Purpose

This paper aims to provide a snapshot of workers’ experience while working from home (WFH) during the Australian lockdown in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. It focuses on lessons to inform organizations, employees and the design of the workspaces post-2020, human, organizational and environmental considerations may affect satisfaction, productivity and health.

Design/methodology/approach

Two separate surveys were designed for this study to target Australian organizations and knowledge workers. Participants included 28 organizations and 301 employees, and descriptive and correlational analyses were conducted.

Findings

Organizations stated productivity losses, maintaining culture and workplace health and safety concerns with WFH setup while employees were more concerned about their social interactions, internet connectivity and increased workload. Employees also found the social aspects of WFH challenging and disclosed that face-to-face interactions with their colleagues was the most important reason they wanted to return to the office. High level of trust and value was reported amongst the organizations and workers.

Originality/value

In the scarcity of academic literature around negative and positives of the WFH experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic, the main sources of information have been industry-focused reports. This study aims to contribute to this knowledge gap by identifying positives and negative aspects of WFH during the first wave of lockdowns in Australia in 2020 from the organization and workers’ perspective, including human, organizational and environmental considerations.

中文翻译：

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学习在家工作：第一次 Covid-19 封锁期间澳大利亚工人和组织代表的经验

目的

本文旨在简要介绍在 Covid-19 大流行期间澳大利亚封锁期间在家工作 (WFH) 期间工人的经历。它侧重于为组织、员工和 2020 年后的工作空间设计提供经验教训，人类、组织和环境方面的考虑可能会影响满意度、生产力和健康。

设计/方法/方法

本研究针对澳大利亚组织和知识工作者设计了两项单独的调查。参与者包括 28 个组织和 301 名员工，并进行了描述性和相关性分析。

发现

组织表示，WFH 设置会降低生产力、维护文化以及工作场所的健康和安全问题，而员工则更关心他们的社交互动、互联网连接和增加的工作量。员工还发现 WFH 的社交方面具有挑战性，并透露与同事面对面的互动是他们想回到办公室的最重要原因。组织和工人之间报告了高度的信任和价值。

原创性/价值

在 COVID-19 大流行期间，围绕 WFH 实验的负面和正面的学术文献稀缺，信息的主要来源是以行业为重点的报告。本研究旨在通过从组织和工人的角度（包括人、组织和环境方面的考虑）确定 2020 年澳大利亚第一波封锁期间 WFH 的积极和消极方面来弥补这一知识差距。