Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic and the precautionary measures applied globally (lockdowns and curfews) have impacted homes, including work. Working from home (WFH) has emerged as a growing trend in the post-pandemic era. The research question was: Are our homes ready for teleworking? To respond, a national prospective mixed approach was launched for Spanish households during the spring 2020 lockdown, using two online questionnaires, one quantitative and the other qualitative. Through a survey, photographs, and narratives, the study evaluates the perceived adequacy of telework spaces and their specific characteristics, the availability of digital resources and the internet. A total of 1800 surveys and over 200 images and texts related to telework environments were obtained. The results suggest that the adequacy of these spaces was insufficient for more than a quarter of the homes. Also, strong relations between the perceived workspace adequacy and a social status or stability of homes were shown and validated, despite other sociodemographic features, the home composition or habitat were not related. Some other variables statistically significant were occupation regime, type and surface of dwellings; their indoor environmental quality; the availability of exclusive spaces for teleworking; quality of digital resources; and the specific space features. The analysis was completed with qualitative insights through photos and texts. Telework, lived in this context as an experiment, needs this reflection from an environmental, resource-availability, and ergonomic point of view.
Highlights
IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
The data obtained in the fieldwork campaign between 30 April and 22 June were presented, a period included in the State of Alarm decreed by the Spanish government, for which the confinement was established, which would begin on March 14 of that same year [23]
The main conclusion that can be drawn from this article is, on the one hand, the uniqueness and exceptionality of teleworking in homes as a result of the confinement due to COVID-19, which caught at least 42.2% of teleworking households off guard of the sample, who did not have a fixed site to carry out this task
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, confinement was stablished as a preventive and containment measure for public health at a global level, and in European countries, such as Spain [1]. Confinement and social distance have had a psychological impact on the population [2], hitting the most disadvantaged in a more significant and general way [3]. As a consequence, it generates the worsening of the already unequal distribution of wealth [4]
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