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

Maral Babapour Chafi,Annemarie Hultberg,Nina Bozic Yams

doi:10.3390/su14010294

Maral Babapour Chafi, Annemarie Hultberg + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su14010294

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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.

Highlights

Our results are divided into four major sections: (i) the adoption of remote work as a new way of working, (ii) the social aspects of remote work, (iii) the leadership perspective of remote working, and (iv) returning to offices and moving towards hybrid work after pandemic restrictions are lifted
Our results on the perceptions of employees and managers with respect to new ways of working during and after the COVID-19 restrictions indicate that the era of a one-sizefits-all office-based work structure is over, giving rise to more customised and hybrid work models in the future
Our results present a mixed picture of new ways of working, exemplifying both a range of new possibilities and challenges that remote and hybrid work models pose from employee, managerial, and organisational perspectives

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The shift to remote working and the push towards digitalisation in response to COVID19 restrictions has had an unprecedented impact on office work with respect to social sustainability, in particular the work environment, organisational innovation capabilities, and the wellbeing and performance of office workers. Previous research on the impact of flexible work arrangements (such as flexible work time, flexible workplace, remote work, etc.) on employees’ subjective wellbeing has generally shown positive results but has highlighted certain challenges of remote and flexible work arrangements from employee and leadership perspectives. According to a systematic literature review, the main positive effects of remote work are increased flexibility, autonomy, job satisfaction, and a better work-life balance [1]

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