Background: Working from home (WFH) has become a new tendency thanks to the improvement of technological communications that enable new flexible ways of working. Before 2020 and the Covid19 pandemic, some companies had already started implementing this approach. However, the pandemic drove a widespread implementation of remote work, leading to the appearance of new problems previously not considered by most companies and individuals. Among these problems is the effect of WFH on the employee’s career perspective as well as the lower visibility in the workplace which could have an impact in future promotions. Objectives: The main research phenomenon to be studied is the impact of WFH on career prospects for engineers and in particular the paradox between visibility at work and the career progress of the employees. Methodology: The contribution of this thesis is a fourfold. First, it analyses the effect of visibility when WFH on engineers’ career perspectives. Second, it proposes a framework that relates WFH, visibility and career. Thirdly, it contributes to the existing literature on WFH, visibility and career. Lastly, it uses the innovative method of questerview, involving twelve engineers working on R&D department of an aeronautical company, to finally develop a thematic analysis and generate a new framework to be discussed with the first, according to the grounded theory method. Results: The results showed that WFH has an impact on career progression with a decrease invisibility, affecting it through personal relationships. WFH also affects other factors (such as networking and soft-skills) and these have a connection with visibility that, all together, will have a high impact in the career promotion rate. Other findings include the necessity to work on visibility by prioritizing the meetings with the right people in order to become more allegeable for promotion. Visibility affects the trust between manager and employee, due to the fact that the latter becomes much more dependable on deliverables when comparing to working in the office. WFH doesn’t affect visibility for career promotion if credibility with managers has been achieved, this being connected with job quality. Conclusions: WFH and visibility have both a high impact on the engineer’s career progression. The first reduces direct contact with peers and superiors, which in turn decreases visibility. Visibility has been found to be an essential tool for promotion. Its effect on career promotion works as the enabler to promotion, making superiors notice your work and keeping the employee in their minds to consider when a promotion is proposed. Visibility has not solely an impact on career promotion, but it has a connection between networking and soft-skills, and these three factors are directly related to one another when considering the influence on career promotion. Recommendations for future research: The relationships between factors in the literature review framework need to be studied further, in line with the cross connections found in the new framework. Also, during the elaboration of the thematic maps, it was also found that WFH has an impact on daily work (affecting autonomy, networking, and productivity) and additional research would enrich the final framework. Lastly, it was found during the questerview analysis that other factors not considered in the present study are also relevant for career promotion such as age, education level and experience. Future research could focus on studying the impact these factors have on career promotion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:bth-23235 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Da Silva Maximino, André, García Colón, María |
| Publisher | Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för industriell ekonomi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Blekinge Institute of Technology Best practice |
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