Remote Collaboration : Building a Supporting Remote-Work Environment

Abstract: Remote work has been a more prominent phenomenon for most people during the last couple of years due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Thanks to the many advances in technology during the last couple of decades in the usage of technology of mobile phones, computers, tablets and much more, the thought of remote work has increasingly grown. With the help of these technological advancements, the possibility of remote work has increased. With the help of platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams, interaction with colleagues or management is still possible despite the distance between the individuals. The definition of remote work has long been the subject of discussions, with researchers not finding a standard definition. The research and literature regarding collaboration in the remote work setting and environment are limited, creating a research gap this thesis serves to fill. We wanted to investigate more and correlate the collaboration aspect to other factors that might be affecting collaboration. Therefore we looked at motivation, engagement and commitment, and trust in the remote organisation setting, forming the research question: How do employee motivation, employee engagement, and trust affect the efficiency of collaboration in a remote-work setting in Swedish firms? When we, as students, experienced the shift towards remote work imposed by the university’s response to the pandemic, we had to change our approach to our education. Lectures were no longer held on campus but online; examinations were held online, and all group work was done remotely. Therefore, the purpose of the thesis is to analyse and answer the research question and give insights into how an organisation that works remotely can facilitate collaboration in the remote setting by looking at motivation, engagement, and trust. We used a qualitative method through semi-structured interviews to gain more profound knowledge about collaboration in the remote work setting. The data was gathered from five participants in a remote work structure. With the help of the responses, we could continue to analyse the results and connect the result to the theories. We did this by creating a cross-case analysis where we searched for patterns amongst the respondents. A distinct pattern was seen where all participants ranked collaboration better functioning when they and the team were more motivated, engaged and trusting overall. This study contributes to the growing trend of remote work and how organisations and individuals can facilitate collaboration in the remote work setting. With the combination of theoretical frames of departure, previous literature, and the finding from this thesis, we can conclude that there is a need for motivation, engagement, and trust in the workspace to facilitate remote work collaboration.