O trabalho remoto emergencial na pandemia pela ótica do secretário(a) executivo(a) da Universidade Federal de Sergipe (UFS)

Abstract

Remote work — otherwise known as “work from home” — is the format of working outside of physical facilities of a company, through the usage of information and communication technologies. From the Third Industrial Revolution, and in particular the Telecommunication Revolution, new work formats were created; remote work being one of them. With the COVID-19 outbreak, which mostly took place during 2020, social distancing and quarantine were the main strategies to hinder the spreading of the virus. Consequently, work from home was adopted in order to continue with laboral activities. This paper aims to analyze how the practice of remote work took place in the period, in the perspective of executive secretaries from the Federal University of Sergipe. It describes the activities executed by these professionals before the pandemic, in order to identify the changes proposed during that time, and also analyzes the work experience in the eyes of the secretaries. This research is structured according to the exploratory research model, adopting the case study method with a quali-quantitative approach. For data collection, we used a semi-structured questionnaire, divided into sections based on the specific goals of this paper. We obtained the profile of the secretaries as mostly young women between the ages of 31 and 40, will good academic background, majored in areas such as Languages, Public Administration and Executive Secretariat. The experience was shown to be mostly positive, with a reasonable degree of adaptation. The greatest advantage in remote work was found to be the flexibility in work hours; while the worst downside was the distacing from coworkers. We found there were no significant changes in the secretaries’ activities throughout the pandemic; however, there was great need for adaptation to the remote format and the consequences it brings to the professionals’ lives.