‘When the daily commute stops’: a long-distance commuter’s reflections on commuting and telecommuting across the COVID-19 pandemic

Trusson, C, Chen, GK-W ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8107-0286 and Bridger, J, 2024. ‘When the daily commute stops’: a long-distance commuter’s reflections on commuting and telecommuting across the COVID-19 pandemic. Work, Employment and Society, 38 (1), pp. 279-290. ISSN 0950-0170

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Abstract

This article foregrounds the working experience of a knowledge worker in the United Kingdom across three years (2019-2022) that included periods of ‘lockdown’ and other social restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Across seven separate interview extracts, it offers a longitudinal narrative on the lived experience of substituting a workday comprising a long-distance commute by car to work ‘standard’ hours for an extended workday telecommuting from home. Over time the worker paradoxically recognises that telecommuting entails added pressures of work intensification, extensification and greater domestic responsibility but this is preferable to returning to a long-distance dissatisfying commute. The reflexive narrative reveals how he embraces the pressures of telecommuting through job crafting to re-identify as an autonomous professional and more engaged care-giving parent. The article contributes to the literature on hybrid/flexible forms of work organisation emerging from the pandemic by indicating the importance of micro-level considerations and implications for gender equality.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Work, Employment and Society
Creators:	Trusson, C., Chen, G.K.-W. and Bridger, J.
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Date:	February 2024
Volume:	38
Number:	1
ISSN:	0950-0170
Identifiers:	Number Type 1775623 Other 10.1177/09500170231188660 DOI
Rights:	This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	14 Jul 2023 15:26
Last Modified:	22 Feb 2024 11:25
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/49371

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