ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN THE CHANGING WORKPLACE: A Study of the

Effects of Off-Site Work Arrangements to Household Economics

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of Students

in Siena College of Taytay

Bachelor of Science and Business Administration

Major in Management

Amante, Shejelyn B.

Montoya, Margie

Orea, Donnan O.

Pardilla, Christian R.

Rilloraza, Andrew Joshua M.

Mr. Felipe Gan

March, 2021
 ABSTRACT

Acknowledgements

DEDICATION

Table of Contents
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Essential fragments in history have shown to be a key element in shaping global society to adopt

the means towards remote work. Pasini (2020) and Schrieberg (2018) discuss that the Industrial

Revolution dramatically changed workplace models and arrangements in which the model of

nine to five workdays was the norm. Moreover, emergence of offices and inventions such as the

telephone and typewriter has brought transformative innovations towards the modality of work.

Lastly, the advancements in public transport systems provided workers a practical option to

travel to and from home, hence the culture of daily commute has taken in place (Reynolds,

2017). Bring forward into the 21st century, the birth of the wireless internet and the mass

production of laptops and smartphones, have generated the trends of remote work which enabled

employees to work not only from their home, but practically at any location and at any time

(ILO, 2017).

The prevalence of working remotely took a huge upsurge due to the coronavirus pandemic. In

this context, the opportunity to work from home (WFH) became of great importance since it

allows employees to continue working and thus receiving wages, employers to keep producing

services and revenues, and overall limits infection spread risk and pandemic recessive impacts

(Acemoglu et al. 2020). However, these rapid changes raise concerns in regards to additional

household consumption due to sudden emergence in practice of telework. An article by

Fernandez (2020) addressed that Filipino households have seen a spike in electricity usage since

the coronavirus confined residents to their homes. The trend is set to gain traction in post-
lockdown Philippines as many individuals continue to work from home, commercial

establishments adjust their operating hours, and home-schooling becomes the norm.

The aim of the study is to explore insights in which teleworking may produce consequent

impacts on household energy consumption. This study provides a systematic review of the

current state of knowledge of the household energy impacts of teleworking. This includes the

essential utilities associated with telework such as electricity, food and water.

In this regard, the significance of this study will provide insight into what people’s experience of

working from home during the crisis looked like at the time. This might be useful later when

looking back on the Coronavirus outbreak. For future researchers in the same field, the study will

help them uncover how the effects of work from home (WFH) arrangement may impose

potential benefits and challenges in an employee’s household.

Review of Related Literature

This section will show a comprehensive review of the relevant studies and literature that can be

used to further understand the subject at hand.

The term off-site work arrangement derives from telework which is defined as work that is

performed from different locations that enables workers to access their labor activities by the use

of information and communication technologies (Perez et al., 2003). Telework has numerous

terms such as telecommuting, remote working or working from home (Yu et al., 2019). In this

study, we will focus on working from home in which employees perform tasks elsewhere that are

normally done in a primary or central workplace, for at least some portion of their work

schedule, using electronic media, personal computers and mobile phones to interact with others
inside and outside the organization. The concept of telework depends on different telework

characteristics, according to Madsen (2003) telework can be defined considering (1) telework

intensity (how often?) according to the proportion of time an employee works from a place other

than a traditional office space; (2) telework timework (when?) whether teleworking occurs

during traditional or non-traditional working hours; and (3) telework place (where?)

Telework intensity differs according to the amount of telework time that ranges from full-time

telework to part-time telework (Perez et al., 2003). Full-time telework occurs when a teleworker

works from home or place other than an office using telecommunication technologies all the

time. Part-time telework happens when a teleworker works partly from home, partly from the

office or from a client site. On the other, telework timework can be categorized according to

whether or not a teleworker works during traditional or non-traditional working hours.

Individuals engaged in non-traditional telework generally telework some of the day during

regular working hours, but also spend evenings or weekends teleworking in order to cover work

that was not done during the regular working hours (Towers et al., 2006).

Household refers to individuals who comprise a family unit and who live together under the

same roof; individuals who dwell in the same place and comprise a family, sometimes

encompassing domestic help; all those who are under the control of one domestic head

(https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Household).

A household may be either a one-person household, i.e. a person who makes provision for his or

her own food or other essentials for living without combining with any other person,
or a multi-person household, that is to say, a group of two or more persons living together who

make some common provision for food or other essentials for living. The persons in the group

may pool their incomes and may, to a greater or lesser extent, have a common budget; they may

be related or unrelated persons or a combination of both (ILO, 2017).

The household economy describes the collective economic activities of households. Often

the household economy is called the household sector as distinct from the business,

government and foreign sectors (Ironmonger, 2001). According to basic economic theory,

households purchase market goods to maximize utility, or well-being, based on their preferences

and subject to the constraint that the cost of those goods is less than or equal to the sum of all

sources of income. However, households are subject not only to an income constraint but also a

time constraint. Thus, according to household production theory, households combine time and

market goods to produce commodities for consumption in the household. (Becker, 1965).

A few studies on the effect of telework in relation to household economy discusses its benefits

and downsides. In a study conducted by Glaudemans (2019) found that for many working

professionals, having a flexible work location provides certain cost savings, such as spending

less time on the road commuting to work, spending less money on gas for transportation, and

spending less time deciding what clothing to wear for that particular workday. Studies also

indicated evidence for these benefits; for example, the research in the Greater Dublin Area by

Caulfield (2015) found employees saving travel time and value of travel time. ).

Conversely, according to Purwanto et al. (2020), there are certain drawbacks of WFH, such as

employees working at home have to pay for electricity and the internet costs themselves.
Similarly, Borggreven (2020) writes that although employees would save considerably by not

travelling to work, other cost implications on employees are more varied. Direct costs such as

increases in gas and electricity usage are not fully offset by savings in childcare costs, assuming

some employees keep their children at home while working remotely.

The global pandemic has wreaked havoc on the economy. Countless have lost their jobs or

businesses, and experienced other economic hurdles.The real impacts on the economy can be

seen at the level of families or households. Impacts on businesses are felt in the households as

job losses, dramatic declines in incomes, restrictions in movements, which lead to reduced

consumption of basic goods and services such as food and health care.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic is causing a shift in paradigm in how work is done in the

Philippines. Whereas before long hours of stay in the office was the norm, the imposition of the

Enhanced Community Quarantine (“ECQ”) forced employers of non-essential industries to

recognize that work can be done even outside the office premises, such as through Work-From-

Home (“WFH”) arrangements. These WFH arrangements have been widely embraced and are

expected to linger even after the ECQ has been lifted (Navarro, Pomoy, & Consignado,

2020).

In the Philippines, almost 72% of companies have operated remotely as the country was placed

under community quarantines. In a study, it was found that the BPO industry (31%), information

and communication (9.79%), and healthcare (8.51%) sectors were the biggest industries that let

employees work from home during the Enhanced Community Quarantine implementation in

critical districts and cities (Diva, 2020).

working from home tends to increase utility consumption, particularly in electricity. He also

argued that a few individual workers from various sectors shoulder additional expenses out of

their own budget in just to procure necessary equipment to telework.

In light of the current issue, heightened concerns about finances drive Filipinos’ in a struggle of

decision to allocate income to settle utility bills as prices of food and other commodities jump

amid the coronavirus crisis. The Philippine Statistics Authority reported on February 5, 2021 that

inflation surged to 4.2% in January 2021. The latest figure is higher than the 3.5% recorded in

December 2020 and the 2.9% posted in January 2020. Food and non-alcoholic beverages pushed

inflation up in January, with meat (17.1%), vegetables (21.2%), and fruits (9%) posting the

highest increases. Transportation costs also continued to rise, posting an 8.6% inflation rate. This

is mainly due to higher fares for tricycles (46.7%), jeepneys (6.4%), and buses (4.5%). (Rivas,

2020).

Together, the following literatures outline the current state of knowledge of the topic about

telework. However, a few work has been done surrounding this topic and past empirical

literature has found inconclusive results whether telework is beneficial in relation to household

economy. Thus with all the things mentioned, there is the need for further research in order to

understand how the current practice in work from home may or may not have a significant

relation to household economy.

Statement of the Problem

arrangement and household economy. More specifically, the study will attempt to answer the

following questions:

1.What are the profile of households in terms of:

1.1 Number of family members per household

1.2 Number of family members engaged in work from home

1.3 What are the age, gender, and marital status of family members engaged in work from home

2. What are the nature and pattern of work arrangements of the family members working from

home in terms of:

2.1 Job Role; (i.e, technical and operational, professional, managerial and supervisory)

2.2 Specified work field;

2.3 Work schedule; (i.e., full-time, part-time, traditional or non-traditional work hours)

3. What are the household consumption costs accumulated in terms of:

3.1 Electricity

3.2 Food

3.3 Water
4. How do respondents perceive the accumulated household costs prior to the practice of off-site

work arrangement during the pandemic?

Theoretical Framework

This section provides an overview of theoretical underpinnings of the study essentially in

application to find the relation of telework to household economy

Practice Theory

This research was based on Pierre Bourdieu's Practice Theory. The main idea of Practice Theory

according to Bourdieu is to analyze the relationship between established structures of culture and

how the people in reality act within that structure. Practice Theory focuses on the idea that

people are not only influenced by their social structure, but influence their social structure as

well. This idea of a circular relationship between people and society is a founding aspect of

practice theory.
 Figure 1.0 Practice Theory

Figure 1.0 demonstrates the elements of practice theory which constituted interdependencies

between diverse elements which includes Materials, Competence, and Meanings. (Frost et al.,

2020). Competencies are learned bodily and mental routines, including know-how, levels of

knowledge and ways of feeling and doing. Competencies are distributed, and can be redistributed

between people through what Latour (1992) refers to as delegation. Moreover, know-how does

not only manifest in knowing how to act appropriately, but also knowing how to talk about, how

to recognize and how to prompt and respond to such actions (Schatzki 2001). Competencies

involve inherently shared knowledge about what is good, normal, acceptable and appropriate

(and what is not) and learned, bodily/mental capacity to reach these standards to more or lesser

extents.

Moreover materials refers to the tangible elements deployed in the practice. Shove et al. (2012)

summarize them as objects, infrastructures, tools, hardware and the body itself. Moreover, the

body itself and other things not directly man-made, like air, bacteria etc, are also part of the

components in practice. Materials are socially shared because the same or similar things are

available (although certainly not equally accessible) to groups of people. Meanings are socially

shared ideas or concepts associated with the practice that give meaning to it; reasons to engage in

it, reasons what it is for, or as Shove et al. put it, ‘the social and symbolic significance of

participation at any one moment’ (Shove et al. 2012:22). Images bring to the fore concepts of

association, relative positioning, norms, values and ideologies (Shove and Pantzar 2005:47).

Household Production Theory

the mid-1960s. The Theory of Household Production states that families are both producers and

consumers of goods. In an effort to maximize utility, families attempt to efficiently allocate time,

income, and the collection of goods and services they both use and produce. Household

production relates to all the output that a household produces including production related to

work. Household consumption includes all things that are consumed by a household including

things like food, sleep, and leisure.

According to the theory, consumption is often predicated on the idea of diminishing marginal

utility. This idea implies that we will diversify our consumption because increased consumption

of the same good will give us less utility after a certain point. Finally, time allocation refers to

the exact way we spend each minute of our day. Time allocation also introduces the basic

concept of opportunity cost, explaining that every minute we allocate to one activity, by

definition, can not be allocated to any other activity. The main assumption of household

production theory is that consumers act as rational actors. The overall theory’s goal is to explain

the interactions and relationships between consumption, production and time.

In line with the Government’s goal for the preservation of employment, the DOLE issued Labour

Advisory No. 17, series of 2020 (“Employment Preservation Guidelines”) which aim to assist

employers to protect jobs and prevent layoffs. Under the Employment Preservation Guidelines,

any of the following work schemes may be adopted by the employer: Transfer employees to

another branch or outlet; Assign employees to other functions or positions; Reduce normal

working hours; Job rotation; Partial closure of establishments; and Other feasible work
arrangements, considering the individual requirements of the business. The Employment

Preservation Guidelines also allow employers and employees to mutually agree in writing to

temporarily adjust wages and benefits provided under an existing employment contract, company

policy, or collective agreement.

Nevertheless, the Civil Service Commission (CSC) has issued guidelines on alternative work

arrangements (AWA) in government agencies pursuant with the community quarantine rules

issued by the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases

(IATF). The Civil Service Commission (CSC) promulgated on May 7, 2020 the Resolution No.

2000540 which suggests; work-from-home (WFH) arrangements, four-day or compressed

workweek, and staggered working hours as AWA types that agencies can adopt during the

pandemic.

WFH refers to an output-oriented work arrangement that authorizes the worker to produce

outputs or results and accomplishments outside of the office. For agencies in areas placed under

general community quarantine (GCQ), where public transportation is limited and physical

distancing in the workplace is required, WFH will be a required option. In line with this,

employees designated to the skeletal workforce shall be entitled to hazard pay on top of the

compensatory time off or overtime pay granted for authorized services rendered outside of the

employee’s regular work hours.

Meanwhile, under a compressed work week arrangement, the employees need to report for work

only four days each week. Agencies may also adopt staggered working hours, which is
applicable to offices or agencies that observe work shifting or flexible working time. For this

purpose, staggered working hours refers to the existing 24/7 shifting schedule and the flexible

working time schedule.This may be implemented as a means to limit the number of employees

present at the workplace at any given time.

Figure 1.1 Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework described above and chosen to undergird this study offers

multiple lenses through which to assess the relationship between the frequent practice of work

from home and its association with household consumption. In relation to the study, practice

theory supports the developing process of how global society adopted the means towards work

from home which are inclined from the elements of materials, competence, and meanings.

Likewise, household production theory supports the concept of how the present household

rationally decides to produce, consume and allocate limited resources amidst the pandemic.

Consequently, the aforementioned Memorandum order by DOLE and CSC provides a relevant
ruling context on how work from home arrangements should be practiced and implemented in

accordance with the law. Overall in combination of theories and policies, provides an arrival

point in overview about the changes in work culture, household consumption patterns and work

environment innovations.

Conceptual Framework

This study seeks to explore if there is a significant relationship between off-site work

arrangement on the respondents' household economy. This section presents the conceptual

paradigm to present the figure of the study:

Figure 1.2 Conceptual Framework

Figure 1.2 provides an overview of the study in a simpler structure. First, the input shows the

data that will be gathered from the study, in such a guide to what to explore and conduct for the
research. For instance the practice of telework during COVID-19 pandemic, its nature and

pattern. Consequently the study will seek the respondents' perception on accumulated household

energy costs prior to the practice of telework during pandemic.

The process includes observational methods and survey questionnaires which will be needed to

acquire the information needed for the research and eventually analyze and assess the data that

were gathered from the respondents’ answer to the questionnaire and acquire the data from

which the study will derive the conclusion from. Finally, the output which will be the valuable

insights obtained and results and findings as a contributor to the significance of study.

Significance of the Study

This study provides insights about the effects of telework in household economics by

highlighting the factors that produce added costs in the practice of telework during COVID-19

pandemic. The results of the study will be of great benefit to the following:

Local Employees. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented threats posed to health

and wellbeing for people who worked in both public and private sectors. The direct recipients of

the output of this research are the local employees, thus this study will provide appreciation and

gratitude for the efforts that the employees exceeded during the pandemic.

The Students. This study will be very beneficial to the students especially in the business field .

Through this research, students may purposefully discover insights into what people’s experience

of working from home during the crisis looked like at the time

The Instructors. This study can be used as a case material for studying in economics and social

sciences as it may apply particular findings and results from the study as a part of discussion.
The Society. The significance of the study is to help society in general, particularly the younger

generations to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a

culturally diverse post- pandemic world.

The Researchers. For future researchers in the same field, the study will help them uncover how

the effects of work from home (WFH) arrangement may impose potential benefits and

challenges in an employee’s household.

Scope and Delimitations

The focus of this study is to explore insights in which teleworking may produce consequent

impacts on household energy consumption. Our research focuses on those teleworkers who have

employment contracts with an organization and partly or fully work from home or place other

than a traditional working place during traditional or non-traditional working hours. The research

does not cover teleworkers working independently and having no permanent labor contracts with

organizations, such as freelancers.

The researchers' focus is purely based on the responses of thirty respondents working from home

belonging to two sectors during COVID 19. Data was collected during May 2021, a month after

the government implemented ECQ within high risk areas. Majority of the respondents of this

study are from the BPO and I.T sector. All the respondents of this study are working from home

for at least three months continuously. This study is limited to the employees within NCR and

Rizal respectively. This choice was made due to accessibility of potential participants within the

researcher’s limited contacts and networks of people. Other several employees still working on-

site during Enhanced Community Quarantine won’t be included in the research. In this study,

another example of a delimitation was the decision to use a digital survey due to the risk of
Covid- 19 virus and thus, conducting physical interactions to the respondents was highly

restricted.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a prediction of the possible outcomes of a study (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009).

Hypotheses are statements in quantitative research in which the investigator makes a prediction

or a conjecture about the outcome of a relationship among attributes or characteristics (Creswell,

2012). And with that, the Null and Alternative Hypothesis of this study are:

H0 - Offsite work has no effect on household economics

H1 - Household Economics has been affected by offsite work arrangements

Definition of Terms

The following are the operational definition of the terms used in the conceptual framework and

statement of the problem in study:

Household Economy- describes the collective economic activities of households.

Household consumption- represents consumption costs including electricity, food, water.

Information and Communications Technology (ICT)- refers to all communication

technologies, including the internet, wireless networks, cell phones, computers, software,

middleware, video-conferencing, social networking, and other media applications and services

enabling users to access, retrieve, store, transmit, and manipulate information in a digital form.

On site - an arrangement where work is performed and developed within a company's premises.
Off site - is a work arrangement whereby work can be outside the company's premises; thus

employees provide utilities and equipment necessary for work.

Telework - refers to a work flexibility arrangement under which an employee performs the

duties and responsibilities of such employee's position, and other authorized activities, from an

approved worksite other than the location from which the employee would otherwise work

(Telework Enhancement Act of 2010).

Work from Home - refers to the style of telework that is home-based, e.g. the carrying out of

one’s usual work-related duties from home through the use of ICTs (Hallin, 2020).

CHAPTER 2

METHODS

Research Design

This study aims to utilize the quantitative design wherein using the non-experimental method.

According to Salkind (2010) the design encompasses the method and procedure employed to

conduct scientific research which involves describing the behaviour of a group without

manipulating any variables or randomly assigning participants to a control or treatment group.

Thus, no conclusions about causal relationships between variables in this study can be drawn.

This method is used in order to determine if there is a significant relationship between the off-

site work arrangement and household economy. The first stage involves questionnaire

development, while the second phase involves questionnaire validation. To this aim, the

researchers administered an online survey by collecting demographic information (i.e., profile of

households, nature and pattern of work arrangements). Consequently, using questionnaires this
study will measure the respondents level of household consumption in terms of water, food and

electricity. And to know the respondents perception on the accumulated household costs prior to

the practice of off-site work arrangement during the pandemic using the Likert Scale. All of it to

be examined through a web-based questionnaire. Statistical analysis includes mean and Pearson

r, using the software Microsoft Excel and JASP for checking and re-evaluation of statistics.

Locale of the Study

The locale of the study is to be taken in place with known households in which any or all

identified family members are engaged on offsite work arrangements. Inquiring via a web survey

will provide the researchers profound and appropriate data regarding the problem.

Population and Sampling

The respondents of the study are the identified household family members who worked in the

services sector were selected to participate in the survey for this study. Out of the one thousand

households within NCR and Rizal, a total of thirty households will be chosen as a sample. All of

the selected participants must have at least three months of experience working from home

during the COVID-19 outbreak. Overall, there will be at least thirty household respondents for

this study to have a proportional distribution of survey questionnaires to come up with a reliable

conclusion. Each respondents comes from different and various environments as well as their

perceptions with household consumption. For sampling technique, this study will be using non-

probability sampling. In this procedure, not every member of the population has an equivalent

possibility of being chosen as a subject.

In order to achieve significant data about this study, a survey-questionnaire will be used as a tool

to make the respondents give accurate and complete information. The questionnaire will be in

the form of a four-point likert scale that aims to provide sufficient data,¹ cover all aspects of the

problem and to answer all the specific questions under the statement of the problem.

The instrument that will be used in collecting data for this study is a survey questionnaire, which

was constructed by the researcher from different sources of related literature and studies. A 2-

page structured, combined questionnaire was developed by the researchers as a mode of data

collection. The questionnaire consists of three sections which are respectively; household's

profile and the nature of off site work arrangements, level of household consumption, and the

respondent's perception on accumulated consumption prior to off-site work arrangements. In

section A, the respondents will be asked to furnish demographic information of household size,

number of family members engaged in telework including their age, gender, and marital status.

Data Gathering Procedures

• Accurate data gathering procedures should be documented especially when the study is

experimental to allow a reliable repetition of the procedures done (phase by phase and step by

step detailing of methods applied will be most helpful for future researchers).

• As much as possible, the time frame with which the study was conducted should be reflected in

this part of the paper.

Statistical Treatment
• As mentioned, well-known statistical tools and instruments need not be defined but they should

be explained fully in the context of the study as to how they were actually used.

• Values substitution and formula representations should be discussed for the readers to be able

to

grasp the purpose of using such treatments in the study.

• Formulas, if written, should be in a form that is correct and universally accepted.

Ethical Considerations

• Intellectual honesty means having to give that which is due to whom

• Source of information should be acknowledged through proper citation

• Approved permission letter is needed from the respondents of the study

• Parental/ guardian consent should be secured for minor responde

CHAPTER 3

RESULTS

Tables and Figures

CHAPTER 4

Interpretations
• Discuss the relationships, correlations and patterns among the data that were presented

previously.

• This is the part of the paper where the hypothesis is contrasted with the results of the study.

• Connect your findings with the studies and theories that were cited under the RRL.

• If there are any unexpected result, discuss its significance to the study and possible to the field

of the discipline.

Implications

How are the results of the study conducted fit in the existing knowledge as discussed under the

Introduction and RRL? What can be its possible contribution on theories cited or field of

specialization? In this section, the results should be analyzed and explored to answer the

following questions explicably:

• How do the results agree with previous studies and what can be its possible contributions?

• How is the study different from other existing studies? Why do you think it is so?

• How does it support or challenge theories that were reviewed?

• What can be its practical implications?

Limitations

• Acknowledge the things that cannot be concluded based on the results that were generated.

• The limitations of the study might be coming from the following:

o Specific methods used

o Unanticipated obstacle that emerged during the research process.

• Include only aspects that are relevant to the achievement of the research objectives.

• Evaluate the impact of the identified limitations in achieving the aims of the research.

Recommendations

• What are the recommendations based on the results that can be made for practical

implementation or for possible further research?

• Future research may come from limitations. Provide concrete ideas how recommended future

studies will be able to build on areas the research was not able to address.
References:

Appendices:
Curriculum Vitae