Self-leadership in remote work
Niskanen, Evita (2021)
2021
All rights reserved. This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202105077594
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202105077594
Tiivistelmä
This thesis is a research-based study, and the main topic of the thesis is self-leadership skills and how employees use them during remote work, when external leadership is potentially at a lower level than in an ordinary office setting. Self-leadership during the pandemic, COVID-19, has become a more current topic than ever. Employees all around the world are working from home more than ever before, having less physical contact with their peers, managers and high-level executives in the organisation. In addition to how current this topic is, in the future it will become the norm to work from home more, making the insights in this thesis useful for the future.
Self-leadership is based on various theoretical backgrounds. Many of these theories suggest that self-leadership is the basis for all leadership, which acts as a great generator for the need to understand the importance of self-leadership, as well as how it can be implemented and supported in organisations. The theoretical background to self-leadership shows that self-leadership is within every individual, but how individuals recognise, utilise and develop these skills can vary quite a bit.
The objective of the thesis is to find out how employees utilise their self-leadership skills and how the switch to remote work has changed the need for these skills. It has also considered whether organisations should support and actively train their employees to have better self-leadership skills, to prepare them better for extraordinary circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
The research was conducted between 7-22 December 2020 with four individuals, in semi- structured interviews. The findings of the study show that while participants have self- leadership skills, they are often unaware of these skills, which causes self-leading throughout their days to be at a lower level than it would be if they were more aware of self-leadership tools. The research also recognises that employees feel a bigger need for self-leadership during remote work than they did before, when working at an office, and that the need for support from organisations has also increased. While organisations might offer training of self-leadership skills, the practical side of helping employees can easily be forgotten, and therefore such training can easily become invalid.
The proposed solutions for the research findings are for organisations to not only offer more information and training of employees’ self-leadership knowledge and skills, but to also create a strategic plan for self-leadership implementation and integrate self-leadership into the organisational culture. This can be seen as one of the organisation’s values that effectively helps employees to self-lead, not only in office-setting work situations and remote work, but also in future crisis situations.
Self-leadership is based on various theoretical backgrounds. Many of these theories suggest that self-leadership is the basis for all leadership, which acts as a great generator for the need to understand the importance of self-leadership, as well as how it can be implemented and supported in organisations. The theoretical background to self-leadership shows that self-leadership is within every individual, but how individuals recognise, utilise and develop these skills can vary quite a bit.
The objective of the thesis is to find out how employees utilise their self-leadership skills and how the switch to remote work has changed the need for these skills. It has also considered whether organisations should support and actively train their employees to have better self-leadership skills, to prepare them better for extraordinary circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
The research was conducted between 7-22 December 2020 with four individuals, in semi- structured interviews. The findings of the study show that while participants have self- leadership skills, they are often unaware of these skills, which causes self-leading throughout their days to be at a lower level than it would be if they were more aware of self-leadership tools. The research also recognises that employees feel a bigger need for self-leadership during remote work than they did before, when working at an office, and that the need for support from organisations has also increased. While organisations might offer training of self-leadership skills, the practical side of helping employees can easily be forgotten, and therefore such training can easily become invalid.
The proposed solutions for the research findings are for organisations to not only offer more information and training of employees’ self-leadership knowledge and skills, but to also create a strategic plan for self-leadership implementation and integrate self-leadership into the organisational culture. This can be seen as one of the organisation’s values that effectively helps employees to self-lead, not only in office-setting work situations and remote work, but also in future crisis situations.