Wrok From Home

 The novel coronavirus (COVID-19), a pandemic sweeping across the globe, has challenged society in ways once considered unimaginable, forcing people to reconsider a wide variety of practices, from work, to leisure, to basic travel and daily tasks. Not only has this had individual impacts, but it has also impacted countries as a whole from an economic standpoint, bringing an array of economic sectors to a complete standstill. While there was a lot anticipated and there were countless warnings, especially from those working in public health, the challenge remained as a substantial change which requires planning, training, and facilitating. While the society did mentally prepare, the extent and solution still remained unthinkable and remains to be a big challenge. COVID-19 is a new disease that has begun circulating in the human population since December 2019. It is part of the coronavirus family, the same group of viruses that caused the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in South East Asia in 2002 and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in 2012. Currently, the known main mode of transmission is through respiratory droplets, and hence is considered to spread through close contact with other people. At present, the only tools to combat the viral spread are using masks properly, introduction of social distancing measures, and practice of good hand hygiene (Centre for Health Protection [CHP] 2020a). The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of COVID-19 as a global health emergency on 31 January 2020 (World Health Organisation 2020). Since then, the virus has spread rapidly.

The virus has vastly spread worldwide, with over 60 million confirmed cases and over 1.4 million confirmed deaths as of 26 November 2020, and the number has been increasing consistently (World Health Organisation 2020). As the coronavirus continues to spread across the world, some governments worldwide have imposed and re-imposed strict lockdowns with the closure of non-essential businesses and banned non-essential gatherings from keeping hospitals from the threats of being overwhelmed due to COVID-19. Many of their counterparts have urged their citizens to stay at home as much as possible and practice social distancing to limit face-to-face interactions with others. At this time, authorities and organizers of mass gathering events are encouraged to carry out a risk assessment in the context of the pandemic for their events to protect people from harm. For instance, the WHO has released a risk assessment tool for stakeholders to use to assess the safety of any mass gatherings that are to take place. This tool involves three pillars of assessment, namely: Risk Evaluation; Risk Mitigation; and Risk Communication. Once data is filled into these categories, data is automatically filled into a Decision Matrix which assesses the total risk score (from 0 to 5) against the total mitigation score (%) and categorizes the overall risk of transmission and spread from very low to very high. Besides, employers are also advised to carry out a coronavirus-specific risk assessment of the workplace, taking each individual into account, to determine the safety of their employees working on-site. Businesses in the UK are required to openly share the risk assessment results with the workforce (HM Government 2020). This might be because offices are among the top three places to get infected with COVID-19, according to Dr Zhong Nanshan, a renowned respiratory disease expert (Hong Kong Economic Times Limited 2020). If the risk is too significant, employers are forced to accept alternative working methods, by practicing social distancing at work or implementing WFH. Before the pandemic, the idea of WFH was a fantasy to many people, but such practice was considered not practicable for heavily populated cities like Hong Kong. This is principally because home working requires a quiet and dedicated space to perform work duties, which can be a real challenge for those living in tiny homes. Hong Kong is undoubtedly famous for having tiny homes, in which the average living space per person was only 161 sq ft. in 2018 (Task Force on Land Supply 2018), which is about 25% lower than Tokyo and 60% lower than Singapore (Ng 2018). Over the years, there has been a belief throughout the city that workers need to be physically present in the office to carry out the job. Now that the pandemic has forced a trial run for WFH in the city, for many, it is their first time to work remotely and to a large extent it is proving to be successful. Therefore, a unique opportunity to assess the possibility of having WFH as one of the future working models for such a densely populated city has high impact. Being one of the first studies in this area, we aim to analyze three different dimensions. Firstly, this study attempts to enhance the understanding of WFH, including the factors that influence WFH and the practicality and effectiveness of this work arrangement. Secondly, the scrutiny of the WFH’s potential outcomes on workers’ work and life domains, such as flexibility and work motivation. Finally, our investigation in the context of Hong Kong adds distinctions to the record of Hong Kong’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, which is substantially believed to be victorious due to strong “community capacity” or social mobilization (Hartley and Jarvis 2020; Wan et al. 2020). The rest of this paper has the following structure. The next section discusses the COVID-19 pandemic and WFH in Hong Kong, with attention to WFH arrangements during the epidemic in Hong Kong. Next, in order to enhance the understanding of the WFH concept, this paper presents an overview of WFH. Subsequently, the framework of the study and a SWOT analysis for the investigation of WFH is presented, followed by a discussion of Hong Kong's WFH experience. The final section includes the conclusion, policy implications and recommendations.