How have we transformed our homes into workplaces? Often the ‘base’ for entering the synthetic situations of hybrid work, homes are now layered with screens and voices that are intermittently muted and audible, with cameras that flick between on and off, displaying more or less curated scenes of work that reveal to colleagues and students some snippets of life beyond the campus office.
About one year after the declaration ending the global health emergency, we are still processing its impact. For some, hybrid working became the solution for a more balanced life. But the impact of transforming the home into a workplace is felt unevenly. The pictures in this section reflect on our participants’ varied experiences of working from home.
Invading the living room?
The first picture of this section highlights a common strategy developed by employees to transform their homes into offices: the use of the living room. In several instances, participants shared that their houses were small, and they could not dedicate an entire room to work. Some interviewees highlighted their preference for the campus office to perform most of their activities, while home would host very specific tasks, such as reading. This picture was taken by one of the participants of the study, who describes still working from home while ill. It highlights a more provisory situation where hybrid working emerges. Although work from home is not the preferred setting, it is effectively adopted in specific circumstances, which are unpredictable and often arise at the last minute. In that sense, the picture inspires us to consider points related to the ethics of hybrid working: when screens make the location of our bodies less relevant to work, how do we take care of ourselves and those we manage?
Credits: Working from Home 1 © 2023 by Hybrid Working Project VU Amsterdam is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Note that we intentionally don’t show people in this image.
