Examining new ways of office work between the Netherlands and the USA

Abstract

There are many definitions of new ways of work, but working with a computer at another location than at the office or at the clients' location with Information Communication Technology as a support is becoming more prevalent. A new office having shared desks and facilitating informal meetings along with a changed leadership style is yet another way. Examining the experiences of alternative work styles, telework, between the Netherlands and the USA are especially apparent in the design of office environments as is the emergence of new leadership behaviors to promote safe and healthy work.

Identifying factors that influenced wellbeing and learning effectiveness during the sudden transition into eLearning due to the COVID-19 lockdown

“…[25-27, 51-55, 58, 81]: such as temperature, lighting, humidity, etc. e. Exogenous factors [21][22][23][24] h. Organisational factors [7,19]: all the aspects regarding the re-organisation of time dedicating to the study and time dedicating to the recreative activity.…”

“…Moreover, on one side, being connected at home, that is working or studying at home, could be beneficial in general. For example, people could have more control on their work-life balance [19], or avoid taking public transport or driving to reach the classroom or the workplace, saving more personal time. However, on the other side, being forced to remain at home can lead to feelings of isolation [19,20].…”

State of science: the future of work – ergonomics and human factors contributions to the field

“…Alongside working remotely/teleworking (Bentley et al 2016), activity-based working and flexible office arrangements have become increasingly popular for knowledge workers. These arrangements provide different work locations to fit best with different work activities (Robertson and Vink 2012;Wohlers and Hertel 2017), including open-office environments comprising collaborative spaces, plug-in-and-play areas and other configurations that involve the design or redesign of office structures from cellular to non-cellular work environments and a move away from dedicated workspaces and offices.…”

“…Research evidence of the benefits and challenges of new ways of working is mixed, although there is plenty of appetite for the proliferation of such practices amongst organisations globallynot least in the post-COVID-19 era where organisations and workers alike may elect to maintain work from home arrangements for various reasons. E/HF researchers have begun to shine a light on specific aspects of new ways of working, including new ways of office work (Robertson and Vink 2012), activity-based working/flexible offices (Wohlers and Hertel 2017;Chafi and Rolf€ o 2019), telework (Bentley et al 2016) and working in alternative locations and non-traditional workspaces, such as trains (Groenesteijn et al 2014). At present, there is a real opportunity for E/HF in relation to how flexible working arrangements can best be designed in terms of the organisation of work, workplace and workspace design including the virtual environment, communication and policy design, support, training and equipment design, and the management of health, safety and wellbeing including increasing physical activity at work (Arundell et al 2018).…”

Improving car passengers' comfort and experience by supporting the use of handheld devices

“…An increasing amount of personal computing is done away from the desktop PC, using among others the capabilities of small, mobile devices [8,9]. The term mobile devices is assigned to the product group of laptops, PDAs, smart phones, e-readers and tablet-PCs.…”