Making Home Work; Making Work Home: Charting a New Paradigm for Employment Relations in an Emerging Work Environment

Abstract

Following the emergence of the virtual Organization resulting from the third and fourth phases of the Industrial revolution, the old Employment Relations paradigm has seized to function optimally. The objective of this paper was to explore an Employment Relations paradigm shift that will match the contemporary workforce, workplace and Organization. This paper explored the people management models that emerged in the phases of the industrialization process. Exploring extant literature, the effect of the third and fourth Industrial revolution with the corresponding digital production process that gave rise to the emergence of remote working, a remote workforce and a digital organization were unveiled. The challenges faced with the management of the digital workforce, including the implications of the birth of Remote Working on Employment Relations were analyzed. The paper posited that the workplace rules currently in vogue are modeled to work for physical workplace settings. The paper concluded and recommended that models of workplace rule making for Remote working will now need the instrumentality of high cost technologies, employees and Managers re-skilling as an Employment Relations paradigm shift that will make work home, and home work. Keywords: Employment Relations, Paradigm Shift, Remote workforce, Digital Organization.