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Top1. Background Of The Study
Telework as an alternative work arrangement originally came into existence with the eruption of the oil crisis of 1970. This is precipitated by rapid advances in information and telecommunication technologies. Despite its radical and conspicuous departures from standard working conditions in the suite of flexible work practices yet it is still gaining widespread acceptance especially in the developed countries of the world. Telework is perceived as an execution of work at home with the aid of ICT gadgets such as smartphones, desktop and laptop computers, telematics technologies to achieve intended or expected results. This definition synchronizes with the perception of the International Labour Organization (2017) as it conceptualizes telework as the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs), for work that is done outside the employer’s work environment. Information technology has become an integral part of the office environment, and the physical location of a working place has been gradually losing its importance at present.
As telework is gaining wider acceptance in response to technology advancement, changes in the economy, shifting views of societal roles, and lately, the physical and social distancing regulatory order to curb the spread of covid-19 pandemic; it seems unavoidable that institutions of higher learning will be faced with the need to adopt telework as an integral part of their system. It is explicitly clear that knowledge and information workers are the prime candidates for teleworking or telecommuting. Given this, telework has helped knowledge workers like lecturers in tertiary institutions and myriads organizations to work remotely from anywhere in the world be it at home, an offsite office, tree shades, or from multiple locations as the case may be. This implies that telework enables individuals to work from anywhere, anytime through information communication technologies (ICT) in the opinions of (Garett & Danziger, 2006).
Telework is regarded as one of those best practices that accord employees the leverage of flexible options for enhanced work-life balance. Since distance education has emerged as an important form of education in the last few decades. In recent years, the offering of online courses and programmes has become increasingly popular not only in distance education institutions but also in traditional universities as well (Wheeler, 2002). Even the developing countries like Nigeria embarked on online teaching/lecturing owing to the unprecedented eruption of the COVID-19 Pandemic that ravaged and crippled our economy. In reality, the COVID-19 pandemic injected fears, worries, and anxieties among individuals that triggered the online classes especially in Nigeria in particular and the whole world at large. COVID-19 is conceived as a novel coronavirus with an outbreak of unusual viral pneumonia in Wuhan, China. As a result, this pandemic, interest in telework or teleworking has grown among lecturers, workers, employers, employees, transportation planners, communities, the telecommunications industry, and others (Handy and Mokhtarian, 1996). Traditional management has also encouraged the transition from visible supervision to performance-based management that concentrates more on quality and punctuality, not on a physical presence (Arnold 2006).