What is the impact of the COVID-19 health pandemic on the collaboration in the context of hybrid work ?

Details

Supervisors

Taskin, Laurent

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Following the COVID-19 crisis, between 40 and 60% of Belgians (Thisse et al., 2021) found themselves teleworking. This was a real disruption to the way companies were organized, but it was the only solution that enabled them to maintain their activity. The spread of home-based telecommuting has supported the development of what is now known as "hybrid work", alternating presence and co-presence within work teams. This type of work organization is made possible by the development of technological communication methods. Although hybrid working has enabled many companies to maintain their economic activity during the crisis, it is associated with social and collaborative risks for employees. This master thesis attempts to define what hybrid working is, in the light of existing management science literature and related notions, and presents the results of a case study carried out at a Belgian audit and consultancy firm. Following the pandemic crisis, this company implemented an Activity Based Office work structure, allowing people to decide on the environment in which they wish to work, depending on their activity. Collaboration is approached from the angle of knowledge sharing, and thirteen workers were questioned about the conditions of collaboration in a hybrid context, and more specifically, in the ABO context, through semi-structured interviews. Although hybrid working has a negative effect on collaboration, the workers interviewed show that they have re-regulated their work interactions to preserve a minimum of quality knowledge sharing and remain collaborative.