Remote Work: A Paradigm Shift in the Modern Workplace and Its Impact on the Workforce

Introduction

The Covid-19 pandemic period, from the moment it emerged, has led to changes in business/business models that progress in a routine order and continue within certain patterns (Espitia et al., 2022; Madero Gómez et al., 2022). These changes have primarily led to the transition to a flexible working system in the working models of organizations and have led to the emergence of remote working opportunities that enable employees to carry out their work processes and activities that they are obliged to carry out regularly in the workplace in environments outside the organization. It has become evident with the fact that remote work takes a more active place in our lives (Buchanan et al., 2021). In this direction, the transition to remote working has accelerated all over the world in order not to interrupt the working life with the pandemic. It has integrated teleworking systems into existing working models in countries and paved the way for teleworking models to take their place as a permanent part of individuals' working lives after a certain integration period in many countries (Arunprasad et al., 2022). Therefore, many remote working models have emerged in the pandemic and post-pandemic periods. In such business models, reflections based on individuals, groups and organizations have been inevitable. The fact that remote working is a permanent working model has brought various advantages and disadvantages based on individuals and organizations. In particular, the lack or lack of infrastructure that will support remote working of organizations has brought with it the negativities that are reflected in the productivity of the organizations, mainly in terms of competitors, potential competitors, suppliers and customers. Therefore, it has revealed negativities on organizations' maintaining their sustainable competitive advantages, fulfilling their task requirements, sustaining their lives, and their growth and development. This situation has been the opposite for organizations that can take steps to support an easy integration process to remote working, and there have been developments in the processes and activities of their organizations. The technology adaptation caused by the individual, namely the current employee, and various factors arising from the accompanying job demands (physical demands, emotional demands, mental demands, work pressure, time pressure, working conditions) have had negative reflections on the employee. On the positive side, employees' experience of new technologies has led to a reduction in both material and moral costs in terms of time spent on their way to the workplace (Endress, 2023; Sahut & Lissillour, 2023; Tomić, & Vizinger, 2023).

While there has been an agenda where remote working is gaining immense popularity, the necessity of examining the weaknesses, strengths, opportunities and threats of remote working or its models in depth reveals (Karunarathne, 2021; Hendrawan, 2022; Longhurst, 2020). Especially, this in-depth examination is thought to be beneficial in terms of minimizing the problems that may arise administratively and organizationally. Making such analyzes sheds light on the future plans and strategies based on the results obtained from the detailed comparison cases. Through the concrete data obtained as a result of the analyzes, elements such as how the workforce adapts to this process according to the changing working conditions during and after the pandemic, how they experience the adaptation process, how to plan their business processes and activities are tried to be understood. Likewise, how the managerial and operational activities of organizations work, how organizations cope with the situations that arise when they adapt to this process, and how they make the satisfaction of employees and customers sustainable have also been among the topics of interest.