Conceptualization and Assessment of the Home Workspace: A Person-Centered Approach
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Egan, Jennifer
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Abstract
The prevalence of working from home (WFH) as an alternative work arrangement has gradually increased as a result of pivotal technological, societal, and global developments from the 1990s (Felstead & Henseke, 2017). WFH is not a novel phenomenon, but relatively little attention has been given to the impact of how the spatial environment of the home workspace affects an individual’s work experience (Stephenson et al., 2020). Given that remote work is unlikely to recede to pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels (Bana et al., 2020), organizational psychologists should consider the impact of home workspace environments on worker-related outcomes. This study builds upon boundary theory (Ashforth et al., 2000) and architectural perspectives by using person-centered, sensory based (i.e., visual, auditory, olfactory) measures of the home environment. 199 administrative staff participants were administered a survey that measured connections between objective aspects of the home environment (e.g., workspace size), sensory inputs from the home domain, psychological outcomes, and respondent intentions to WFH in the future. Ultimately, objective and self-situated aspects of the home environment positively related to the sensory inputs. Auditory and visual inputs positively related to general stress and home-work boundary violations. Specifically, auditory inputs from the home environment predicted general stress, while visual inputs predicted a more general assessment of home-work boundary violations. Finally, home-work boundary violations were positively related to a worker’s intention to work from home in the future. Implications for theory, remote workers, organizational leaders, and designers, are discussed.
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2023-04-13
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