st century, more individuals prefer to work remotely rather than perform tasks at the office. As a result, the Working from Home (WFH) environment has experienced shifts, facilitating the process of incorporating smart home concepts. Device manufacturers, utility companies, and house planners all try to market their products and services as techniques to make life simpler and save time. As a result, employees can access all corporate features, incorporate sustainable approaches, and digitalize the household. Though there are specific challenges that make smart home systems vulnerable, the benefits of such a concept are found to optimize work and operations for both employees and businesses.
Introduction
As remedies to the COVID-19 epidemic develop, technology and data are colliding in unprecedented ways at home. It is becoming evident that the COVID-19 epidemic has not only transformed the way many companies work but has also hastened the demise of countless firms throughout the world (Amankwah-Amoah et al., 2021). This paper looks at the literature on the evolution of digitalization in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in the widespread adoption of smart homes and is expected to continue. Furthermore, several technologies that have become especially important under these circumstances will be emphasized.
From a critical perspective, post-COVID-19 era has hastened the transformation from the regular work modalities to remote working. The paradigm shift has been occasioned by the technological advancements that have been witnessed over the years. More specifically, working from home has shifted from the traditional perception of domestic workers and caregivers to more advanced professions such as banking, teaching, and engineering among others. Though in a subtle manner, several research studies have revealed the importance of working from home. In their explanations, different studies have tried to explain the benefits of the rising need to work from home by employees.
By evaluating different articles about working from home in the current era, it can be deduced that the home working has its advantages as well as the disadvantages. Working from home in a fully smart home has introduced new possibilities for the way organizations work in addition to structuring themselves. With the breakout of the COVID-19, working from home has offered some employers the flexibility they require to continue their business operations while prioritizing the health and safety of their workers. Indeed, before the coronavirus pandemic, there was a rising trend of working from home because various organizations had established the advantages it could bring to their businesses. More strikingly, an improved work-life balance for the workers is a reason enough to necessitate working from home.
To ensure business survival, government’s steps to battle the virus have compelled businesses to adjust to new working circumstances. In such unforeseeable conditions, organizations are forced to digitize their working practices regardless of their resources and skills. The pandemic catastrophe has provided an opportunity to investigate the sustainability of remote work in a new setting where employees are confined to their homes (Rana et al., 2021). Such circumstances, on the one hand, put pressure on both firms and employees. The circumstance, on the other hand, has blurred the lines between home and work activities and locations. The usage of smart homes has expanded tremendously as work and home areas have merged into a hybrid environment.
Keywords
Remote working or teleworking are terms that are interchangeably used, but are related. Pioneer researches were fuelled at a time when working from home was a connotation used to denote working away from the workplace, basically by means of technological communication as a substitute to commuting (Diab-Bahman & Al-Enzi, 2020). Currently teleworking is defined as a form of an adaptable work that involves distant work, which is dependent on the use of information and communication technologies. However, teleworking incorporates three major forms of working.
Important forms of teleworking are home-based telework, teleworking from remote offices, and mobile telework. Home-based telework is a category of remote working that involves low or high-skilled duties that are virtually done at home. On the other hand, teleworking from remote offices refers to the kind of working in which jobs are done far away from the main office or headquarter by application of communication technologies. Thirdly, mobile telework incorporates completion of assignments that are ordinarily done by those who routinely work away from their working base. Interestingly, COVID-19 pandemic changed the notion of teleworking to mean working from a home, or as it is referred as remote working.
Smart houses today make people’s lives simpler and give convenience to their daily routines. Many manual jobs are automated or considerably improved by smart appliances and devices. A smart home includes Internet-connected devices and appliances that can be operated remotely from your smartphone or tablet (Gupta et al., 2021). The COVID-19 epidemic had a drastic influence on the future of smart home gadgets, resulting in rapid adoption as people transform their living environments into places to work and study (Maalsen & Dowling, 2020). The move of many organizations to remote work has been a critical factor in the development of smart houses. This has led to a surge in the creation and spread of smart home technologies, which are strongly linked to the new working circumstances.
Methodology
Published papers linked to the development of smart homes and digitalization in the age of COVID-19 was summarized as part of the search for relevant material. Various internet databases and Google Scholar were used to conduct the literature search. Wiley Online Library, Elsevier, Sci-Hub, the New York Public Library, and the Free Library are among the databases used. The search was made using a certain combination of phrases and keywords (also found in the abstract). To evaluate eligibility and gather information about the study, each of the found publications was examined. The research issues discussed are extensive, as they are in most narrative studies.
There are, however, ten key questions that can be distinguished. First, how these systems are created, and second, what methodologies are employed to investigate these systems and occurrences. Third, what conclusions may be reached as a result of these systems’ development? Fourth, what are the most relevant examples of technology for addressing future possibilities and issues? Fifth, what are the benefits of working from smart home today? Sixth research question, what are the disadvantages of working in a fully smart home? Seventh question, how were employees adapting to new work modalities during COVID-19? Eighth, how were the conventional work settings transformed by coronavirus? Ninth, what is the relationship between digitalization and COVID-19? Tenth, what is the role of IOT in enabling productive work from home? In essence, the answers to the outlined questions provide a basis for understanding this review.
For this literature review, six independent studies were selected for evaluation. Amankwah-Amoah et al. (2021) approached digitalization in the work settings and argued that the COVID-19 continues to be “the great accelerator” of the process. Gupta et al. (2021) tackled the phenomenon of the Internet of Things (IoT), one of the key drivers behind the development of all the “smart” solutions. Maalsen and Dowling’s (2020) research explicitly showed the difficulties that accelerated smart home development is facing in relation to privacy. Rana et al. (2021) provided the general outline of the possible smart home and smart home-office evaluation pattern, with a discussion on the impacts of adopting it. Umair et al. (2021) took notice of noticeable technological advancements in the “smart” settings and the implications for their potential massive adoption. Lastly, Yousif et al. (2021) discussed the impacts of IoT technologies in different fields and their potential in the post-pandemic situation.
A systematic review evaluation approach was used for this literature review. Its goal is to find papers that describe the situation in question. The narrative review is a conventional method of examining the literature that focuses on a qualitative interpretation of past knowledge (Snyder, 2019). This style of review may be particularly useful for gathering and summarizing the body of literature on a certain topic area. Its major goal is to present thorough information to the reader in order for them to grasp existing knowledge and to underline the necessity of fresh research (Snyder. 2019). Descriptive reviews can assist researchers in generating research ideas by finding gaps or inconsistencies in the corpus of knowledge, allowing them to construct research questions or hypotheses. It is worth noting that descriptive reviews may also be utilized as instructional pieces to help practitioners get more familiar with certain issue areas.
This study addresses a topic that has received little attention in the literature. There is a small set of literature on the usage of smart home technology. The majority of prior study has focused on smart house technologies from a technological standpoint, while another flow of studies has focused on the services that smart home products can deliver. While the research on smart homes suggests that technology can enhance living circumstances and housekeeping duties, there is little evidence that smart homes have an influence on work-related results.
The study used a systematic approach to analyze and synthesize the smart home material. In order to gain an insight into the interconnection of remote work and smart homes, six sources were analyzed. Furthermore, the given study discusses the concept of the smart home, its advantageous sides for remote work, and possible threats. The objective of the study is to identify the future trend of smart homes and their influence on remote work.
Results
The results of the literature review indicate that the concept of a smart home involves the usage of digital equipment, promotion of sustainability, and security. The scholars agree that there are benefits of a smart home for remote employees that imply time-efficiency and productivity. However, researchers claim that smart homes involve technological vulnerability that can be abused by cyber attackers who can obtain private data for personal gain.
Importance of Smart Homes
To start with, smart homes are gaining immense popularity due to their helpful features. According to Strengers and Nicholls (2017), improving productivity and making everyday tasks easier has always focused on consumer advertising. The concept of a smart home is no different in its goal of making life and work simpler through technological and integrated commerce (Strengers & Nicholls, 2017). The incorporation of internet-enabled products and equipment into the design of the house is at the heart of this strategy. Smart home supporters believe that a significant positive aspect of this time-efficient way of life is connected with energy-efficient usage, which may be reached via simplicity and streamlining.
As it was mentioned earlier, the literature exclusively dealing with the issue of smart home development and its relation to the future of work-from-home settings is relatively scarce. However, several articles discuss this issue within the broader topic of digitalization and the Internet of Things (IoT) settings. Several studies also touch upon the issue of possible dangers of further digitalization of working conditions and its direct link to the development of smart homes, cities, and building concepts. Overall, the issue of how a smart home will help people to work from home in the future is based on several sets of factors, directly or indirectly dealt with in most of the publications. The working environment is considered crucial in this regard.
There are still two basic ways to categorize and understand smart houses, based on whether they begin with living spaces or power systems. Marikyan et al. (2019) establish the first category by identifying it as homes with Information and Communication Technology (ICT). As per the scholars’ perspective, such houses have linked devices that can be digitally monitored and simultaneously adapt to homeowner demands. The second category is smart houses and other structures that are viewed as dynamically interconnected and interactive aspects of energy networks on a bigger scale (Marikyan et al., 2019). These two perspectives may be regarded in views of usefulness to individuals and the whole power system, as well as demands imposed on homes and systems.
At the individual level, ‘smart’ can incorporate electronic products and equipment, such as heating system, lighting, or security, for remote control by the residents or another operator. Progressing further, detectors and processing units can also obtain and utilize knowledge about the residents, operating independently of immediate human decision to alter controller parameters, in applications such as learning thermostats (Marikyan et al., 2019). Electronic equipment in households has the opportunity to assist with system and grid control as components of models that depend progressively on power generation, storing, and load control (Marikyan et al., 2019). This implies deviations from regular demand patterns in reaction to providing availability (Marikyan et al., 2019). One justification for smart homes is that they can improve system productivity by minimizing peak usage and matching demand with supply instantaneously. This facilitates the incorporation of more dispersed renewable power into power grids. Consequently, such home concepts not only make daily tasks easier but make working conditions more efficient and sustainable.
Remote Work Environment
Many scholars agree with the statement that a remote work environment will become optimal in the near future due to the increased adoption of smart house systems. According to Guan et al. (2022), smart will imply a home workplace environment where data flow will be rapid and simple. Existing options include integrating a secured WFH setting with the latest intelligent gadgets “sitting” on the same network (Guan et al., 2022). Users at home subsequently obtain features such as user and remote access, multi-level network security, web filtering, customer support available 24/7, and a corporate management dashboard, all available via an easy-to-use smartphone app (Guan et al., 2022). Additionally, smart home systems are beneficial for businesses whose expenditures on office areas and equipment might decrease drastically (Guan et al., 2022). Thus, the concept of a smart home and remote work will grow in demand.
Cyber-security in Smart Homes
Nevertheless, many researchers also claim that the smart home concept can be detrimental to both employee and business’ privacy. Because of WFH’s unique contextual consistency, more specifically, surroundings, it should be noted whether these remote conditions are influenced by personal smart home products (Abdi et al., 2021). For example, while a client is in a secret conference, the smart home gadget might possibly capture voice recordings or even confidential material (Abdi et al., 2021). Butt et al. (2021) further claim that cyber-attacks on remote employees working from home have significantly escalated due to the global epidemic. Cyber attackers have identified the vulnerability of both corporate and private users and abused customers for monetary gain and espionage purposes (Georgiadou et al., 2021). Perpetrators intend to exploit unprotected smart homes via the Internet of Things to obtain access to enterprise networks (Butt et al., 2021). This implies that homeowners must be especially cautious about this modern technology.
Importance of Smart Environment
A remote working environment represents new performance qualities, techniques, and situations that are influenced by the new work environment and equipment. Rana et al. (2021) research proved beneficial in examining the link between task and technology fit, which is crucial because users may stop using technology if they detect a mismatch between the task’s needs and the technology’s capacity to accomplish them (Rana et al., 2021). Smart homes can help people control their working environment and boost their productivity. Voice-activated assistants and other smart home technologies provide seamless communication and automation, making virtual collaboration easier to adjust to (Umair et al., 2021). Furthermore, smart houses are thought to improve the efficiency of personal duties. Remote work applications such as monitoring workplace conditions demonstrate the importance of smart home technology services (Amankwah-Amoah et al., 2021). Some of the literature considers that creating pleasant working conditions while working from home is linked to individual task performance, which, in turn, has a good impact on job results. Given the advantages of smart homes in terms of providing comfort in the house, their implementation might help to improve the settings for remote work, which is critical for greater productivity and well-being (Gupta et al., 2021). Smart homes are vital in this respect and give the required comfort, and the advancement of this component is expected to be critical in the future for working from home.
IoT
In the post-pandemic environment, IoT technologies are projected to play a big role. IoT has swiftly become one of the most well-known commercial and technical terms in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic (Yousif et al., 2021). The Internet of Things, when combined with other technologies such as cloud computing and the embedding of actuators and smart sensors, makes it easier to interact with smart devices, allowing access from multiple locations, increasing data exchange efficiency, and improving storage and computing power (Umair et al., 2021). The research by Umair et al. (2021) showed that these improvements are likely to influence remote work habits, and they are ideally suited to make it simpler to keep this work environment going.
However, while IoT-based technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we live beyond COVID-19, further study and validation is required before widespread use (Yousif et al., 2021). In this regard, the authors consider security and privacy problems as one of the key obstacles to installing smart infrastructures. Home automation attacks, for example, have grown widespread, with cybercriminals using Internet of Things (IoT) devices to gain access to a larger network (Gupta et al., 2021). Simultaneously, the move to a digital office employing smart houses is being hampered by factors such as organizational inflexibility, cash-based company practices, and the digital divide in the case of small businesses.
Development of Smart Home in Relation to COVID-19
Besides the potential benefits of future smart home offices, several studies considered the downsides and difficulties in their development. Umair et al. (2021) study names expense and technical expertise necessary for home automation as two of the most significant impediments to smart home development in the current era (Umair et al., 2021). This necessitates the effective integration and analysis of data created and gathered from many sources.
Additionally, to make it easier for people to adopt, the customization limit must be lowered. Plug-and-play solutions must be developed that can be simply installed and utilized by those who do not possess certain technical capabilities (Umair et al., 2021). It was also brought to attention, that as a result of these advancements, the energy sector’s expanding demand must adapt to the changes brought about by COVID-19 in human lifestyle and energy consumption habits (Yousif et al., 2021). People are likely to spend more time at home in the future, and the energy consumption is shifting away from commercial enterprises and toward households. Gupta et al. (2021) consider that in smart houses and smart buildings in general, energy supply and billing should be optimized based on occupancy patterns (Gupta et al., 2021). Thus, technology allows access work from home and widens the home environment’s bounds. In the post-pandemic setting, the rapid integration and acceptance of technology in the home are likely to continue (Rana et al., 2021). The epidemic has accelerated the adoption of smart technologies, which has implications for a careful assessment of their possible consequences.
Aside from the theoretical research on the issue of smart homes and their relation to the work-from-home settings, there are some practical considerations and examples. Smart home technologies, as demonstrated through them, definitely benefit people working remotely. A smart house, for example, may provide parents control over their children without disturbing them from their job. In this scenario, home security cameras in a child’s bedroom, playroom, or wherever they spend time can be a solution. Access live camera feeds from anywhere in the house through the special application (Maalsen & Dowling, 2020). This is important if a person works remotely while living with family and children. Controlling settings is another advantage of working from home (Rana et al., 2021). The smart home thermostat, for instance, makes it simple to regulate temperature and humidity in the home office, promoting comfort and productivity in the workplace. As previously said, pleasant circumstances at a remote workplace may contribute to higher productivity, and the smart home can provide this.
Advantages of Remote Working
Working from home is attached to a benefit such as increased adaptability and activeness on the part of an employee. With employees not being tied to a specific work station as it is in an office situation, they are willing to work flexible hours, such as morning hours, midday hours, and even on weekends. This is important when an organization has with clients who are residing in a different time zone because this kind of flexibility means that the needs of such clients are met in an effective manner. In essence, working from home is not only of benefit to an employee but to the employer as well.
Employee Retention
Efficient organizations with excellent records of performance attach their successes to output of their workers. Work performance is basically tied to the loyalty that the employees have with their employers. Nevertheless, the most important pillar to workers’ performance is the foundation of their loyalty which is pegged on employee retention. Different studies reveal that working from home enable retention of workers as the flexibility of their working hours ensures that they meet childcare needs, in addition to fitting their work around their personal lives. Being allowed to work from home, employees feel increased levels of trust between them and their employers which in turn contributes immensely to staff loyalty. Therefore, the employees’ morale is boosted and consequently they are motivated to work harder.
Competitive Advantage
With the current globalization trends, working from home is advantageous to a firm as it can rely on that for competitive advantage against other organizations. Working from home can be used as an incentive to attract great talents from the job market. For instance, by offering the option to work remotely, firms are able to derive an advantage over those that do not present home working opportunities. As a matter of fact, working from a fully smart home enables the effect of a small corporation to be felt even in those areas that it does not cover in its operations.
Increased Productivity
Inasmuch as few researches have tried to explain the advantages of smart homes in relation to work performance, a notable outcome that is grounded on working from home is the increased productivity. The relationship cannot be established to a greater extent because of the newness of remote working. However, those studies that support working from home argue that homeworking is advantageous because of fewer interruptions which would otherwise occur in an office setup. In contrast with the office environment, working from a smart home allows for a serene situation that can enhance more focused work. In some situations, employees seek to increase their paid contractual hours to save on the time that they had previously spent on commuting to and from the work. Without doubt, productivity of workers increases by some extent when they are allowed to work from their smart homes.
Increased Staff Motivation
Increased staff motivation is dependable on almost all other benefits of working from home in a fully smart home. Nonetheless, as an advantage on its own, it is fully based on the trust that is built between the employers and their employees. By working from home, the employees build trust as the working relationship is not under close surveillance and the workers are allowed some degree of freedom to do their work. Motivation accrues because the workers are able to establish a working routine that is tailored towards their needs and thereby making them to yearn for excellence. Undeniably, this is an example of intrinsic motivation that precipitates productivity in workers.
Improved Health and Social Welfare
Moreover, remote working provides a good opportunity for staff to improve on their health and social wellbeing. Working from home eradicates the need for a commute to work that can be stressful to some workers. More significantly, the staffs that are motion sick are affected by the daily routine of boarding a train or a bus to work place. Therefore remote working reduces the burden of taking motion sickness medicine by such sick workers whenever they are reporting to work. In addition, the time that is saved by working from smart home, enables the employees to acquire extra health benefits such as additional sleep, spending time with their families, exercising, or preparing healthier foods. As such, the family ties are strengthened, health conditions are maintained in a way that allows the staff to be effective in their work.
Reduced Expenditures
From studies that offer economic perspectives, remote working is beneficial to the organization in terms of the reduced expenditures on their part. For example, organizations are able to save on the office space when they allow some of their workers to work from their smart homes. The rent can then be diverted to other activities that increase profitability to the organization. Equally, office supplies, utility bills and other facilities costs are reduced. Furthermore, employees are also exempted from spending on transport costs for coming or going to work. Clearly, remote working is proving to be profitable for organizations and their staff.
Convenience to Clients
Smart homes are making organizations to be more efficient, reliable, and responsive to their clients in a timely fashion. It means that clients’ needs are catered for at their convenience especially with the advent of working from home. With some organizations, there are workers who do a lot of client visits and are not regularly in the office and therefore working from home works to their advantage. Professionals such as loan recovery officers, data analysts, online marketers, web designers are able to work at their own convenience from their smart homes. Allowing these workers to concentrate on their jobs from their homes is more convenient and leads to further time and costs savings. As such, working from a fully smart home by employees is important in making them more comfortable in undertaking their assignments.
Work-Life Balance
The rising cases of mental health in the current world are making employers to seek for ways to deal with the menace from among their employees. One of the ways that the organizations have resorted to is the introduction of working from home to check on the work-life balance. This is an advantage that is derived from remote working in a bid to balance personal life and professional life. In illustration, workers who commute to work would use that time on themselves, giving the basis for improved work-life balance. Staffs are also able to allocate household duties to themselves within the working hours and they can have spare time in the evenings to chat with their families. On that account, employees who are working from home are able to manage their time well by allocating each important aspect of their lives their time.
Increased Efficiency
Smart working reduces sick leaves, complete absence from work, and effects such as burnouts. Some studies have revealed that staffs working from home are more likely to feel happier, energized with less probabilities of their immune system being affected by burnouts. In addition, the fact that workers from same organization are working from their respective homes means that the chances of contracting diseases are greatly reduced. Ideally, isolation that was enforced by different governments across the world during the COVID-19 was based on the need to control the spread of the infection. That being the case, control of diseases that lead to sick leaves is pivotal in organization’s effectiveness.
Disadvantages of Remote Working
Although working from home has many benefits to it, there exist some disadvantages that are attached to it as well. Most importantly, homeworking might not be suited to everybody’s personality and competencies. Without a doubt, human beings were created differently with different abilities, needs, and fears, among others. Therefore, some employees might prefer routine and structure that office working provides to them. A number of people might prefer social interaction with their co-workers, direct guidance from their supervisors which might be crucial in completing tasks and achieving certain objectives. Besides, there are individuals with certain disabilities whose working from home may have a negative result on the assistance they require to do their work. Homeworking may not fit in everyone’s home-life as they may have young children who do not know boundaries hence interrupting the employee during the day. Again, other individuals may not have the needed physical space to create a suitably working location. As has been noted, humans are unique in their needs and abilities and on that basis diversification of modes of working is crucial.
Social Alienation
Another disadvantage of working from home is the social alienation that it creates among workers. People working from their fully smart homes may feel a disconnect from their co-workers and institution as a whole that office practice breeds. The situation is more severe for those people who are close friends in an office arrangement and are forced to work from their respective homes. In such a scenario, the workers may end up calling each other many times of the day at the expense of doing their work. Consequently, some people may feel depressed and delinked from the social life.
Difficulty in Monitoring Performance
Difficulty arises when it comes to monitoring of performance of workers who are working from their homes. As has been stated earlier, people are different and therefore the degrees of positive response to surveillance also vary. Besides, there are people who can spend the whole working time doing other things yet when tracked the results prove otherwise. In this case, personal drive supersedes any other surveillance mechanism that the company may have put in place to monitor individual performance. Furthermore, softwares such as Clouddesk are subject to human manipulation and they cannot be absolutely depended upon to monitor remote teams. In other words, working from home can be easily misused by lazy employees when proper structures are not laid for monitoring performance and efficiency.
Distractions in Smart Homes
Distractions that occur from the office are unidirectional as opposed to those that come from the office. In an office environment, disruptions would automatically come from the colleagues and their behaviors while home working is bridled with distractions from both obvious and unexpected entities. Obvious sources of distraction are the mailperson, little babies, and pizza guys among others. Unexpected sources of distraction are noises from birds, hooting trains and cars, and gunshots among others. In this regard, office environment is better compared to the home environment despite the serene ambience that can be associated with working from home. Another rare form of disruptions is power outages that may inhibit continuation of a specific project while working from home. Interestingly, experiencing disturbance or any form of distraction while working at home is inevitable because the home acts as a confluence between an individual’s life and work place. On the whole, home working is more disadvantageous compared to office working in relation to the matter of disruptions.
Possible Burnouts
Indistinct physical barrier between professional life and personal life poses a challenge as it can to burn out in the case of homeworking. A staff may struggle to differentiate a work life and personal life. As a consequence, employees find it hard to switch off from the career life and, leading longer durations of work, increased psychological stress and inescapable burnout. The condition is affecting not only the workforce but business activity as well.
Initial High Costs
Establishing a work station at home is costly on the part of an employee than when the staff is working from the office. The notable difference is that after home working station has been created, it is more cost effective than the traditional office working. Initial costs of staff training and provision of suitable equipment such as laptops, mobile phones, and other equipment. Adaptation to health and safety standards is given important consideration when determining the costs for starting a work station. As evident, the expenses are related to the infrastructure and the requirements of setting up a work station.
No Staff Development
There are challenges pertaining to staff development when a specific job is exclusively based on the working from home model. Not having staff in close proximity leads to difficulty in maintaining professional development and upgrading of job competencies. However, online training, mentorship and career coaching have been proposed to deal with the staffs who are working mostly at their homes. The greatest challenge with online training is that assessment results cannot be relied upon as a true reflection of understanding of the concept. Lack of proper assessment mechanisms within the homeworking model explains why career progression is less pronounced as compared to office working model.
Information Security
Personal computers, laptops, and tablets are prone to attackers for those who are using them away from the office. When attackers access information that is sensitive such as passwords, information security problems are bound to occur. This is because the hackers or criminals can use the passwords to access the company servers remotely and use the information or data at their disposal for criminal purposes. On their part, database administrators can encroach on the privacy of a worker by gaining access to information that is solely for personal use. Briefly, enforcement of data protection guidelines in the current age of cybercrime is important for home workers.
Low Staff Morale
Low employee morale is among the disadvantages that are associated with working from home. By working on their own, team spirit dims and those who were either learning on the job previously or being supported by others are set to fail in their objectives. But as contagious as it is, poor performance can spread rapidly from one worker to another. The feelings of disengagement lead to inability to meet targets, disorientation, and lack of innovation. In simple terms, a non-performing team member can bring down an entire team that was previously performing. It is therefore important to detect and mitigate the problem of low morale by an employee before it spreads.
Limitations
By and large, this literature review gives the challenges and advantages of working from home in a manner that is not explicitly expressed in many of the reviewed articles. However, there is an agreement that COVID-19 ignited the acceleration of the smart working modality among many companies. It is during the pandemic that various institutions advised their employees to work from home (Diab-Bahman & Al-Enzi, 2020). Smart working is then an opportunity that was not fully tapped before the break out coronavirus. As a challenge, this paper explored information security as a challenge that bedevils the smart workers. The increase in problem of cyber-attacks is attributed to the increase of the number of those who are working from their homes (Butt et al., 2021). Clearly, COVID-19 pandemic period acted as the turning point for paradigm shift in the modalities of work.
Being that the review depended heavily on researches that were conducted amid COVID-19 pandemic, there are limitations as far as the reliability of the information is concerned. Ideally, people tend to be attracted to surveys if there is a monetary gain that is attached to it. Therefore considering the special conditions of isolation and hard economic situation due to COVID-19 lock downs, the reliability of the studies might be compromised (Georgiadou et al., 2021). Few samples were collected for some surveys as few individuals came forward for the survey. As such, the error is cascaded further to this particular review.
Conclusion
In summary, the current discussion about working from home is grounded on the technological advancements in the communication, science, engineering and mathematics sector. Smart working is currently embraced by the advanced professions that were traditionally office dependent because of the COVID-19 break out and guidelines that are presented against the disease. Compared to any other phenomenon, working from home has its advantages and disadvantages. It has radically changed organizations in almost every aspect as the institutions are changing their structures and operations to ensure that they reap benefits that come with globalization and smart working. Foremost, working from home in a fully smart home has benefits such as flexibility and activeness on the part of the worker. On the other hand, organizations that are successful depend on smart working by their employees to build loyalty which is key in high workers retention. Employers employ smart working as a tool in creating competitive advantage over their competitors in the job market by using it as an incentive to hire individuals with top talents. As homeworking becomes more entrenched in the labour sector, employees are becoming more adaptable in doing their work.
As a result, incorporating smart home concepts is predicted to increase due to helpful and accessible features. Employees who work from home can obtain such features as remote network access, network security, web filtering, and a corporate management dashboard. The concept of the smart home provides time-efficient features that facilitate the successful implementation of work tasks. Moreover, it is beneficial to companies since smart homes for employees and remote work decrease business’ costs.
Apart from flexibility, activeness, high employee retention, there are also other advantages of smart working. For example, increased productivity and motivation, increased staff health and wellbeing, financial benefits, and convenience are among the advantages that are derived from working from home as opposed to working from the office environment. Simply put, productivity is increased is promoted by the comfort derived from remote working (Abdi et al., 2021). However, motivation is based on the mutual trust between employer and the employee. More explicitly, trust is built by the fact that the employee is granted some degree of freedom and because tight surveillance is not in place. Smart working eliminates the need for one to travel over some distances to go to a work place. The abolished need to travel helps the employee to save time. With reduced or no travel expenses, an employee can use the saved funds for other services. The benefits are derived from the organizations which then dependable, effective, and responsive. Evidently, the benefits are that both the employer and employee receive are correlational because they depend on others and a benefit enjoyed by one party ignites the rise of another advantage.
Currently, the escalating cases of mental health in the world are making employers to seek ways of addressing the issue among their employees. Indeed, smart working from home enhances an employee’s work-life balance. When workers allocate time to themselves, they are able to spare additional time for personal life, family included. By their initiatives employers ensure that sick leaves are limited, absence from work is reduced, and burnout effects fully abolished. However, the model of smart working has its own shortfalls. A notable weakness of working from home is that the model does not favor all individuals because of the variations in their needs, abilities and preferences. With disregard to the uniqueness of each individual, it is most likely that homeworking creates the social detachment in an employee. An additional challenge to the smart working paradigm is the difficulty that arises when more than one worker is to be monitored from a control centre by the employer. In a word, the both the health and social wellbeing of employees is greatly affected by the decisions that employers make concerning such conditions that ensure that working conditions are improved.
Other disadvantages of working from smart working entail disruption from home environment, likelihoods of burnout, high costs for establishing home working stations, inability to maintain career development. Additionally, information security risks and low morale among the employees are major challenges to smart working. To illustrate, home as an abode and working area is open to distractions from friends, children, relatives and environmental factors such as noise. Burnouts have higher probabilities of happening due to the fact that some workers may fail to differentiate between work and personal life hence consuming more hours in the work station than is actually required. Equally important, the initial costs of establishing home office or a work station are relatively higher on an employee than it is to work from an established office environment. Upgrading job skills is difficult when someone is working from home because of the distance between the worker and the supervisor. Moreover, employees expose themselves to cybercrime attack from criminals when they are remotely working. Undeniably, working from home requires a thorough understanding of the model in its entirety in order to limit biases that may arise before doing research.
The COVID-19 epidemic has boosted the development of smart homes by empowering and recalibrating households digitally. In the aftermath of a pandemic, this pattern is likely to emerge. The extant research on the literature on the subject has shown that new technology adoption and digitalization are speeding up, while many organizations’ rapid shift to remote labour is unlikely to be reversed. Despite the numerous obstacles and constraints, the smart house has received generally good feedback. The potential adoption of remote offices with smart homes as the key paradigm for post-pandemic scenario is being driven by the major acceleration of smart home and remote office installations, IoT technology, and individual variables.
A big number of businesses have been compelled to employ new technology to move to telecommuting skills development as a result of the epidemic. Unintended effects of digitizing work, on the other hand, can result in long-term expenses for businesses in the form of lost productivity and health-related absenteeism. Finally, the benefits of work-life balance employing a smart homework environment may cause satellite sectors that support traditional office work to decrease, ranging from transportation and catering to office leases.
Recommendations
It is vital to understand that the challenges of smart homes extend beyond security problems. Smart home systems might be costly, which might not make such a concept ubiquitous. Moreover, another challenge of such systems is their maintenance and power source. Smart homes that utilize renewable energy tend to be more sustainable and are not vulnerable to power failures. As a result, researching the possible sources of maintaining the smart homes, ensuring cyber security and lower costs will create more demand for such systems.
It is important to understand that each country’s technology infrastructure is unique, people’s perceptions and experiences with smart home offices may differ. Another disadvantage is that the literature covers a wide range of smart technologies, making it difficult to evaluate which is most important for improving smart home office productivity and people’s life satisfaction. As a result, future studies may look at the influence of a certain smart technology on the lifestyles and productivity of remote employees.
It may be beneficial for governments to give incentives for businesses to build digital skills and capacities, as well as to strengthen national physical-digital infrastructures as part of the recovery from the epidemic. Long-term use of remote work within smart home settings will minimize road congestion and pollution while increasing productivity. To a greater extent, this will ensure that employment opportunities are create for the youth as well boosting economic growth in a country.
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