The critique should critically review (not summarize) the ar.docx

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New ways of working: does flexibility in
time and location of work change work
behavior and affect business outcomes?
Merle M. Bloka,*, Liesbeth Groenesteijna,b, Roos Schelvisa
and Peter Vinka,b
a, TNO, P.O. Box 718, 2130 AS Hoofddorp, The Netherlands.
b Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of
Technology, Landbergstraat 15, 2628 CE Delft,
The Netherlands.
Abstract. In the changing modern economy some new factors
have been addressed that are of importance for productivity and
economic growth, such as human skills, workplace organization,
information and communication technologies (ICT) and
knowledge sharing. An increasing number of companies and
organizations are implementing measures to better address these
factors, often referred to as ‘the New Ways of Working
(NWW)’. This consists of a large variety of measures that
enable flexi-
bility in the time and location of work. Expectations of these
measures are often high, such as a reduction in operating costs
and an increase of productivity. However, scientific proof is
still lacking, and it is worth asking whether al these
implementa-
tions actually cause a change in work behavior and effect
business outcomes positively. This article describes a case study
of
three departments (total of 73 employees) that changed from a
traditional way of working towards a new way of working.
Questionnaires and a new developed objective measurement
system called ‘[email protected]’ were used to measure changes
in work

behavior (i.e. increased variation in work location, work times
and a change towards NWW management style) and the effect
on business objectives such as knowledge sharing, employees
satisfaction, and collaboration.
Keywords: new ways of working, task facilitating office,
knowledge worker, work behavior, business objectives
*Corresponding author: Merle Blok. E-mail: [email protected]
1. Introduction
The modern economy is changing from agriculture
and industrial manufacturing to a service and knowl-
edge driven economy. Knowledge is recognized as
the driver of productivity and economic growth, and
statistics form the OECD studies show that the num-
ber of employees working for knowledge- intensive
service sector is increasing [6]. Knowledge work is
supported by a revolution in new ICT applications
and communication networks. These innovations has
changed our perceptions on work and made it possi-
ble to work at any location at any time [5]. The pro-
liferating use of information has long been seen as
‘the’ aspect that would bring us higher productivity
and better business outcomes. However aspects such
as human talent can be seen of even greater impor-
tance, since that makes it possible to share knowledge,
adapt and innovate [1]. It is therefore argued that em-
ployees, especially knowledge workers, should be
more empowered to work more efficiently and effec-
tively [4]. This empowerment implies offering the
employees more self control and freedom by intro-
ducing flexible work arrangements. This transforma-
tion is often referred to as ‘the New Ways of Work-

ing’ (NWW) and consist of changes that take place at
four aspects:1) the physical workspace, 2) (ICT)
technology, 3) organization & management and 4)
work culture. The physical workspaces refers to
NWW measures that increasing the flexibility where
and when to work by introducing flexible work hours,
telework and creating flexible workplaces at the of-
fice that better suits the work task. Introducing ICT
technologies implies that employees are supported
with technologies that allows them to be connected
and able to collaboration always and everywhere. The
1051-9815/12/$27.50 © 2012 – IOS Press and the authors. All
rights reserved
5075Work 41 (2012) 5075-5080
DOI: 10.3233/WOR-2012-0800-5075
IOS Press
third NWW aspect: ‘organization and management’
is important since managing employees might be-
come a big challenge when it is not longer visible
were, when and what employees are working on. It is
therefor important that managers have trust in there
employees, focus more on output instead of presence
at the office, and provide them with more autonomy
by stimulating own initiative. Changes in work cul-
ture implies that an open culture, with focus on in-
formation sharing and collaboration in networks is
created.
Many organizations see potential opportunities in
the transition to the NWW and the number of organi-
zations that have implemented a form of NWW is

rapidly increasing. This is not only in order to en-
hance productivity growth, but is also seen as a nec-
essary preparation for the upcoming societal issues.
Attracting skilled professionals will get more difficult,
since we are facing a demographic shift in aging
populations. And there is an increase in road traffic,
causing serious traffic infarcts and a loss in produc-
tive work time. The NWW measures not only offer
differentiation in starting and ending time of work, it
also offers the possibility to work from any other
remote location. The Telework Trendlines 2009 [7]
reported that the number of U.S. employees who
worked remotely at least one day per month increased
39% in two years from approximately 12.4 million in
2006 to 17.2 million in 2008.
Working from remote locations affect the purpose
of the office building, making it less important for the
performance of individual work tasks, and more im-
portant for work activities such as collaboration, face-
to-face meetings and knowledge sharing [2]. To bet-
ter suit these work activities, a growing number of
organization lower the total amount of office building
space, and task facilitating offices. This often consists
of transparent offices including a large variety of
shared workplaces, such as meeting rooms, project
places, lounge corners and concentration arias [3].
Although the expectations of the NWW measures
are often high, scientific proof is still lacking. It is
important to know more about the effects to provide
organizations with a better understanding and (at
forehand) insight in the effects of their NWW in-
vestment or policy decisions regarding the implemen-
tation. It is still unknown how implementations of
NWW measures affect work behavior, in means of

where and when the employees work, and how this
relates to business objectives such as increased pro-
ductivity by improvements in collaboration, knowl-
edge sharing and employee satisfaction.
In this paper a case study is presented of a Dutch
organization with a pilot group consisting of three
departments that changed from a traditional way of
working towards a new way of working. The changes
includes a new flexible office layout were workplaces
are shared, introduction of social ICT and the ability
to work from home or any other remote location at
flexible work hours. Their objective was to increase
collaboration, knowledge sharing and employees sat-
isfaction, and thereby enhance the productivity of the
employees, while at the same time reducing cost by
decreasing the amount of total office space used. The
effects on work behavior and on the aimed business
objectives are monitored every half year for four
times in total. A questionnaire and a new developed
objective measuring method called ‘[email protected]’ to
monitor changes in work location are used. The re-
sults from the first two measures will be presented in
this paper. This article is aimed to provide an answer
to the research question: “What are the effects of new
ways of working in a task facilitating office on work
behavior, and does this positively effect collaboration,
employee satisfaction and knowledge sharing?
2. Method
A group of 73 employees from three different de-
partments participated in this study. All participants
moved from a traditional work environment where
each department had his own work space, to one

shared work area consisting of a large variety of dif-
ferent shared workspaces such as brainstorm area’s,
meeting rooms, silent open workspaces and project
places. Digital smart boards were introduced to sup-
port project work, as well as laptops, cellphones, and
access to the business network in order to enable em-
ployees to work everywhere throughout the depart-
ment.
2.1. Questionnaire
A web based internet questionnaire was developed
and carried out twice, once while implementing the
new ways of working (M1), and one six months later
in the new office environment (M2). All employees
of the three different departments participated in the
study. The questionnaire was conducted in order to
measure NWW awareness, change in work behavior
and the effects on business outcomes. Questions on
change in behavior consisted of questions on flexibil-
ity in work location and workplace, and if a NWW
M.M. Blok et al. / Does Flexibility in Time and Location of
Work Change Work Behavior and Affect Business
Outcomes?5076
management style was created in the new work envi-
ronment. Since the first measure (M1) was conducted
while at the same time the implementation of the new
way of work was implemented, the questionnaire
consisted of some questions to retrieved information
of the actual stage of the three differed departments,
such as habitation to the new flexible work environ-
ment.

Questions on NWW management style consisted
of items measuring the degree to which managers
behaved as a NWW role model, if they listened and
showing interest in the work of the employees, and
questions on the focus and agreements on results, the
feasibility of the results and whether the employees
perceived enough autonomy
2.2. [email protected]
In the new work environment the participant had
greater flexibility in the timing and location of work.
It was therefore assumed that employees would more
frequently change workplaces and work location (at
the office, at home, while traveling or at the client
office). In order to measure actual behavioral changes
in work place and location a ‘[email protected]’ system
was developed and tested. The method consists of an
automatic short message services, were texts mas-
sages were send to the business cellphones of sixty
employees five times a day at standardized moments
in time for a period of two weeks. The employees
were asked to respond immediately to each text mes-
sage with a message code that described their work-
place, work location and the task they were perform-
ing. In order to make the response as less time con-
suming as possible, response codes were formulated
and profited to the employees at small pocketsize
plastic cards (see figure 1) and the workplaces at the
office were labeled with code numbers. The
[email protected] measurement was conducted in the new
office situation only and corresponded in time with
the second questionnaire measure (M2).
2.3. Statistics

Descriptive statistics were used to describe the re-
sults from the questionnaire and [email protected] Within-
subject t-test analysis (p<0.05) was used on the ques-
tionnaire data of participants that participated in both
the M1 and M2 questionnaire only, in order to detect
significant effects of NWW on collaboration, em-
ployees satisfaction and knowledge sharing.
[email protected] Codes for short message service
For example O1IC
Location
O# = Office + workplace number
OD = Office, working at a different de-
partment
OL = Working at a different office loca-
tion
H = Home
T = Traveling
WE = Working extern (at client office)
How?
I = individual
T1 = working together at one location
T2 = working together at two locations
G1 = group work at one location
G2 = group work at two or more loca-
tions
What?
C = concentration task

R = routine task
F = formal meeting
IF = informal meeting
P = Phone call
B = Break
N = Not working
Figure [email protected] codes that were used in the short
massage service.
3. Results
All 73 employees of the three departments received
the first online questionnaire (M1) and half a year
later 60 of them received the second questionnaire
(M2). In total 58 participants (average age 45; 59%
male) filled out the first questionnaire, while 52 em-
ployees (average age 44; 53% male) responded to the
second questionnaire. A total of 39 participants filled
out both questionnaires. The job functions of the sub-
jects existed of either manager, project manager, pro-
ject support or advisor.
3.1. Implementation awareness of NWW measures
Questionnaire data on the status of implementation of
the new ways of working and the habituation to the
new flexible work layout showed that none of the
participants were fully habituated to the new flexible
work layout, and a part of the participants (28%)
were still working at the traditional office at the time
the first questionnaire was filled out (M1). Half year
later, at the time the second questionnaire (M2) was
Work Change Work Behavior and Affect Business Outcomes?

5077
filled out all participants were working at the flexible
work layout. More than half (54%) of the participants
were entirely habituated and 30% was habituated
somewhat. A total of 16% stated that they were not
yet habituated to the new flexible work layout.
In figure 2 the results are shown for differed state-
ments that were addressed in the questionnaire on the
possibility to work flexible. The results show an in-
crease over time between M1 and M2 in the experi-
enced possibility to work at flexible work hours at the
office, the availability of sufficient ICT facilities and
access to business networks from home or other re-
mote work locations. These results indicate that the
participant were aware of the new possibilities that
were created by introducing the new way of working.
Figure 2. The ability to work flexible in time and the
accessibility
and sufficient ICT facilities to work from remote locations at
measurement M1 (n= 57) and M2 (n=50)
Besides changes in physical workspace and (ICT)
technology, implementations of the NWW also im-
plies changes in organization & management and a
change towards a suitable work culture. The results
on NWW management style items of M1 and M2
(see figure 3) show that the overall score on NWW
role model and the focus on results improved over-
time, although there is still a large percentage of em-
ployees that did not experience the manager as a

NWW role model (31%) with forces on results (15%).
The other aspects of the NWW management style
aspect show a decrease over time.
Figure 3. The average score on question items measuring NWW
management style M1n=48, M2n =48.
3.2. Changes in flexible work behavior
In order to investigate whether the actual implemen-
tation of NWW measures actually caused a change in
work behavior the participants were asked where they
performed their work tasks. The results in figure 4
show that there were no big changes in amount of
working hours spend on different work locations.
Working at home increased from 4.5 hours per week
at M1 to 5.5 hours at M2, which was not as much as
was expected, since at M2 working from home was
officially enabled. The biggest increase was seen for
working at the client office which increased from 5.8
hours per week to 7.4 hours per week.
Figure 4. The number of hours per week worked at different
loca-
tions, at measurement M1 (n= 57) and M2 (n=50).
The results from [email protected] (see figure 5) show that
60% of the work time was spend at the office build-
ing, of which 40% of the working time was spend at
the flexible work layout. A total of 18% of the work-
ing time was spend at home, an another 13% was
spend teleworking extern at the client office.

Outcomes?5078
Figure 5. The number of hours per week worked at different
loca-
tions, at measurement M1 (n= 57) and M2 (n=50)
At the traditional office the employees had owned
workstations, and did not have a variety of different
workplaces except for meeting rooms and coffee cor-
ners. The new flexible office layout did offer a wide
variety of different workspaces (M2). In the
[email protected] measurement the percentage of work
time spend at each workplace was measured for M2
(see figure 6). The workplaces at the open area (a
total of 31 workplaces), were used for 61% or the
time. The three meeting rooms and team rooms were
used 13% of the time, followed by meeting/lounge
rooms. The phone booths were only used 1% of the
time.
Figure 6. The average number of hours spend at different work-
places at the office for M2 (n=49), # number of workspaces.
3.3. Effect on business outcomes
So far, the results have shown that the employees did
experience an increase in possibilities to work flexi-

ble in time and location and a small change in behav-
ior caused by these increased flexibilities was visible.
Results on the business objectives were measured on
a scale from 1 ‘very low’ to 7 ‘very high’. Results did
not show any change between M1 and M2 for col-
laboration and employees’ satisfaction and the suit-
ability of the environment to perform the work tasks,
while knowledge sharing was decreased significantly
(see Fig. 7).
Figure 7. Average scores for M1 and M2 on scale from 1 to 7 (1
=
very low, 7 = very high).
4. Discussion
In this research study it was investigated whether the
introduction of new way of working measures caused
changes in work behavior, leading to positive effects
on business objectives. The results of this study
showed that the participants were aware of the in-
creased possibility to work at different locations, and
they experienced an increase in availability of ICT
facilities and better remote access to business net-
works. It is interesting to see that even after halve a
year still not all of the employees were habituated.
Results on the implementation of a NWW
management style did not show overall positive re-
sults. Four out of six questionnaire items on NWW
management style showed a decrease over time. This
is a interesting result, since it was expected that the

NWW management style was implemented and
therefor the experienced NWW management style
would improve. It was certainly not expected that it
would decrease. This result might indicate that when
NWW is introduced the importance of a NWW man-
agement style is of greater importance, which might
created increased awareness of the absence of NWW
management style resulting in lower scores.
As mentioned before, NWW consist of changes that
Work Change Work Behavior and Affect Business Outcomes?
5079
take place at four aspects, the physical workspace,
(ICT) technology, organization & management and
work culture. From the results we might conclude
that at least two out of four NWW aspects (i.e. phys-
ical workspace and ICT technologies) were success-
fully implemented. The implementation of manage-
ment style was not conducted successfully yet, and
should be given more priority. Changing the organ-
izational culture might be of greater effort and take
up more time. It will be interesting to see if im-
provements are seen at a later stage in the third or
fourth measure.
Studying the results on change in behavior,
some indications are found for the hypothesis that
implementing NWW measures changes the work
behavior. For instance, more different work locations
and workplaces throughout the office were used. It is
expected that there will be a greater change in work
behavior when all four NWW aspects are imple-

mented successfully.
Not finding any improvements in the busi-
ness objectives can have at least two important rea-
sons. First of all it can be explained by the fact that
not all four aspects of NWW are implemented well
enough to cause a significant change in work behav-
ior, and therefore the business objective are not af-
fected. Second of all it is possible that although ex-
pected by NWW believers, the NWW measures do
not affect of improve the selected business objectives.
The NWW might increase ad hoc interaction and
communication of colleagues, but this does not imply
improvements in knowledge sharing or collaboration
Even if knowledge sharing and collaboration at the
office itself improves, this might be counteracted by
the fact that more time is spend working at home or
at other remote locations where less ad hoc interac-
tion and communication has takes place.
This case study provides us with some inter-
esting insights in some of the effects of the NWW
measures. It is difficulty to set up a good research
study to measure the effects of the NWW since in
reality it is difficult to isolate the effects of NWW in
organizations, and other changes that might affect the
results as well are often taking place as well. In order
to gain good inside in the effect of NWW interven-
tion it is important to measure the situation some time
before the implementation takes place and a period of
time after, when al the short term effects caused by
the change toward the NWW measures has disap-
peared. Unfortunately in this study at the moment of
the M1 measure the implementation was already part-
ly started and some of the employees had already
moved to the new flexible office layout a few days

prior to the measure. Even so, it was not expected
that the recent movement did cause an immediate
change in business objectives and it is expected that
when employees get more habituated to the flexible
work environment it will have a positive effect on
knowledge sharing, collaboration, satisfaction and
experienced suitability of the work environment.
Further research on this topic will be done,
since two other measures will be performed. It will be
interesting to see whether all four NWW aspects will
be further implemented successfully. And if the be-
havior of the employees will change towards a more
flexible work behavior such as a further increase in
hours worked at home or remote, changes in work
time and more flexibility in the use of different
workplaces at the office. It will then be possible to
see if a further increase in work behavior will signifi-
cantly improve the business objectives.
References
[1] S. Aravaniti and E.N. Loukis, ICT, human capital,
workplace
organization and labour productivity: A comparative study
based on firm-level data for Greece and Switzerland, Informa-
tion, Economics and Policy 21, 2009, pp. 43-61.
[2] M. Blok, E. de Korte., L. Groenesteijn, M. Formanoy, P.
Vink,
The effects of a task facilitating working environment on of-
fice space use, communication, concentration, collaboration,
privacy and distraction. Proceedings of the 17th World Con-
gress on Ergonomics, Bejing, 2009.
[3] E.M. de Croon, J.K. Sluiter, P.P.F.M. Kuijer, and M.H.W.

Frings-Dresen, The effect of office concepts on worker health
and performance: a systematic review of the literature, Ergo-
nomics, 48: 2, 2005, pp. 119-34.
[4] C. Ichniowski, T.A. Kochan, D.I. Levine, C. Olson, G.
Strauss,
What works at work: overview and assessment. In: Ichniowski,
C., Levine, D.I., Olson, C., Strauss, G. (Eds.), The American
Workplace. Skills compensation and Employee Involvement.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000 pp. 1–37.
[5] S.Y. Lee, J.L. Brand, Effects of control over office
workspace
on perceptions of the work environment and work outcomes,
Journal of Environmental Psychology, 25, 2005, pp.323–333.
[6] OECD, Organization for economic co-operation and
develop-
ment.. The knowledge-based economy. General distribution
OCDE//GD(96)102, 1996.
[7] WorldatWork Research. Flexible Work Arrangements for
Nonexempt Employees, 2009. WorldatWork Telework trend-
lines (2009),
http://www.workingfromanywhere.org/news/Trendlines_2009.
pdf.
Outcomes?5080
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