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Top1. Introduction
The unexpected Covid-19 pandemic has considerably changed the business ecosystem in various ways. Many companies had to move to work-from-home mode as an alternative working arrangement. In the United Sates, the outbreak of the pandemic accelerated the working from home trend with a 27% increase (Statista, 2021a), and with an increase of 12.3% of worker from home in Europe (Statista, 2021b). As work from home seems to be a long-term change (Brightspot, 2021), implications of this work mode at the time of pandemic have been studied and reported. Health measures, ergonomics, and phycological considerations were provided by public health authorities and agencies (WHO, 2020; Robertson and Mosier, 2020; Sundarasen et al., 2020); Related legal advices were reported by global law firms (ECIJA, 2020; Fulbright, 2020); Labor rights considerations were published by labor organizations and lobbies (ILO, 2020a; ILO, 2020b; Eurofound, 2020; IBEC, 2020).
A significant challenge for organizations at the start of lockdown, was to create remote work digital platforms, in a short period of time, to get most employees working from home. Many businesses were able to overcome this challenge via the outstretched arm of the corporate Intrant. Since the start of 2020, Intranet developed to be a saviour during the crisis (Nielsen, 2020). Hence, evaluating the efficiency and employees’ perception toward corporate Intranet, became an urgent concern to be studied upon (Suresh and Gopakumar, 2021). While few tips for adapting corporate Intranet to enhance remote workplace were reported in experts online forums (Brightspot, 2021; Bick, et al., 2020), consultants blogs (Nielsen, 2020), and professional services firms web sites (Accenture, 2020a; Accenture, 2020b), nevertheless, there is a severe shortage in academic research reporting Intranet user testing results in the new work-from-home mode during the Covid-19 pandemic (Brightspot, 2021; Suresh and Gopakumar, 2021).
Having said that, with the special user needs that the pandemic presents under unusual working conditions, a more integrative and holistic assessment of workers from home experience is definitely needed (Selamet, 2020), while keeping social distancing in mind. Diversifying remote user testing methods ensures more reliable, valid results by considering multiple ways of collecting data remotely (Nielsen, 2020). On the other hand, for developing countries, with poor IT infrastructure, lack of financial resources and technical support, and modest IT skills for workers and employers, creating a quick and usable remote work digital platforms represented an augmented challenge (ILO, 2020a ; UNESCO, 2020; Gómez-Jordana, 2020).
Based on the above research gabs, evaluating the usability of corporate Intranet in the work from home mode at the time of the current pandemic, especially in developing communities, is a timely research area. Only very little explorations were reported to date in this field, this has led to a motivation for the current study. The aim of this research is to investigate an integrated approach for assessing the usability of Intranet in the work from home context at the time of pandemic, in a developing country, Egypt. The suggested approach, which includes remote heuristic evaluation, remote moderated user testing with think aloud protocol, semi-structed interviews, and satisfaction questionnaire, might be affordable and plausible for organizations assessing their Intranet with social distancing precautions. The results of this study would also contribute to the current literature by identifying factors affecting employees’ perception and satisfaction towards work from home digital platforms. These aims were formulated into the following research questions:
Research Question #1: How to assess the usability of corporate Intranet for employees working from home at the time of pandemic?
Research Question #2: What are the factors affecting the perceptions and satisfaction of those employees towards their corporate Intranet?
Research Question #3: How to improve the usability and overall satisfaction of such platforms?