European community for mobility management

Working from home has an optimum in the amount of time that people working at home. Working at home completely seems to benefit productivity on the short-term, but on the long term the productivity will decrease after some time, and may even become less compared when working in the office. This is one of the results of the TNO expert meeting on the effects of the new way of working.

More and more organizations give their employees the opportunity to work at home. There is still much uncertainty about the effects of the so-called New Way of Working on employee productivity and vitality. There is not much scientific literature. So understanding of the effects of organizations provides guidance in making choices and making investments before an organization proceeds to implement the New Way of Working. TNO researched the effects of the New Way of Working. 

TNO brought together experts in the field of New Way of Working together to get insight in the effects of New Way of Working. The conclusion is that a workplace which is activity-related has a positive and lasting effect on productivity (if well implemented). Examples are:

• doing a focused task in a small quiet room or at home 
• informal meeting in a lounge area

The dimension of working at home has an optimum concerning the amount of time that people work at home. Working completely at home seems to benefit productivity on the short-term, but the productivity will decrease when they work in the office. This is because the binding with the company and collaborate with colleagues reduced a lot when they work at home. Partly working at home does give a lasting positive effect on productivity cause collaboration with colleagues remains.

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