(Erica Pimentel/ The Conversation) — The COVID-19 lockdown has become synonymous with working from home for many people. While some research has suggested that remote work can be isolating, it also makes the competing priorities that workers are juggling very visible — even sometimes literally so due to the popularity of video calls.
This has the potential to unite workers with the feeling that they are in this struggle of balancing work and personal responsibilities together.
Whether it’s kids or pets that are popping up onscreen during Zoom calls, remote work has caused a relaxation in the traditional rules of professional presentation and resulted in a virtual workplace that is not only more flexible, but also more humane.
My preliminary research on how remote work has impacted professionals at accounting firms across Canada suggests that working from home has important implications for how accountants, or any professional working from home for that matter, communicate their expertise and credibility in a virtual workplace. (…)