Knight, Caroline; Jooss, Stefan; Hay, Georgia; Marasco, Georgia; Parker, Sharon, K.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many individuals to transition to working from home (WFH) amidst great fear and uncertainty. The way work was done radically altered almost overnight, requiring individuals to rapidly adapt and learn new ways of working to allow organisations to remain functional and productive. Suddenly, work design became a real priority for organisations as they grappled to support and manage this transition to WFH. Yet, while there is established research that good work design leads to engagement, wellbeing, and performance (Parker et al., 2017), we know little about how the changing nature of work may shape individuals’ learning (Parker et al., 2021). Integrating work design and learning literatures could potentially offer insights into how organisations can support individual learning and adaptation during times of radical change (e.g., natural disasters, wars, pandemics), and more generally, as workplaces continue to change with technological and digital advancements.
This paper responds to recent calls for more phenomenon-based research (Ployhart & Bartunek, 2019) through addressing the following two research questions: What learnings emerged during the forced WFH transition? And, what allowed individuals to learn in this challenging context? Our qualitative research design involved 29 semi-structured interviews conducted 14 months after the pandemic began (May-June 2021). Interview questions focused on the WFH transition, and the experiences and learnings during this period. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim using the software, Otter, and imported into NVivo for thematic analysis. We adopted a work design lens (Parker, 2014) and integrated a learning perspective (Noe et al., 2014) to inform our analysis.
In response to our first research question, we identified three types of learnings: relational, productivity, and personal. In addition, we revealed that individuals varied in terms of the depth of these three types of learnings, with some experiencing reinforcement of previous views, others experiencing shifting views, and yet others experiencing enlightenment (deep learning and altering of views). In response to our second research question, we unpack three enabling processes which help explain what allowed people to change, including exploitation (whereby individuals used familiar, pre-learned strategies to adapt their work), exploration (where people explored new strategies enabling adaptation such as relational crafting), and reflection (where individuals reflected on the absence of something).
Our study has important implications for managers and organisations, providing insights into how work design might facilitate employee learning, particularly when managing radical change.

At the conclusion of this event, attendees will be able to:

1. Understand individuals' experiences of the forced transition to working from home during Covid-19
2. Analyse individuals' cognitive and behavioural learnings during the forced work transition to working from home
3. Apply a learning perspective to work design

We hope attendees will engage with us during the question time to help us interpret and analyse our results further. Through this process we will be able to assess whether attendees have achieved the learning objectives.