Abstract
With the ongoing flexibilization of work, new trends concerning work outside the company’s premises such as coworking spaces are on the rise. Coworking spaces are designed to offer collaboration and community in furnished and equipped workspaces on a rental base. There is a growing body of scientific literature on coworking spaces with empirical results of qualitative and quantitative research. The present study adds to the latter by examining psychosocial demands experienced by coworkers in Germany based on a quantitative survey (n = 112). Among coworkers the home office was or still is another frequently used workplace. However, can the coworking space be seen as a better alternative to the home office in terms of work- and performance-related, social, environmental and health-related aspects? Results showed moderate to low psychosocial demands regarding quantitative workloads. Compared to the home office, the coworking space proved to be the preferred work arrangement. Results are discussed with regard to current literature and workplace design. In conclusion, coworking spaces can be seen as an alternative to the home office that was highly valued in the present sample. It is recommended to further emphasize aspects of work environment and ergonomics in order to create health-promoting and satisfying workplaces.
Highlights
Technological developments enable an increasing digitalization as well as a growing globalizing endeavor
Can the coworking space be seen as a better alternative to the home office in terms of work- and performance-related, social, environmental and health-related aspects? Results showed moderate to low psychosocial demands regarding quantitative workloads
The present study examined coworking spaces from a psychosocial and health-related perspective and raises awareness for psychosocial working conditions in an emerging work environment
Summary
Technological developments enable an increasing digitalization as well as a growing globalizing endeavor. This has always been accompanied by the reorganization of work. Nowadays, these developments lead to significant changes in flexibility, so that work outside the organization’s office becomes even more present in terms of temporal and spatial flexibility. Telework has been used as hypernym for different kinds of work arrangements outside the conventional office and can be seen as an “early form of virtual work” [2], The virtualization of work has been described by Morganson et al [4] as telework arrangements. First developments regarding telework arrangements have been noticed already in the 1970s and 1980s, it has gained even more importance in the last decades [5,6]
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