Keywords

Internet Of Things (Iot), Work from Home (WFH), Remote Workplace, COVID-19, Environmental Volatiles.

Introduction

Epidemics are massive blows for organizations and global business relations that affect the business operations for multinational companies, SMBs, startups, and supply chain management (Verbeke, 2020). The COVID-19 highlighted the significance of remote work culture to the organizations and led them to adopt this cultural shift. For instance, in order to understand the pandemic’s financial consequences, we first need to understand the human resource management with respect to social distance and perspectives from economists, psychologists, leaders, and corporate governance (Craighead et al., 2020; Budhwar and Cumming, 2020).

Cutthroat competition and higher demand in the market have driven organizations to take on trend-setting innovations to improve their work efficiency. Enterprises are now looking towards automation and data exchange through online mediums being in a remote setting. Internet of Things (IoT) has prompted an upper hand in the performance of every organization in terms of better resource management and supply chain management. An enterprise is a wide collection of various skills, for example, company management skills, specifically: work processes, meetings, knowledge, and data that organizations use to choose and implement strategies to accomplish superior work performance (Beech and Anseel, 2020). Since IoT is all about empowering a digitally connected ecosystem, it hence assumes an essential role in ensuring an interconnected framework powered by each one of these company management skills.

Internet of Things enables organizations to connect with and manage the physical activities remotely (Ramos et al., 2008). Hence, adopting IoT might give a wide range of advantages for companies and the data gathered by it offers significant insights for organizations as well as employees to witness a significant boost in their productivity (Dwivedi et al., 2017). Nonetheless, risks and trends come up that might have huge, accidental consequences for organizations and their goals in using IoT. IoT might turn out to be important for the companies which constrain individual activities.

Despite that the 5th Generation infrastructure has not been well established (Fonyi, 2021), the applications of the IoT can be mitigated and continued to improve (Pico-Valencia and Holgado-Terriza, 2018). Industry leaders also need to address the possible unforeseen effects of this adoption (Ma et al., 2013) and to explore the effects of IoT on organizations in a methodical way. A small portion of consequences has been considered as to what IoT adoption might mean for companies either with respect to benefits of eliminating sudden risks, potential negative side-effects or challenges that need to be resolved.

Literature Review

The literature survey strategy proposed in this paper is followed to analyze and combine quality writing. The objective of this survey is to gain a significant understanding of the current databases as to why and how organizations adopt IoT and what risks organizations might face once the adoption cycle has started. This paper uses the Duality of Technology (Orlikowski, 1992) as a training lens for mapping IoT on organizations. We, hence, explore literature that assists us with assessing how IoT adoption structures associations, considering research into the adoption and effect of IoT on associations as proposed by research on other disrupting innovations such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

To evaluate the duality of IoT, we take a look at the normal advantages and risks of IoT. Advantages assist us with understanding why associations decide to adopt IoT through understanding the risks assists with understanding the effect of IoT adoption on the association.

We have formed a matrix of ideas into which the literature was classified Table 1. The resulting advantages and risks found in the literature were regularly observed and it was not obvious if they really could be found practically in the real world applications and how the advantages and risks are interrelated. In the survey, advantages and risks are regularly accepted to happen, however, there was no precise record of this adoption and if they were actually accomplished and why (Hussain et al., 2021).

Table 1 Propositions of The Influence of Iot In Literature
Type of Influence	Proposition in Research
Technology as a product of human action	IoT is developed and implemented to achieve expected benefits
Technology as a medium of human action	IoT can facilitate human action, but also poses significant risks to organizations such that expected benefits are often not achieved
Institutional conditions of interaction with technology	Achieving the benefits of IoT adoption requires new skills, roles, and processes
Institutional consequences of interaction with technology	Mitigating the risks of IoT adoption often requires structural changes to the organization

In the present dynamic work culture, innovation and creativity are significant assets for acquiring a competitive advantage. Organizations need to go past their competitors and promote creativity to prosper and develop (Alzghoul et al., 2018). Furthermore, leadership is considered to be a relevant factor that impacts workers’ creative performance and development; it has turned into a huge concern for companies to address initiative methodologies based on their strategic plans (Müceldili et al., 2013).

The main development and progress results can include more noteworthy flexibility and adaptability, helping companies and employees (Martin, 2017). Business leaders can find out flexible and functional workforce variations on how much work HR can do, changes in schedule and workload, and locational adaptability (Kalleberg, 2001). The internet is a network that allows connection among people and data. When applied to the leadership level, HRM’s implications are related to how management and their employees are connected remotely and the increased integration of digital and non-digital job roles.

Impacts of Iot on Digital Workplace and Remote Working

As per the U.S. Census Bureau, almost 33% of the United States’ workforce and a huge segment of overall workforce can work remotely. However, the people working from home to some extent, or completely remote is on the rise throughout recent years, the pandemic might have maximized its adoption.

Security in an IoT environment can be a challenge to connect to heterogeneous devices especially coming from unsecured networks (Sánchez-Pérez et al., 2019). Below are the degree of compliance (0-non-compliance, 10-compliance) categories. From this interpretation, it can be said that compliance needs to be improved Table 2 & Figure 1.

Table 2 Evaluation of Iot Smart House Systems
Categories	Value obtained
I1: Insecure web interface	6
I10: Bad physical security	4
I2: Insufficient authentication/authorization	3
I3: Unsafe network services	2
I4: Lack of transport encryption	3
I5: Privacy issues	4
I6: Unsafe cloud interface	9
I7: Unsafe mobile interface	3
I8: Insufficient security configurability	4
I9: Insecure software/firmware	3

Internet of Things and Data

Data is going to assume a major role in order to connect applications with physical world. IoT has been a game-changing element in associating companies and employees lately. It has also been an important part of the remote workplace regardless of whether it is simply by its capacity to collect huge amounts of data (Sharma et al., 2021).

Through IoT sensors, organizations can interpret external conditions like the intensity of light, flow, position, and temperature. Likewise, these sensors measure actual physical inputs of data and transform them into information. This information is used to analyze the business operations. IoT solutions in general develop a steady flow of information with the help of environmental elements for working and empowering remote organizations that are based on data-driven methods. Even with all the transformation brought by the pandemic in the enterprises and fall in industry movement, the IoT marketplace grew up to 5.8 billion dollars in 2020 (Manavalan, 2019).

Data and IoT in Workplace

When we talk about the role of IoT in remote workplace, it is widely about the information these gadgets are collecting, analyzing, reviewing, and automating workflows rather than the cutting-edge smart devices themselves.

Enterprises are now incorporating applications and software in their desktops to gain insights into the office propensities for employees, but managers can boost the productivity of their workforce by leveraging information from these IoT gadgets (Manavalan & Bynagari, 2021). Such IoT devices provide immense value to organizations in terms of understanding the sleep patterns, eating habits, and work hours of their employees.

With this kind of knowledge, different tasks should be assigned more appropriately based on the data collected. Regardless of the smart gadget is, managers can boost their employees to use these insights and collect information.

Remote Workplace, Smarter Workplace

Innovative technologies such as Internet of Things have been transforming the face of WFH for environmental volatiles now, however, with all the digital transformation brought about by pandemic, IoT has secured an opportunity to grow. IoT can assist with creating a productive workspace for a wide range of organizations. Organizations are often posed with serious challenges issues and that’s where IoT comes into place in order to create customized solutions (Manavalan, 2020).

Smart IoT devices are capable of collecting unique insights into different variables, which we would then be able to use improve the overall performance. No wonder remote workplaces were already a norm in some parts of the world even before the pandemic hit this world and is expected to grow as the time passes. With the use of this technology, almost every employee can work all the more securely and efficiently from their preferred area.

Expanded Workplace Environment

In this section, we discuss three major areas where Internet of Things comes in handy in order to given remote workers a competitive edge.

1. Improved Collaboration: The relationship between colleagues will be highly elevated with the introduction of IoT as teams will be constantly connected and will hold proper command over the workplace. To boost the collaborative activities, organizations will surely want to push a stronger training program that is efficient for every worker. Traditional recruiting process will turn out to be more productive for workers, paying little heed to their location, time, convenience, etc. Newly joined employees will have the option to understand their workplace and connect with other colleagues in a superior manner.

2. Workplace Security: Internet of Things makes it a lot easier to manage the security of your organization through a mobile application. With the help of a cloud-supported framework, you can assign appropriate access rights to the employees from your company. It’s also easier to perform remote unlock and introduce a variety of guideline to abide by.

3. Remote Work: Plenty of workers might want to keep continuing the work from home (WFH) lifestyle even after the pandemic is over. Internet of Things empowers employees to carry out crucial assignments remotely without being there in the workplace. This practice makes WFH for environmental volatiles possible across a few areas, giving more opportunity and adaptability to workers.

Industrial IoT and Digital Workplace

Majority of the enterprises and modern organizations have been leveraging new industrial applications to support rigorous analysis, hardware management, shipment tracking, and other Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications that enable those enterprises to maximize the productivity.

While this has expanded because of the cultural shift caused by COVID-19, a lot of industrial organizations have been left behind to benefit from the potential of IIoT advances to genuinely make ”more brilliant” production streams, smart cities, digital networks, and smart homes. The cause behind this lacking is that it is confusing and requires extraordinary skills to integrate industrial technologies or digital frameworks with the IT infrastructure.

This integration involves skills in equipment, programming, cloud computing, internet/wireless connectivity, smart protocols, and network security. Modern organizations are not capable enough to have these skills expected to install this foundation, pandemic or not. In any case, new tech is assisting with overcoming any hurdle. With these solutions, organizations can instantly develop, convey, sustain, and upgrade these frameworks that enable them to use this information to further develop their organizational operations.

Moreover, industrial solutions have been present well before the epidemic hit. COVID-19 is only supposed to be speeding things up. In past, we have observed modern organizations adopting a hybrid strategy that help them enable remote maintenance and teamwork, while they can also adopt to the changing dynamics and empower security as new solutions are introduced within the system.

Remote Workplace: Advantages and Disadvantages

The shift to remote work has made critical disruption in the workplaces. People needed to adjust to get things done in new ways and various perspectives needed to work in close physical proximity were lost through this shift. This shift, just like anything else, came along with a few disadvantages as well as advantages.

Disadvantages

1. Absence of Casual Conversations: Causal discussions within an organization occur in many places, including chatting in the cafeteria or just before getting into a meeting. This process allows people to become more acquainted with one another. With more personal connection comes more trust. One of the best trust-building procedures is to start a casual conversation and talk about anything. Business operations further develop when there’s trust between the team members.

2. Lack of Spontaneous Collaboration: Physical interactions likewise provide the opportunity to have a spontaneous discussion and collaborate all the more effectively. While solving an issue, it is a lot simpler for somebody to reach over the desk area and simply ask for help. Interestingly, people learn and make more progress on a problem simply by working it out with another colleague instead of attempting to solve it themselves again and again.

3. Little-to-no Cross-department Interactions: Casual conversations, cross-department collaboration, and impromptu discussions are compromised while losing the actual setting of the workplace. The risk of making an indifferent workplace where there is a limited understanding of each other or the business goes up when moved to an all-remote environment. It is somewhat possible to introduce these elements into remote work. The challenge is these activities happen normally in a physical workplace. A remote workplace requires proactively planning.

Advantages

So while we can’t have “apple-for-apple” substitutions, there are extraordinary benefits of using IoT and other technologies in a remote workplace to substitute the lost connection. What are a few benefits of a virtual workplace over a physical one?

1. Asynchronous techniques for correspondence allow employees to participate on their own schedules. This is especially possible for virtual meetings as they don’t need to be at a specific area at a specific time.

2. Everybody has the chance for equal collaboration. In a physical workplace environment, mostly extrovert employees have a higher chance to dominate the discussion. With remote work, there is an equal chance to introverts who might be more concerned about the response and take part more.

3. Cross-department interactions can be a lot more extensive than physical workplaces. You have a lot bigger chance to develop your internal network than relying on a certain cubicle in the usual work setting.

Value Propositions of Iot for Small and Medium-Sized Business (Smbs) In Wfh Environment

For SMBs, this adoption of technology not only provides various opportunities to extend their digital capacities, but also a chance at using IoT to improve their work processes and become more useful, more reliable, and more beneficial (Bynagari, 2020). Let’s look at some of the major value propositions that SMBs can enjoy via the Internet of Things and its cutting-edge use cases to work on their basic business operations within a remote setting.

Cost Reduction

The more organizations use IoT devices to streamline tasks and increase their productivity, the more IoT developments will be customized to assist those organizations with growing. From online security to workplace productivity, IoT devices are having a significant effect on organizations’ main problems (Ahmed & Ganapathy, 2021).

Maintenance expenses can be reduced when IoT gadgets are used with sensors to keep businesses running. Real-time troubleshooting of office equipment faces issues before they affect the staff and employees, saving the problem and expenses of huge fixes

This reduces the expensive downtime for fixes—only one of the many advantages the IoT brings to your operations and maintenance workflow.

This is frequently the situation when trying to reduce costs by further developing process efficiencies (Bynagari & Ahmed, 2021). 83% of organizations that have adopted IoT have seen a hike in their productivity, reducing their consumption and improving the output from employees. Additionally, a report by Statista suggests that the total number of IoT gadgets being utilized worldwide will surge to 75.44% by 2025.

By 19 November 2020, as shown in Figure 2 below, the number of IoT connections (12 billion) exceeded the number without them. It is expected by 2025, there will be more than 30 billion IoT connections and with almost a ratio of four IoT devices per person Figures 2 & 3.

Proficiency and Efficiency

Proficiency is the motivation for the sort of efficiency that helps generate revenue for SMBs.
One approach to using the power of IoT to expand organization effectiveness is to utilize it to eliminate redundant or tedious tasks. Using big data with IoT can give insights into the efficiency of employees and assist with finding out the tasks that are improving the capacity of your business—and which are disabling it.

Big data can also be vital in tracking efficiency for supply chains. You can track delivery frameworks and monitor products and stock to remain one step ahead. Furthermore, you ensure that your equipment and software are connected to provide customer support without any lag or downtime. A study by Donepudi revealed that 83% of organizations that adopted IoT systems experienced efficiency gains (Donepudi, 2020) Figure 4.

User Experience

While IoT has so far impacted back-end processes with its newly adopted presence, the present IoT has impacted that omni-channel methodologies have totally overturned the way customers approach their interactions with organizations. Front-end user engagement has turned into a need for organizations as they hope to connect better with their audience, typically through IoT devices. Users in 2021 have certain expectations towards organizations that should be met; in particular that they need to have the option to interact with you through their phone, regardless of whether that is using an automated chatbot or dedicated IoT device. Forty percentage of customers don’t have any issues whether a chatbot or a real human caters to their queries, as long as they are getting the help they need. Along these lines, mainstream organizations are using new methods and connecting those with the IoT to effectively serve their clients.

Challenges and Risks Associated with Iot Devices In Remote Work

Things definitely changed with more employees working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many organization leaders chose to allow their workers to WFH for environmental volatiles, especially in the wake of assessing that many were essential as useful off-site as in the workplace.

Nonetheless, one drawback is that remote work can raise IoT risks and pose some serious challenges. Here are some provocative examples.

Home Vulnerabilities Can Impact Workplaces

Many people who have smart home appliances use their phone applications to connect with different products. That normal practice presents risks when an individual uses their phone to access organization resources through a virtual private network. If they have smart home applications on that smartphone, the situation could create a malicious gateway for hackers.

Employees working from home are most probably going to be connected with their home Wi-Fi and internet connections. The security of these networks is considerably less extensive than a professional workplace and can expose the remote worker’s PC and data to cyber-attacks.

Numerous Remote Workers Haven’t Received Training

As many organizations quickly shifted towards remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, employees needed to adjust surprisingly fast — often overnight. Nonetheless, a June 2020 study from IBM showed that 45% of people surveyed didn’t get specific training to be aware of security threats that come along the WFH environment. If business leaders had shown more concern around there, they could make their employees aware of the specific risks IoT gadgets can carry.

One potential solution is to have workers turn off IoT smart gadgets, for example, smart speakers before business calls happen. Then again, have them ensure that the devices are not even close to the room where the person works.

Repetitive Passwords Can Expose IoT Devices and Workplace Portals

IT teams frequently emphasized that employees follow certain password guidelines at the workplace. However, it turns out to be progressively hard to command that as workforces go remote.

Imagine a situation where an employee uses a similar password for their work email, banking account, Netflix account, and other websites. Initially, it looks like a good idea to remember passwords for all the accounts easily but, in reality, this practice exposes employees as well as workplace portals to a huge security threat.

Managers can restrict this issue by directing their employees to use unique passwords, particularly when signing into the workplace portals. They must also encourage any person who uses IoT gadgets at home for work or personal reasons to promptly change the default passwords for those devices and make them hard to crack.

Remote Working Makes IoT Software Updates More Challenging

When organizations use IoT applications, there are common frameworks set up to ensure those gadgets all receive the essential updates. That is pivotal because device manufacturers release security patches to address known issues.

Security patches exist to fix the vulnerabilities of a system. In any case, they’re not always easy to quick fixes. IoT devices are frequently difficult to fix with new updates, and that is particularly the case if an individual working remotely is affected by a bug or security malfunction (Manavalan & Donepudi, 2016).

Installing the fix might be too complicated for some off-site workers to do themselves. Also, they may not have an idea about the IoT gadgets they use might have some underlying issues.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that IoT gives many advantages yet the application of this innovation is a result of human activities and these activities decide the real advantages and consequences. This research gives an efficient outline of the potential advantages along with the hindrances that come along with IoT in a remote organizational setting and also provides insights into the duality of this technology in both of these scenarios. The end goal of this research survey was to explore the effect of Internet of Things on enterprises.

These points propose to scientists and experts that normal advantages are regularly identified with the application of data produced by IoT, for example, measure taken to handle information created by sensors and that IoT can be more instrumental for organizations than only functional advantages.

As talked about in this paper, the effective reception of IoT relies upon human conditions as well as organizational activities. It also requires the innovation to be of significant value. Besides, experts might presume that the adoption process is a nonstop cycle as new streams of data and infrastructure keep changing. This dynamic process introduces unique requirements and applications that drive further development. Unmistakably, IoT can provide organizations numerous likely advantages, nonetheless, they must understand that accomplishing these advantages carries possible challenges, as proposed earlier, presents variations within the company and IT frameworks.

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