Where does work belong anymore? The impact of the COVID19 pandemic on working in the UK

新冠肺炎的爆发迫使企业以如此之快的速度拥抱在家工作，以至于它们几乎没有机会考虑对员工的影响。可以说，这场危机导致了有史以来最重大、最密集的数字社会实验--HBW。目前的情况是，整个家庭都呆在家里，这是一个前所未有的挑战，在接下来的18个月里可能至少是间歇性的(BBC Futures，25/03/20)。媒体认为，这场革命“也可能为许多公司提供一个机会，最终建立一种允许早就应该有的工作灵活性的文化……那些已经将所有员工遣送回国的公司的许多员工已经开始质疑，为什么他们一开始就必须进入办公室”(《卫报》，13/02/20)。这些乐观的工作模式侧重于HBW的解放潜力，提供了灵活性，润滑了工作和家庭责任，并承诺提高生产率。然而，这种新的世界秩序，其中家变成了一个多职业、多人的工作场所和学校，不仅挑战了边界，也挑战了对家庭空间的概念。在家工作的影响可能会有很大的差异，这取决于组织支持、工人的角色、社会经济地位、就业状况以及家庭结构和居住空间的大小。人们对家庭暴力加剧表示严重关切，包括工作与生活平衡不佳、国内紧张局势加剧以及对社会经济地位较低的群体产生不成比例的负面影响。此外，HBW增加了妇女(最常见的)花在家务和照看孩子上的时间比例，在新的工作空间内复制和加强性别角色。我们将深入研究这种工作安排的根本性转变，以及它如何影响工人及其家庭的福祉和生产力。这个项目(Working@Home)结合了对60名参与者的深入采访，代表了这一新颖的家庭工作者群体，以及一项大规模调查，将为英国人提供无与伦比的在家工作体验的见解，并将成为这个史无前例的时代公民生活的永久记录。这项研究将是理解组织对工人的期望以及已建立的支持系统的稳健性的关键，考虑到家庭工作系统的快速发展，几乎没有准备，只有有限的现有支持结构或专业知识。这些发现将为个人和企业的弹性提供一个基准，并展示出基础设施在危机后恢复“新常态”的潜力。为了确保所有人都能看到项目的调查结果，我们正在开发一个网站(workingathome.org.uk)，该网站将提供关于项目进展的最新信息、项目小组的详细情况、对参与者的指导以及关于我们的网络研讨会系列的信息。该项目旨在为个人、组织和政策制定者提供指导，指导他们如何从家庭工作的角度最好地管理正在进行的医疗紧急情况，并为未来的任何大流行情况提供指导。

The COVID-19 outbreak has forced companies to embrace home-based working (HBW) at such speed that they have had little opportunity to consider the impact on their workers. It can be argued that the crisis has led to the most significant, intensive social experiment of digital, HBW that has ever occurred. The current situation, which involves the whole household being based at home, is an unprecedented challenge which may be at least an intermittent fixture, for the next eighteen months (BBC Futures, 25/03/20). The press have suggested that this revolution "might also offer an opportunity for many companies to finally build a culture that allows long-overdue work flexibility ...many employees for companies who have sent all staff home are already starting to question why they had to go into the office in the first place" (The Guardian, 13/02/20). These optimistic takes on the current patterns of work focus on HBW's emancipatory potential, offering flexibility, the lubrication of work and family responsibilities and the promise of increased productivity. Yet, this new world order, where the home becomes a multi-occupational, multi-person workplace and school, not only challenges boundaries but also conceptions of the domestic space. The impact of homeworking is likely to present significant variation depending on organisational support, the worker's role, socio-economic status, employment status, as well as household composition and size of living space. There are significant concerns regarding intensified HBW, including poor work-life balance, enhanced domestic tensions and disproportionately negative impacts on those in lower socio-economic groupings. Moreover, HBW increases the proportion of time women (most often) spend on housework and childcare, reproducing and reinforcing gender roles within the new 'work-space'We will examine in-depth this radical shift in working arrangements and how it impacts on the wellbeing and productivity of workers and their households. Using a combination of in-depth interviews with sixty participants, representing the spectrum of this novel group of homeworkers, as well as a large-scale survey, this project (Working@Home) will provide unrivalled insights into the experience of home-working for the UK population and will serve as a permanent record of the lives of citizens in this unprecedented time. The research will be key in understanding the expectations that organisations have placed on workers, as well as the robustness of support systems that have been put in place, taking into account the rapid advancement of home working systems with almost no preparation and only limited existing support structures or expertise. The findings will provide a benchmark for the resilience of both individuals and businesses and demonstrate the potential for the robustness of the infrastructure in the return to a 'new normal' after the crisis. In order to ensure that the findings from the project are accessible to all, we are developing a website (workingathome.org.uk) that will host up to date information on the progress of the project, details of the project team, guidance for participants as well as information regarding our webinar series. The project aims to produce guidance to individuals, organisations and policy makers on how to best manage the ongoing medical emergency from a home-working perspective as well as providing guidance for any future pandemic scenario.