Abstract:

The worldwide pandemic of COVID-19 have had implications that are far-reaching, both in our social, private life but also of workplace and organizational life. COVID-19 had an unprecedented impact on the workplace and organizational practices radically changed the way we work due to the demands of social distancing. Many workplaces changed over night and employees were forced to work from home using digital devices. Working from home has shifted the research on remote work to the use of different technologies, but also the need to learn how to communicate and socialize in a digital work environment. Obviously this puts socialization in a new light. Louis defined organization socialization as:[. . .] the process by which an individual comes to appreciate the values, abilities, expected behaviors, and social knowledge essential for assuming an organizational role and for participating as an organizational member. This definition emphasizes the significance of socialization as being important in helping persons to successfully adjust to the other employees and culture of an organization. As the digital workplace continue to advance, not the least due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is of great importance for organizations to understand the relationship between socialization and the organizations culture and how employees learn to adjust to the “new normal”, related to work.

There are obviously many researchers now studying work in the COVID-19 context. However, it must still be argued to be an understudies issue due to the short period of time we have experienced the pancemic and its implications on work.Specifically, the rapid and forced change to digital remote work required an urgent change under critical circumstances. These rapid changes gave organisations little time to develop strategies, and educate and train employees. Many organisations found themselves, over night, introducing remote, digital working practices and employees set up digital workplaces at home. Due to the persistence of the pandemic and the little we know about how life will play out the following years in the light of the pancemic, one can argue that organizations and employees are facing a “new normal” and need to normalize this new way of working and socializing a digital, remote workplace. The aim of the present study is to shed light on how employees in knowledge-intense organizations experience the challenge of working in a digital workplace and how they learn the new normal. The empirical data was gathered with semi-structured interviews with employees in three knowledge intense-firms in Sweden that were “forced” to increase their digital transformation of their workplaces due to Covid-19. In total, 30 interviews have been conducted during 2020-2021. The findings illustrates how the employees experience the rapid transformation of their workplaces and what challenges they have experienced during the pandemic. Furthermore, the findings illustrate the challenges of socializing and communicating in a digital workplace and how the organizational is challenged and changed due to the lack of social interaction in a physical workplace. The study contributes to existing literature by providing illustrations about the relationship between socialization and the re-production of existing organizational culture as well as the need to re-learn how to interact in digital workplaces.

Keywords:

Digital work, digital workplace, virtual work, COVID-19, digitalization, digital transformation, organizational culture, socializing.