We are currently living in a digital age. This unique period in history utilises digital technology to enable the mass production and dissemination of information through high-speed, widely accessible devices, software and infrastructure. The digital age largely emerged with the widespread use of the World Wide Web and increased broadband and Wi-Fi access; today many social, economic and organisational activities depend on information and communication technologies (ICT) to provide access to work and support working life. In April 2020, it was reported that 4.6 billion people across the globe are now active users of the Internet, with 3.5 billion people owning a smartphone [4]. Against this backdrop, we have begun to observe a burgeoning appetite amongst workers and organisations to capitalise on the digital revolution and promote new ways of working.

Agile working (sometimes referred to as ‘smart’ working) reflects this new movement. Originally a term developed by the software industry to refer to the need to develop more flexible and business-responsive technological infrastructure, it has since been adopted by practitioners and organisations who are interested in the human side of work. In recent years, think tanks (e.g. the Agile Alliance, the Agile Future Forum, the Work Foundation), professional organisations (e.g. the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development: CIPD) and business journals (e.g. Harvard Business Review: HBR, HR Magazine, the Wall Street Journal) have devoted attention to the concept of agile working and how this can be used to benefit both organisations and workers. In particular, a focus of early implementer organisations has been on reducing costs whilst increasing productivity and supporting greater flexibility for workers. These institutions have considered using agile working practices to respond to and anticipate the needs of workers, organisations, markets and customers in a way that enables effective goal achievement, performance and productivity. However, the well-being of the workers who adopt agile working practices has largely been overlooked as a key focal area. This is likely due to the concept of agile working receiving minimal attention from academic researchers interested in the ‘human’ side of work, e.g. in psychology, organisational studies and HRM research. Traditionally, such scholars would consider well-being as a key outcome for understanding work practices. Because the academic literature relating to agile working in these fields has lagged well behind research in other domains, so too has the focus on well-being.

Despite a lack of attention paid to agile working in ‘human’ studies research, scholars in these fields have focused on a number of emerging working practices that are agile in nature, such as remote e-working [9]. Accordingly, where there is a ‘human’ focus, research has identified how well-being is affected by new modes of work, even if these have not previously been conceptualised under the banner of ‘agile working’. This is a vital consideration when we consider that well-being at work has such a significant impact on the healthy functioning of individuals and organisations, with a direct impact on the bottom line [7, 17]. In this book, we refer to well-being as a multi-faceted construct involving the experience of pleasurable emotions and broader meaningful functioning (e.g. in relation to satisfaction, growth, accomplishment and engagement) [20, 28].

In ‘Agile Working and Well-being in the Digital Age’, we therefore take a human focus to understanding agile working and specifically address how it impacts well-being in this era of increased digital and communication technology. Our main aims are:

Each of the chapters in this book addresses these aims in different ways, which we outline towards the end of the Introduction. Our intention within this book is to introduce readers to the human side of agile working, and to elucidate how agile working practices impact well-being as a potentially ‘forgotten’ construct in the initial conceptualisations of agile work. Whilst providing a scholarly overview of the research field and recommending future directions, our authors also highlight how agile working practices can be optimally implemented, for practitioners and professionals involved in the design of agile working today.

We take a human view of agile working to provide a novel definition that encompasses, for the first time, four key interrelated activities of agile work. Following a review of both academic and ‘grey’ literature [11, 18, 24, 25], we state that:

Agile working involves liberation from traditional ways of organising and structuring work by: