Workers employ tactics to resist flexiwork change

New research shows that some employees are resistant to changing to a ‘flexiwork’ ‘style of labour, and are employing tactics to show it. Flexiwork is a change for the traditional office culture (own desk, in-situ every day) to one where employees work from home sometimes, and in the office at others.

In a flexiwork situation, workers are expected to leave the desk tidy and ‘empty’ at the end of the day, leaving the space free for someone else the next day. However, one study on a large Belgian organisation found that employees would leave personal objects like pictures on desks, leave material and work equipment lying on desks, or even leaving their desks dirty or untidy in order to keep the same desk as their own.

As many companies have looked to employ flexiwork and shared office strategies since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, this research suggests that management needs to see spatial changes as more complicated than anticipated.

The research was carried out by David Courpasson, Professor of Sociology at Emlyon Business School, alongside colleagues from Universite Catholique de Louvain.