Post-Pandemic Office Work: Perceived Challenges and Opportunities for a Sustainable Work Environment

Abstract

The widespread adoption of remote and hybrid work due to COVID-19 calls for studies that explore the ramifications of these scenarios for office workers from an occupational health and wellbeing perspective. This paper aims to identify the needs and challenges in remote and hybrid work and the potential for a sustainable future work environment. Data collection involved two qualitative studies with a total of 53 participants, who represented employees, staff managers, and service/facility providers at three Swedish public service organisations (primarily healthcare and infrastructure administration). The results describe opportunities and challenges with the adoption of remote and hybrid work from individual, group, and leadership perspectives. The main benefits of remote work were increased flexibility, autonomy, work-life balance and individual performance, while major challenges were social aspects such as lost comradery and isolation. Hybrid work was perceived to provide the best of both worlds of remote and office work, given that employees and managers develop new skills and competencies to adjust to new ways of working. To achieve the expected individual and organisational benefits of hybrid work, employers are expected to provide support and flexibility and re-design the physical and digital workplaces to fit the new and diverse needs of employees.

Hybrid Workplace: Activity–based office Design in a Post–pandemic Era

“…Our findings on work‐life balance during WFH provide additional support. While the scope of this study was limited in terms of participant profile, organizational culture, and geographical coverage; it supports the results from numerous investigations that suggest hybridization along with an activity‐based office design could be the future trend (Babapour Chafi et al, 2022).…”

“…Until COVID‐19, the focus on activity‐based office designs was to address these negative issues. However, the state of emergency due to the pandemic has overruled our knowledge on workplace design with the induction of a series of new evaluations, modifications on the ways of working and/or sharing of spaces, practices, and temporalities (Babapour Chafi et al, 2022). The impact of COVID‐19 on work experience differs regarding the number of cases in that geography, precautionary measures taken by governments or businesses and organizations, and individual needs of workers: each story has become a unique case to analyze.…”

Guest editorial: Reshaping work and workplaces: learnings from the pandemic for workplace health management

“…The changes that the pandemic imposed have exacerbated specific difficulties for different groups within the workforce. Across the papers we see, in line with other COVID-19 pandemic studies (Aragon de Léon et al , 2021; Babapour Chafi et al ., 2022; Platts et al , 2022), that WFH implies a risk of increasing feelings of loneliness, in particular young adults (Paper 3) whilst WFH has a risk of challenging one's identity (Paper 2). Mental health challenges have increased specifically for women, young adults, people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, and those with pre-existing mental health difficulties during the pandemic (Paper 2 and 3).…”

“…Not surprisingly, having to attend to dependants' needs (i.e. home-schooling children) affects people's subjective well-being (Paper 4), similarly to other international studies (Aragon de Léon et al , 2021; Babapour Chafi et al ., 2022; Platts et al , 2022). However, WFH over longer periods poses different challenges, from being unable to WFH to being exposed to different risks in the workplace.…”

The Role Of Income, ICT Adoption And Leisure Time In Maintaining Employee Mental Health

“…Workers are trying to telecommute for the sake of their mental health (Barn, Di Rosa, & Kallinikaki, 2021). Most workers choose remote work formats or a hybrid between the office and remote work (Babapour Chafi, Hultberg, & Bozic Yams, 2021). In the midst of a spike in timekeeping, Volume 4, No 1, January 2022 inflexibility is one of the factors affecting the mental health of workers.…”