The coronavirus pandemic has significantly disrupted information work across the globe. The rapid and prolonged shift to remote work from home is producing transformational change that will undoubtedly have long-term implications. The new reality of distributed information work challenges and inspires us to revolutionise our work practices and technologies to support the sustainable and robust distribution of people, resources, and knowledge.

There is an urgent need for the research community to come together to address the challenges to productivity, wellbeing, and society that people and organizations are facing. The goal of this virtual symposium on The New Future of Work is to provide an open forum to explore where we have come from and to suggest where we should go. It is a venue to share timely and novel research on currently disrupted or evolving work practices, to reflect on how past findings shed light on the current situation, and to prepare for a world in which work may be done very differently.

Submission Guidelines

We seek two kinds of contributions:

• Novel research: Recently completed research or research in progress (including early stage findings, design concepts, or prototypes) about work during the current pandemic. This research should be novel and involve data directly drawn from or highly relevant to the current global work situation.
• Position statements: Overviews that explore how prior research is relevant to, or might be tested in the light of, the current global work situation.

Contributions should include clear calls to action for research, development, or policy.

This symposium is intended to provide a public forum for sharing research as rapidly as possible. All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. Accepted papers will be shared at a virtual symposium in August 2020. The symposium timing will enable contributions from multiple time zones. At least one author of all accepted papers is expected to participate in the symposium.

There is no specified format for submissions, with the exception that citations and references should follow the ACM format.

• Length: 4-6 pages, maximum 6000 words excluding references.
• Novel research submissions should have the following sections (adjusting as appropriate): Title, Authors and affiliations, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Prior Work, Methods, Findings, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgements, References
• Position statement submissions should have the following sections (adjusting as appropriate): Title, Authors and affiliations, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Relevant Body of Work, Current Implications, Conclusion, Acknowledgements, References
• To ease review, ensure consistency across text styles for titles, headings, captions, and other elements. All links, media, figures, and tables should be inline and captioned.
• We encourage the use of hyperlinks and embedded media.
• Submissions must be in Microsoft Word or PDF format.

List of Topics

We encourage submissions on a range of topics related to the impact of the current global work situation on distributed information work and technologies, including but not limited to:

• Accessibility and inclusion
• Employment, including hiring, onboarding, management, and freelancing
• Fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics
• Managing all-remote teams
• Media and social media influence on the new future of work
• Hybrid and fully online meetings and events
• Physical workspaces
• Privacy and security
• Productivity within and across work roles and domains more broadly
• Public policy related to remote work
• Social connection and isolation
• Societal implications and confounding factors
• Wellbeing and work-life balance

We also encourage submissions from a variety of fields with a clear and relevant link to distributed information work and technologies, including but not limited to:

• Computer Supported Cooperative Work
• Communication
• Data and Information Sciences
• Design Research
• Economics
• Human-Centered AI
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Human Geography
• Machine Learning
• Management and Organisation Sciences
• Privacy and Security
• Psychology
• Sociology

Committees

Chairs

• Gloria Mark, University of California, Irvine
• Sean Rintel, Microsoft

Steering Committee

• Anna Cox, University College London
• Brent Hecht, Microsoft
• Thomas W. Malone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Snap Inc.
• Judy Olson, University of California, Irvine
• Abigail Sellen, Microsoft
• Margaret-Anne “Peggy” Storey, University of Victoria
• Jaime Teevan, Microsoft
• Steve Whittaker, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Naomi Yamashita, NTT Communication Science Laboratories

Publication

Microsoft will provide an open platform to allow for the dissemination of all papers, presentations, and symposium outputs. Papers will be made available prior to the symposium for pre-reading.

Selected contributions will be invited to also submit to a Special Issue of Human Computer Interaction focused on the New Future of Work.

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to Sean Rintel.

Organization

This symposium is being organized and hosted by Microsoft.