Virtuality in Non-governmental Organizations: An Analysis from Working Conditions

Abstract

Nowadays, organizations’ dynamics have resulted in a migration towards organizational models based on remote work, which significantly changes the working conditions of diverse organizations such as non-governmental organizations, which are often responsible for providing advisory and support services to populations in vulnerable situations. In this sense, this study is aimed at identifying the conditions and context of virtual work within a non-governmental organization focused on the attention of the Venezuelan population residing in Colombia. A questionnaire of Likert scale answers is taken as a reference, consisting of a total of 47 questions, broken down into 11 items: Working conditions, Supervision, Recognition, Transcendence, Independence and/or autonomy, Communication with other areas, Career Growth, Technology Resources, Job Performance, Work/Life Balance and Health Conditions. The items in each section are ordinal scale response items (Likert scale) with 4 answer options, categorized from 1 to 4, where category 1 (Very dissatisfied) indicates lower satisfaction and category 4 (Very satisfied) indicates greater satisfaction. The instrument was applied to 30 individuals linked to the administrative and project management areas of the organization, it is observed that the working conditions correspond to 1.65 which indicates that on average people show some degree of high dissatisfaction with their working condition, related to noise, lighting, space, among other factors. As for the supervision item, 2.29 is noted, which means that workers are dissatisfied with the control applied by their boss and the way in which their performance is evaluated, however, the recognition category presents a 3.72 which is a high level of satisfaction and refers to the rewards for the achievement of the objectives and the recognition of their boss. The transcendence item that is related to the possibilities of creativity offered by the work, denotes 2.84 a moderate level of satisfaction, as well as Life/Work Balance, Health conditions with a 3.17 and 3.06 respectively. The items Independence/autonomy, Communication with other areas, Career growth, Technological resources, denote high levels of satisfaction, which means, that workers have the ability to freely decide aspects relating to their job, participate in the decisions of their working group and have opportunities to participate in calls or promotion to other projects. Finally, the item work performance has 2.69 a moderate level of satisfaction, which is related to the tasks and activities that must be performed at work and the times of fulfillment (time available to finish tasks).