Ten years ago, we talked about it as a privilege reserved for an elite startuper, free to make appointments from a café, sofa or desk. Then, for many, it became a reality under the impetus of the Covid-19 pandemic, the sudden and massive recourse to teleworking playing the role of electroshock for many companies. Some then switched to “flex office”, a mode of organization in which employees no longer have a fixed workstation, and can work remotely (at home or elsewhere), or in a collective space dedicated by the company (open space). According to a study conducted by Ifop, 16% of office workers were affected in 2021, compared to 6% of employees in 2017.
But, like that of the open space, adopted en masse during the 20th century before arousing strong reluctance (lack of privacy, calm), the image of the flex office has also ended up tarnishing. Today, to defend it is to take the side of the bosses, suspected of wanting to save money on the backs of employees by reducing the size of the premises, under the guise of “hybridization” of working methods. It also means gaining a reputation as a privileged bourgeois – because to advocate flexibility, you must be single, without children, have a loft overlooking the Sacré-Coeur which allows you to telecommute in peace. It is still endorsing a model that would be sclerotic (working a lot is bad), since for some the arrival of flex office – and therefore of teleworking – has been accompanied by an encroachment of professional life on life private, for lack of clear limits signaling the end of the day. But the virtuous worker is no longer the one who devours a triangle sandwich in five minutes without leaving his office. At the time of happiness manager, the real good student takes advantage of his lunch break to jog and evaporates around 6 p.m.
All kinds of training have emerged to prevent the deleterious effects of which the flex office would be the cause. On the program: “develop calm communication in the workspace”, “defuse stress and protect yourself on a daily basis”, “build a charter of well-being in the shared space”… The bad reputation of hybrid work has even inspired fiction: the series WeCrashed (Apple TV) recounts the meteoric rise of the WeWork company, which shook up the international office rental market, before ending in a monumental fall in 2019.
Social justice
Most of these received ideas have however been contradicted by a study published in April by two professors from Cardiff University (UK), Rhys Davies and Alan Felstead. From 100,000 responses to an online questionnaire conducted in 2018-2019 and then in 2022, the academics found that in 2022 respondents said they were less subject to professional pressure, more able to decide when to start and stop work. work, to take emergency leave, and to take part in decisions related to their occupation, with better prospects for promotion and greater job security (in contrast, they had less latitude in performance of their duties). However, the quality of employment had improved above all in the professions most likely to apply homework at least one day a week.
Notable fact: this progress did not only concern the employees of the highest levels, better paid and already benefiting from better working conditions before the pandemic. Now, call center operators, administrative staff, real estate agents and legal assistants are much more likely to work from home at least one day a week.
Another advantage, according to Prithwiraj Choudhury, professor at the prestigious Harvard Business School, the flex office would allow companies to “retain better talent, thanks to advantageous working conditions”, but also to “recruit and retain more diverse talent”, people with disabilities, minorities (who may live in different regions and not want to settle where the business is located) and women – more hesitant to move for a job, but also often those who, in dual career families, will quit their jobs if the man gets an opportunity overseas.
social intelligence
A study conducted in the United Kingdom or the opinion of a Harvard expert will not be enough to convince the most conservative employees, loving their routine and their material comfort. If your colleague Laurent, not fond of telecommuting, prefers the office overlooking the window with a bird’s eye view of the rest of the open space, will he find it systematically, although the places are not nominative in a flex office? In a world without social intelligence, maybe not. But in real life, where individuals are all subject to the weight of habits, it is likely that an informal organization is set up: the desk near the window is Laurent’s.
There remains the lack of space that pushes some employees to go to the office at dawn to secure a place. “The situation has evolved since the end of the pandemic. The proportion of individual workstations in company premises has decreased from 65 to 45%, confirms Charles Boudet, president of JLL France, Southern and Central Europe, one of the leaders global companies in real estate consultancy and services. On the other hand, the proportion of collaborative spaces (meeting rooms, bubbles, relaxation areas) has increased significantly, from 30 to 45%.
According a study conducted in 2008, people communicate three times more often in open spaces than in closed spaces, but the time spent without communication increases from 5 to 29% – which leaves “more time for people to work and think for themselves”. In short: employees communicate more, but in a more collected way. With the significant prospect of diversifying its relationships, because, by breaking down the partitions and silos that hindered collaboration, the flex office promotes exchanges between different services and trades. However, as demonstrated by a study published in 2021 in theAcademy of Management Journal, the impact of informal conversations at work is mostly positive in that they promote well-being, collaboration, creativity, but also productivity.
Personality differences
Certainly, noise is one of the most important annoyance factors in open space. In a study entitled “Noise Effect on Comfort in Open-Space Offices” (2015), the majority of respondents considered that “the level of ambient noise in their environment is high”, and that “intelligible conversations between colleagues represent the main source of noise annoyance”. But it also appeared that “the noise levels measured in open spaces in the tertiary sector rarely exceed 65 decibels”. However, in 2012, a study entitled “Is Noise Always Bad ?” investigated the effect of noise on the performance of creative tasks while a soundtrack played at low (50 decibels), medium (70 decibels), or high (85 decibels) volume. Ironically, people present during quiet sessions did not achieve the best scores, unlike subjects exposed to medium-level noise (70 decibels).
How to choose between telework and office, when both options are on the table, and this, without major constraints? Gleb Tsipursky, bestselling author Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams, considers employee personality differences to be an important factor in flex office performance differences. Based on the Big Five personality test, which consists of five personality dimensions (extraversion, “conscientiousness”, “agreeableness”, openness to experience and emotional stability), the author found that highly extroverted people respond less well to telecommuting, tending to experience more loneliness and social isolation when working from home, which negatively affects their performance. Conversely, the most conscientious (organized, self-disciplined, taking the initiative in solving problems) are more successful in telework – even if they are also in the office.
Common sense dictates that everyone adopts the balance that suits them best – not all are equal in the face of noise, stress and social isolation. But from a business perspective the situation is different. Faced with the need to organize spaces as well as possible, some companies seem to be making a return to the bureaucratization of working methods. Determine in advance the (fixed) days during which the employee will work remotely, telework exclusively from home… We wanted to free employees from certain shackles, allow them to organize themselves as well as possible according to their personality and the vagaries of personal life and professional (which rarely occur on a fixed day): now the flex office is also beginning to suffer from the French bureaucratic madness.