Does working from home work? That depends on the home

Working from home (WFH) has risen in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic. There is an ongoing debate about the productivity implications of WFH, but the physical climate of the home office has received only limited attention. This paper investigates the effect of home office satisfaction and environment-improving behavior on productivity and burnout tendency for WFH employees. We surveyed over 1,000 Dutch WFH individuals about their home office and perceived WFH performance. We fit logistic regressions and structural equation models to investigate the effect of home office satisfaction and... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Stroom, Martijn
Eichholtz, Piet
Kok, Nils
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
Reihe/Periodikum: Stroom , M , Eichholtz , P & Kok , N 2024 , ' Does working from home work? That depends on the home ' , PLOS ONE , vol. 19 , no. 8 , e0306475 , pp. 0306475 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475
Schlagwörter: Humans / Male / Female / COVID-19/epidemiology psychology / Adult / Job Satisfaction / Middle Aged / Surveys and Questionnaires / Workplace/psychology / Efficiency / SARS-CoV-2 / Teleworking / Netherlands / Burnout / Professional/psychology / Personal Satisfaction / Pandemics
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29186398
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/en/publications/09d0f51d-9422-4b19-8e69-8fc0cfe434f3

Working from home (WFH) has risen in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic. There is an ongoing debate about the productivity implications of WFH, but the physical climate of the home office has received only limited attention. This paper investigates the effect of home office satisfaction and environment-improving behavior on productivity and burnout tendency for WFH employees. We surveyed over 1,000 Dutch WFH individuals about their home office and perceived WFH performance. We fit logistic regressions and structural equation models to investigate the effect of home office satisfaction and characteristics on self-reported productivity, burnout tendency, and willingness to continue WFH. Our results reveal that individual differences in WFH productivity are explained by heterogeneity in the physical home office environment. Higher satisfaction with home office factors is significantly associated with increased productivity and decreased burnout tendency. We continue by showing that more ventilation during working hours is associated with increased productivity, willingness to continue WFH, and burnout resilience. This effect is fully mediated by satisfaction with the home office. We find that higher home office satisfaction is associated with WFH success and air-quality-improving behavior is associated with higher satisfaction. Our results underline a holistic perspective such that investing in a healthy and objectively measured physical climate is a key aspect of the bright future of working from home. The move from the work office to the home office needs to be accompanied by careful design and investment in the quality of the office and its climate.