Does working from home work? Experience of working from home and the value of hybrid workplace post-COVID-19

Purpose This study aims to understand how knowledge workers working from home during COVID-19 changed their views on physical work environments and working-from-home practices. Design/methodology/approach This study conducted a survey targeting workers in the USA recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk. A total of 1,651 responses were collected and 648 responses were used for the analysis. Findings The perceived work-life balance improved during the pandemic compared to before, while the balance of physical boundaries between the workplace and home decreased. Workplace flexibility, environmental conditions of home offices and organizational supports are positively associated with productivity, satisfaction with working from home and work-life balance during the pandemic. Research limitations/implications While the strict traditional view of “showing” up in the office from Monday through Friday is likely on the decline, the hybrid workplace with flexibility can be introduced as some activities are not significantly affected by the work location, either at home-based or corporate offices. The results of this study also highlight the importance of organizations to support productivity and satisfaction in the corporate office as well as home. With the industry collaboration, future research of relatively large sample sizes and study sites, investigating workers’ needs and adapted patterns of use in home-based and corporate offices, will help corporate real estate managers make decisions and provide some level of standardization of spatial efficiency and configurations of corporate offices as well as essential supports for home offices. Originality/value The pandemic-enforced working-from-home practices awaken the interdependence between corporate and home environments, how works are done and consequently, the role of the physical workplace. This study built a more in-depth understanding of how workers who were able to continue working from home during COVID-19 changed or not changed their views on physical work environments and working-from-home practices.

Implementing Remote Working Policy in Corporate Offices in Thailand: Strategic Facility Management Perspective

There was a sudden shift in the way people work during the COVID-19 pandemic. To keep business continuity, many organizations have implemented a remote working policy for employees to work from home. Strategic facility management (FM) acted to support remote working policies by developing organizational norms in an organization. Meanwhile, the human resource (HR) department chose to achieve business performance while remote working by gaining job motivation among employees. However, there is limited understanding of how well organizations adapted to the remote working policy, and what are the critical factors affecting their remote work performance. The present study aimed to explore the effect of organizational norms on remote working, on remote work productivity, and organizational commitment among Thai employees. The study conducted an online questionnaire survey to a total of 414 Thai employees from various corporate offices. Hierarchical component modeling was applied and achieved a good model fit on the measurement and structural models. Results indicated that organizational norm has a significant effect on perceived productivity and organizational commitment, while sustaining work demand. Moreover, employees’ job motivation can sustain employees’ commitment to the organization in a remote working context. These findings proposed the strategic FM guide, through which a remote working policy can further enhance FM practice.

Ad exemplum rei publicae. Roman private colleges and the civitas

The starting point for these studies is the opinion that Roman colleges were to be a copy of the respublica. I have attempted to prove that 1. with regard to organisation, copying municipal (civic) solutions was usually limited to adopting the nomenclature (names of corporate offices) and some institutions (corporate treasury, gatherings (meetings) of corporate members) known from public life. 2. In the sphere of symbols, referring to civic ideals/civic ethos was one of the bases of corporate identity. Both the system of values and the tools used to create the college’s image, founded on this system, were identical for colleges and the community of citizens. In other words, an ideal college member was also an ideal citizen.

‘Googleplex Cultures’

This paper takes a Marxist approach to analyze Silicon Valley workplace cultures and how they exploit and alienate their workers. Unlike traditional corporate offices, Silicon Valley workplace cultures offer a range of perks and benefits that attract every office worker; however, it makes them feel a sense of appreciation, known throughout the paper as ‘Googleplex culture’. This culture presents a “decentralized workforce explicitly with integrated units working together to find solutions to problems or failure” (Tran, 2017) while providing employees with a range of unconventional, yet useful amenities. Throughout this paper, it is clear Googleplex culture’s onsite benefits, such as kitchens, free meals, snacks, cafés, private rooms, designated sleep areas, workout facilities, and many more perks the average workers could only wish for, obscure both the absolute and relative surplus labour which lead to exploitation. Googleplex cultures claim to be centred around the worker; however, the concept of crunch depicted in these companies is mainly focused on profits rather than employee health, further providing evidence that these workplace cultures initiate Marx's four forms of alienation.