New Technology, Work and Employment in the era of COVID‐19: reflecting on legacies of research

• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Author: Andy Hodder
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12173

262 New Technology, Work and Employment © 2020 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and

John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

New Technology, Work and Employment 35:3

ISSN 1468-005X

New Technology, Work and Employment in

the era of COVID-19: reecting on legacies of

research

Andy Hodder

The outbreak of COVID-19 is having a drastic impact on work

and employment. This review piece outlines the relevance of

existing research into new technology, work and employment

in the era of COVID-19. It is important to be retrospective and

undertake both a historically and theoretically informed po-

sition on the impact of new technologies in the current crisis

and beyond. Issues of control, surveillance and resistance have

been central to work on the impact of technology on work and

employment and these themes have been identied as central to

the experience of work in the current crisis.

Keywords: new technology, COVID-19, control, resistance, sur-

veillance, crisis, work, employment.

Introduction

The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on working lives is enormous. As the virus spread

across the globe in the early months of 2020, we quickly witnessed fundamental

changes to our work and social lives. Across the world, millions of workers suddenly

found themselves unemployed or furloughed as businesses struggled to meet costs

(Lewis and Hsu, 2020). The full economic impact of the pandemic is yet to be deter-

mined, but it will be signicant (see Keogh-Brown et al., 2010). Displays of emotions in

the workplace have increased, and tensions have become heightened as society strug-

gles to adjust to widespread illness and death of friends, family and colleagues

(Williams, 2020).1. Writing in the rst issue of this journal, the opening editorial stated:

We can expect radical changes in the areas of skills, employment levels, work patterns, the content

of jobs and occupational structure to name but a few. There will be no turning back; the seeds of

fundamental change have already been sown. New technology is perhaps the most important issue

that has ever faced workers and trade unions.

(Gill, 1986: 7)

These points are now as pertinent as they ever have been as people experience radi-

cal disruption to the ways in which they work. As noted by Donnelly and Proctor-

Thomson (2015: 48), ‘Disasters disrupt the nature of work, creating a culture of

ambiguity with shifting priorities for individuals, organisations and their wider com-

munities. Operating within subsequent uncertain environments promotes a reassess-

ment of the spatial conguration of work and the adoption of new ways of working’.

Andy Hodder is Senior Lecturer in Employment Relations at Birmingham Business School, University

of Birmingham. He is Secretary of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association. His work

has appeared in journals including the following: British Journal of Industrial Relations; Industrial

Relations Journal; Work, Employment and Society; Work & Occupations.