Before the COVID-19 pandemic forced large sections of the workforce to work from home, the uptake of working from home in the public sector had been limited and subject to the discretion or ‘allowance decisions’ of individual managers. Allowance decisions are influenced by factors at the organisational, group and individual levels. This research examines managers’ allowance decisions on working from home at each of these levels. It compares two qualitative datasets: one exploring managerial attitudes to working from home in 2018 and another dataset collected in mid-2020, as Australia transitioned out of the initial pandemic lockdown. The findings suggest a change in the factors influencing managers’ allowance decisions. We have identified a new factor at the organisational level, in the form of local organisational criteria. At the group level, previous concerns about employee productivity largely vanished, and managers experienced an epiphany that working from home could be productive. At the individual level, a new form of managerial discretion emerged as managers attempted to reassert authority over employees working remotely. These levels intersect, and we conclude that allowance decisions are fluid and not made solely by managers but are the result of the interactions between the organisational, group and individual levels.

While research suggests that work centrality has a positive effect on work engagement and a negative influence on family satisfaction, these relations may differ as a function of one's work setting (onsite vs. remote working). In the present study, we examined the direct and indirect – through work-family conflict (WFC), family-work conflict (FWC), work-family enrichment (WFE), and family-work enrichment (FWE) – effects of work centrality on work engagement and family satisfaction. We also examined whether these effects of work centrality on work engagement and family satisfaction differed between onsite and remote employees. We used a cross-sectional survey design to test our hypotheses among a total of 432 employees, including 152 always working onsite and 280 working remotely. As expected, our results revealed that work centrality was positively related to work engagement and negatively to family satisfaction. Moreover, the indirect effects (IE) of work centrality on work engagement were significantly mediated by WFE, whereas the IE of work centrality on family satisfaction were significantly mediated by FWC, WFE, and FWE. Finally, the relations between work centrality and the outcomes (work engagement and family satisfaction) were stronger among onsite employees than among remote employees. These results revealed that remote working may act as a double-edged sword by buffering the negative effects of work centrality on family satisfaction but also limiting the positive effects of work centrality on work engagement. Organizations and managers should thus consider addressing employees' work centrality and work type in their efforts to promote employees' professional and personal well-being.

This article by Isabelle Brenneur-Garel, President of Juriconnexion and its working group, ‘Journée’1, focuses on the Juriconnexion association's annual conference, held on 21 January 2021 by videoconference. The choice of topic was motivated by the recent pandemic: changes to legal information and work in times of crisis. How have professionals navigated this ongoing crisis? What coping strategies have they developed? What does the future hold? More than twenty speakers from academia, legal publishing, legal associations and networks, and the legal and legal-related professions shared their experiences with members of the working group.