The third research question was what is the relationship between the productivity of business managers in the I.T. industry and working from home. From the primary research, it has been found that delayed delivery to the client due to stipulated deadline misses is one of the major impacts of Work from home faced by the managers. In addition to this, poor team performance has resulted in poor manager’s performance. Overall, from the primary research have highlighted the negative impact of Work from home on the overall performance of the managers. The secondary research papers have also supported that Work from home has imposed a negative impact on the overall performance of the employees.
Savi (2020) has noted that a substantial number of international I.T. organisations have discovered that communication-related linguistic and cultural challenges are a big problem that not only impair the individual’s productivity but also the productivity of the team. Due to differing work cultures and culturally specific holidays, there are significant cultural hurdles when personnel from different cultural backgrounds work together in MNCs (Ramasamy 2020). According to Oakman et al. (2020), disagreements over ideas and cultural prejudice or miscommunication frequently lead to conflict, which significantly reduces the team’s productivity. Managers are unable to get frequent updates of the projects and face issues in handling an out of sight team (Feleen and David 2021). For a wide range of I.T. managers, it might be a roadblock, resulting in remote Work becomes problematic for them. When communication breaks down, several issues arise. Workers feel alone and the task doesn’t advance as quickly, which eventually lowers morale. This in turn lowers the performance of the team as well as the productivity of the managers. Thus it can be said that this research have found that while working from home impose both positive and negative impact on the performance of the employees, for managers, Work from home has mainly imposed negative impact.
4.4 To explore the productivity model for business managers in the I.T. industry and working from home.
The fourth research question was how to improve the productivity of business managers in the I.T. industry working from home (Suresh and Gopakumar 2021). From the primary research, it was found that increased communication and interaction with the team members can be considered as one of the effective strategies that has shown a positive impact on the productivity of the managers. In addition to this, conducting multiple meeting along with optimization of team members’ involvement have been found to be highly effective for increasing the productivity of the managers. The majority of the managers have suggested that allowing more power to the managers so that they can make decisions based on the internal and external environment, will not only enhance their productivity but will also increase the performance of the het firms during the pandemic situation. Similar information has been obtained from secondary research. The workers, senior management, customers, and other stakeholders of the organisation were surveyed anonymously by a number of MNCs in the I.T. sector. On the basis of the findings, management productivity improvement initiatives are implemented. To improve managers’ people management abilities and increase productivity, firms like Hyperlink infoSystem, DataArt, and BJSS, for example, started virtual soft skill improvement strategy sessions. Communication skills, cultural competency, understanding, empathy, a persuasive attitude, and the capacity for critical decision-making were among the main soft skills that were highlighted. Suresh and Gopakumar (2021) have emphasised the managers’ ability to effectively handle conflicts in order to assure both their own increased productivity and the productivity of the team members. A significant number of It firms, during the Work from hoe scenario, are undergoing high level of employee dissatisfaction due to frequent conflicts between team members as well as team members and management (Yadav et al. 2020).
4:5 Conclusion
In Conclusion, working from home during the Covid 19 pandemic has brought about various unexpected forms of transition for business managers. The major factors influencing I.T. managers’ productivity levels are technical issues, internet problems, family issues, burnout, and workload-related stress. It is essential to support managers in managing their workload and reducing stress levels during this challenging time to improve productivity in the I.T. industry.
Chapter 5: Conclusion and recommendations
Right after the emergence of the Covid-19 Pandemic across different parts of the world, nearly everyone was required to make quite several adjustments to cope with the entire situation. One of these adjustments was the way different organisations decided to switch to the work-from-home culture al also came to terms with the existing benefits and disadvantages associated with working from home.
This study has identified several important factors that can influence the productivity of business managers in the I.T. industry while working from home during the COVID-19 Pandemic (Kramer, 2020). The findings indicate that work engagement significantly impacts productivity and that various individual and contextual factors influence productivity. Challenges related to technology, communication and collaboration, work-life balance and leadership and management style were major barriers to productivity. Organisations need to implement strategies that address these challenges to enhance productivity. This chapter presents a conclusion of the research study and discusses the research findings. Furthermore, recommendations based on the Conclusion are provided in this chapter.