Home office – Show me your Workplace!

Abstract

New ways of working means flexible working. One of the main conflicts with flexible working is the difficulty, not to get totally absorbed by worklife. The capacity to regenerate is essential. One main place for regeneration is the home. In the home office the conflict of privacy and worklife becomes physical: The worksphere invades the homesphere- and vice versa. The Canadian Psychologist Ng (Ng 2010) states in a review on homeoffice workplaces, that there is no actual research focused on the relationship between spatial and environmental aspects of home offices and work behaviour. Little is known, on how home workplaces look like. Sherry Ahrendzen (Ahrendzen 1989) asked 30 years ago, what types of spatial arrangements are best suited for homeworkers. It makes sense to ask this question again under the light of todays political, cultural and social background and considering todays technical possibilities.There are two essential Questions: How looks the workplace in the home office today? What are the best spatial and environmental arrangements when working at home?Method: This home office study is embedded in a larger research project on the influence of environmental parameters on office workers. The overarching research project gives a superstructure for the home office study. A broad research of laws, standards and literature defines environmental variables and resulted in a database with key criteria and priorities for health, wellbeing and comfort (Hax, Redlein 2016).‘What makes an effective workplace in conventional office setting may apply to home offices as well’ (Ng 2010). The database gives a structure to environmental variables in the home office.To get a close look inside the home office, homeworkers in Vienna and in the suburban areas of lower Austria are interviewed in their homes. The workplaces are documented by foto.Results: This is an ongoing research, starting in January 2017. The planned result is, to construct typologies of home office workplaces, in order to get a better understanding of the relationship between environmental settings and homeworkers work outcomes. First results will be ready on the conference in June 2017.Ahrentzen S. (1989): A place of peace, prospect, and…a PC: The home as office. In: Journal of architectural and planning research 6(4):271-288, December 1989Hax-Noske C., Redlein A. (2016 ): Parameters for Comfort: Comparative study of laws and standards. In: Research Papers for EuroFM´s 15th Research Sy