Potential Impacts on Employee Productivity by Telecommuting Practices in Information Technology Industry of Sri Lanka

Abstract

The information technology sector is the fourth largest export earner of Sri Lanka. The output of ICT services are highly important for the economic stability of the country. The ICT sector currently services over 300 companies in different industry verticals. The export revenue of the industry was increased since 2007, USD 213 million to USD 1089 million in 2019. The ICT sector has created more than 150,000 employment opportunities in 2020, which is expected to increase over 200,000 by 2022. The pandemic has become an eye opener for many industries and new strategic imperatives were implemented. The pandemic encouraged most of the industries to trial telecommuting strategy and many organizations adopted remote working concept. Especially in the IT sector telecommuting has become new normal after the first wave of the corona pandemic in Sri Lanka. Most likely, IT organizations will stick to remote work concept in future. However, there could be gaps in telecommuting practices and the productivity of employees by remote work is still questionable. This paper provides an opportunity to have a basic understanding on the gaps of the telecommuting practices and how they could affect the employee productivity. The reviews from different papers and articles on telecommuting practices at the global level and in the Sri Lankan context are included in this paper. The literature review emphasize the empirical discussions related to the IT sector both internationally and locally about the challenges and the suggestions which other researchers made. Finally, the paper concludes by discussing the overall reviews and by making suggestions to overcome the situation in the long run, and also highlighting the further research areas related to the topic.