Editor’s note: Working from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic has raised new communication challenges for many. In this latest contribution to our series of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis, Pia Tenedero explores the communication practices of offshore accountants in the Philippines, who have been working from home to service their overseas clients for many years. The call for contributions to the series continues to be open.
***
“The trend of the future is working from home. The big question is: Are Filipinos ready for this kind of work?” This question was asked by an employer of Filipino virtual accountants providing offshore services to clients overseas during my fieldwork in June 2018. Two years later, office workers all over the world find themselves forced to do just that—work from home—as a social distancing measure in light of the COVID-19 pandemic situation. In Australia alone, 1.6 million reported this significant change in their working conditions.
Unsurprisingly, there are many different reactions to this global shift to remote-work setup—some readily embracing it as the new normal, others taking a more critical stance. In the interim, as working from home continues to be the norm for some occupation groups, the experience of offshore accountants, who are employed to work remotely, pandemic or no pandemic, provides a picture of how this work arrangement works on a permanent basis.
A sociolinguistic analysis of the globalized accountant experience of working from home was the subject of a webinar co-organized on 3 July 2020 by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines (LSP) and the Lasallian Institute for Development and Educational Research.
In this online lecture, I explore how working remotely has shaped communication practices and ideologies in globalized accounting practice in the Philippines. Examining communication in this context is important as the demand for off-shored (including home-based) accounting services is increasing. This trend comes with the positioning of the Philippines as an emerging global provider of knowledge process outsourced services to businesses headquartered overseas. Ethnographic data collected from this work context for my PhD thesis (in progress) is analyzed using the lenses of performance and audit. Findings show that the way accountants communicate has evolved to fit the shape of virtual work environments. Digital solutions are making communication skills more salient and creating new norms and protocols of transparency that contribute to tensions between autonomy and accountability. The lessons highlighted from accountants’ experiences potentially reflect communication challenges and opportunities in other work domains especially during this period of COVID-19 pandemic, when mandatory physical distancing is redefining workplace interactions.
You can watch this virtual presentation uploaded in the LSP YouTube channel.
Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic
Visit here for our full coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis.
This work is licensed under a
Hi Pia and Ingrid,
This topic has attracted my attention as I have been experiencing this situation at my workplace. More than experience , I am observing people who are working from home right now and are struggling with this aspect of their work. I am working in a VET institute (based in Melbourne) as an admin. Currently, Victoria is under level 4 lockdown. During these restrictions, I have seen the trainers’ struggling with the communication in virtual classes and with the other staff members. The communication is not supported by gestures , papers and or physically absent in the time and space with the listener , is becoming a hard challenge to face. This communication barrier is creating so much gaps in learning process of the student that many are withdrawing or deferring the courses until learning comes back to face to face. These communication barriers are very important to be dealt with . There is a need to address and resolve these issues especially in education sector .