TELECOMMUTING IN GEORGIAN HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM – CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Georgian universities as business entities are faced with new reality provoked by Covid-19. Distance learning became accompanying part of teaching as providing service to students. It is a challenge for university administrations to provide quality service and education and on the other hand, create pleasant working conditions for lecturers to perform uninterruptedly. This article identifies the challenges that arise from changes around the world and also offers few recommendations for managers/ administrations to manage their human resources effectively while telecommuting. 21st century is an era of changing environments and the progress is made in every field. The world is changing at a mile in a minute due to globalization, technological development, consumer habit changes, process reviews, pressure from new business entrants and competitors arising out of nowhere, focus on benefits and etc. These driving factors make us to be more changeable and adaptive to the current events. Popular directions of evolution and surviving, such as Darwinism, turned into one rule (simple and difficult at the same time) – if you want to survive, you need to change. Everything around us develops rapidly. This process has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has changed lifestyle, work and education style. While the whole world found itself surrounded by restrictions and limitations, the quality of life should have been stayed the same. Therefore, everything including education system has moved to a remote setup. Education system has a substantial impact on country’s economy and Georgia is part of this scheme. Since education plays a huge role in development, it is crucial to maintain the quality of distance learning. Covid-19 virus has covered enormous scales and has changed the daily lifestyle of the whole world. While the countries were under lockdown, they had to adapt an alternative working style, which is telecommuting. Working from distance became the main style of working which has covered all business units, including universities. At the current time, many researches have been carried out and many scientific literatures explaining telecommuting as a working practice. The number of universities that offer students online classes are growing fast. It is interesting how university’s administration manages their human resources on distance, because in a new reality it is a challenge. Communication between the employees and their supervisors is another important aspect that has significant effect of whole distance learning process. As it is known, communication and feedback are crucial for job satisfaction and performance of the employees. However, the type of personality plays a role in the telecommuting process and the satisfaction of the telecommuter, which is supported by the need of strong communication. For some people face-to-face communication is the most effective way to do their job. University administration should provide the same amount of feedback to lecturers that work from distance as for the lecturers who teaches at university. Problem of communication, feedback and lack of face-to-face interactions are solved by using modern technologies, such as video calls, conferences, classes and etc. However, this partly eliminates the issue, because lack of face-to-face communication remains one of the problematic topics and to overcome it, is a challenge for administrations. To sum up the discussion, it is without the doubt that by different kind of factors telecommuting is now the part of our daily life and organizations, especially higher educational organizations must have well-prepared procedures and tools to manage distance working process effectively. As we mentioned, to get higher education is one of the main priorities for many countries, because it educated people and labor force create and maintain strong economy. That is why higher education system should be in the center of attention in every aspect.