The New Normal - How to Design and Implement New Work Arrangements That Are Fair and Satisfy Employees' Needs

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a strong impact on how and where individuals work. For many organisations and employees, it seems out of the question to simply go back to the prepandemic workplace. As a result, organisations now face the challenge of implementing remote work arrangement policies that fit their business goals as well as their employees' needs. With the aim to help organisations to face this challenge, the current project will focus on the design and process of creating and implementing new work arrangement policies during and after the pandemic. More specifically, we aim to deepen our understanding of how (a) perceived fairness of the company's work arrangement policy as well as (b) the satisfaction of basic needs (competence, control, relatedness) by the policy are linked to employee work attitudes, performance, and well-being. Moreover, we aim to develop an intervention to support organisations as they design and implement new work arrangement policies. The project comprises four studies using different methodological approaches. Study #1 (the cross-sectional study) will provide representative data for Swiss working society concerning the prevalence of remote work, employees' needs, and their perception of the fairness of existing work arrangement policies. Study #2 (the longitudinal study) will test the prospective effects of remote work and the effects of perceived fairness and satisfaction of employee needs by work arrangement policies on our key outcomes, namely work attitude, performance, and well-being. Study #3 (the diary study) will offer detailed insights into where employees do their main tasks and where they would like to do them, where their basic needs are best satisfied, and whether employee performance and well-being differ depending on whether they work in the office or remotely. Building on the results of these three studies, we will develop an intervention. This intervention will include an e-learning tool, coaching sessions, and team workshops and will help in the design and implementation of work arrangement policies. The effectiveness of the intervention will be tested with Study #4, a longitudinal study with a control group (the quasi-experimental study). Our project will be supported by several implementation partners (business enterprises, a foundation, and a government agency). These partners will follow the project and serve as a sounding board to ensure that the studies and especially the intervention will fit practitioner needs and can be easily implemented in organisations. In sum, the current project aims to offer help for organizations that face the challenge to implement new work arrangement policies in the context of the pandemic. It aims to deepen our knowledge about antecedents and outcomes of employee perceptions of the fairness of remote work arrangements and about the satisfaction of employee needs under different arrangements. This knowledge will provide a basis for developing interventions to create and implement new work arrangement policies during and after the pandemic. For future pandemics, knowledge about employees' needs under remote work and about the role of fairness of policies will help organisations to implement work arrangements that promote employee well-being and performance. In line with the programme objective, the insights and intervention material from this project will help organisations to adapt to changing work conditions during and after a pandemic.