Teleworking Perspectives for Romanian SMEs after the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The crisis caused by COVID-19, made us rethink our perception of the way of life. Traffic restrictions, isolation, quarantine, the need for social distance have generated new behavior by transferring null activities in the online environment. The advantage today is that the 21st century is characterized by the presence of information technology and its rapid development. The telecommute proposed by Nilles (1994), became in 2020 a very topical concept, due to the special situation in which the whole of humanity is. Although both employers and employees have refused the teleworking formula for a long time, it has now become the only possibility to maintain an acceptable level of activity. The rapid evolution of ITC technologies and applications, the entry on the labor market of the M generation have contributed to the increase of favorability for telework, in 2018 it being included in the Romanian legislation. The methodology for this article was to analyze the Romanian Classification of Activities in the National Economy (CAEN) to find out in which domains do Romanian SMEs prefer to activate and to find out the resistance to telecommuting as a way of work by finding out which of these economic sectors have implemented day to day teleworking long ago and which will. An empirical analysis of every domain was complemented by the survey results to verify to which extent telecommuting is feasible in Romanian SMEs, especially during and after the Coronavirus pandemic. It was necessary to analyze of Eurofound statistics regarding living and working during the COVID-19 pandemic to find out correlations and differences between the authors’ findings and the EU27 baseline.