Employee Engagement in A Remote Working Scenario

Remote working is a concept in which the employees do not commute or travel to the Organizations place of work but allows the employees to work outside of the traditional office environment. Employee engagement can be viewed as an attitude of an employee/employee’s a to be productive, to excel and therefore be committed towards the organisation. Remote working applies to a variety of employees especially office or desk-based workers. This paper explores different facets of the remote worker’s persona and provides recommendations and practices to enhance employee engagement of the employees working remotely. Remote work culture is not a new concept, but due to the current Covid-19 Pandemic situation there seems to be a rapid shift of many employees to the remote working model essentially working away from the traditional office ecosystem. This paper examines two aspects of working remotely, a. In regular times b. during a crisis and in both these scenarios how to keep the remote workers engaged and motivated to ensure a minimum if not zero loss of Productivity.

Remote working is a concept in which the employees do not commute or travel to the Organizations place of work but allows the employees to work outside of the traditional office environment. Employee engagement can be viewed as an attitude of an employee/employee's a to be productive, to excel and therefore be committed towards the organisation. Remote working applies to a variety of employees especially office or desk-based workers. This paper explores different facets of the remote worker's persona and provides recommendations and practices to enhance employee engagement of the employees working remotely. Remote work culture is not a new concept, but due to the current Covid-19 Pandemic situation there seems to be a rapid shift of many employees to the remote working model essentially working away from the traditional office ecosystem. This paper examines two aspects of working remotely, a. In regular times b. during a crisis and in both these scenarios how to keep the remote workers engaged and motivated to ensure a minimum if not zero loss of Productivity.

INTRODUCTION
Remote working: This concept of remote working focuses on working productively in a specific place outside the geographical location of the organization's principal or subsidiary facility, it is considered as a work arrangement outside of the office to be more precise. Remote working is not a new concept, though not very well accepted initially but with the advent of technology which has helped to successfully bridge the gap between the physical and digital world. Remote working or working from home has become a practical and preferred way of working in today's Covid-19 scenario where the safety of the employees is the paramount. Working remotely is mutually beneficial to both the employers and employees since it invariably helps reduce facility costs for the employer, maintain work-life balance for the employee, improve overall work output productivity whilst achieving organisational as well as personal goals. The future for working remotely as a work pattern looks very promising as various studies hitherto have suggested that a staggering seventy percent of the professionals will be working remotely by the year 2025. Keeping the employees engaged and motivated is key to success of working remotely, therefore this paper focuses on the various practices of employee engagement when working remotely.

Research Framework
The main purpose of the paper is to give direction and guidelines through its suggestive framework for employee engagement primarily focussing on employees working remotely. It may also act as a tool to the human resource managers in the time of uncertainties or crisis very similar to the current Covid-19 pandemic situation. The suggestive framework proposed in this paper has been developed through a systematic study of the existing Secondary literature on this paper's subject and/or closely related to the subjects around it. Additionally, a Survey tool was deployed to seek inputs from People Officers of Organizations (Sample set) to understand the techniques currently that have been deployed and its effectiveness.

Research Gap
Remote working or work from home as a preferred choice during a crisis similar to the current Covid-19 situation would potentially emerge as a longer-term strategic option for employers. Keeping the employees motivated and focused in the remote working situation is definitely a challenge for every organisation that needs to be focussed upon and addressed.
A set of practices that would positively influence the Employee engagement to help Organizations maintain the best level of engagement to achieve their Organization goals.  Studies | vol. XIV no. 02 (August -November 2021) based on employee engagement that can facilitate effective crisis management for organisations with a help of case study method -of Taj Hotel Mumbai during the terrorist attack.
Jayant Gaurav (2020), the researcher has tried to explain how to draw the employees closer during the times of Social Distancing. The researcher aims to put an idea forward through a suggestive framework of employee engagement to work from home during the pandemic situation. In this article the researcher has tried to make an appeal to the HR managers on how they should become a facilitator rather than an administrator to intrinsically draw the employees towards active participation than being obliged to do the work. • first one is the supportive role the management will play.

Employee Engagement In Remote
• second is to create a positive work environment.
• the third is to encourage trust in leadership..

Sampling
Questionnaire was administered via sharing the google form to HR/People managers of various organisations. Total of 27 responses were received and used for data analysis.

MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS
There have been significant studies and publications that have analyzed and detailed the remote working scenario, this paper has attempted to aggregate best practices and policies that would have a positive and favorable impact on employee engagementbased on the secondary data as described above.
Further to the analysis from the secondary literature, a survey tool was administered as a part of this papers' primary data collection strategy. Presented in this paper is the analysis and inferences based on the survey responses. A summary view of the primary data analysis reveals close alignment of employee engagement practices with the productivity outcomes of the employee in their respective organizations as noted in the analysis, we also found a high degree of consistency between the secondary literature analysis and the survey tool output.

CONCLUSION
To conclude this paper has proposed through its inferences the best practices and policies which when employed by the organization would lead to