Social-psychological effects of remote work in professional development and education

remote work, remote learning, remote teams, communication, verbal and non-verbal communications, interaction, group identity, team cohesion

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many industrial and educational organizations to switch to a remote approach. Although remote work and education have some economic and organizational advantages, there are also some potential "pitfalls" reflected in the social activities, personal development and team’ interactions. Methods: The method of theoretical analysis of scientific and methodological sources in the fields of social, educational and organizational psychology was used. The authors’ attention was devoted to the remote forms of work and learning in “normal” conditions, in contrast to the forced transition to remote activity while providing anti-pandemic measures. Results: The socio-psychological effects manifests in three directions: 1) interaction and communication, 2) formal and informal groups and joint activities, 3) personal development. Interaction and communication include the impact of digital technologies on the information transfer within the teams and interpersonal contacts. The most consequences are increasing experience of isolation, virtual interaction with sense of anonymity, text forms of communication. The decreasing phenomena are role of visual non-verbal communication system and opportunities of feedback giving and reception. Formal and informal groups experience decreasing sense of grope identity and cohesion, loyalty to educational organization and involvement in joint activities, social support within group or organization. The some features of social activity expansion are multiple organizational membership and educational mobility. The difficulties in educational administrating relate to organization and coordination of joint work and result assessment. Personal manifestations are at the level of an individual system of values and interests, goals setting and achieving, individual behavior and subjective well-being, vocational choices and motives. Conclusion: Summing up, we can offer some recommendations for organizational and psychological support of learning, education and career counseling of school students in order to minimize or compensate the impact of negative socio-psychological effects of remote activity organization on learning groups and individuals.

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