EXPLORING NEW SPACE APPROPRIATION STRATEGIES IN FLEX-OFFICES: A QUALITATIVE STUDY

Since the covid-19 pandemic, telework has developed and became the norm in companies worldwide.With people working from home several days per week, offices' occupation rates have plummeted, leaving open-spaces partly empty.Companies have seen this phenomenon as an opportunity to reduce costs by reducing the number of workstations per employee.As a result, workers in such setups do not own a specific desk.They rather belong to an area, in which several positions are available for them to use, but none of these can be considered "theirs".But it has been demonstrated that developing a feeling of appropriation or ownership over one's workspace through a range of processes (i.e., personalization) has a range of positive consequences such as improving work satisfaction (Rioux & Pignault, 2013) or reducing emotional exhaustion caused by lack of privacy (Laurence, Fried, & Slowik, 2013).However, although flex-offices are promptly developing, research about the impact of such design on appropriation and related issues are scarce.To address this topic, we conducted 17 semi-structured interviews, with workers from a French telecommunication company, some of whom had a personal desk and some of whom were in a flex-office.We interrogated their relationship to their own workspace and the ways they relate to it.We conducted a thematic analysis, following Braun and Clarke's guidelines ( 2006) to shed light on issues related to space appropriation.Our results show that a vast majority of individuals value their feeling of workplace belonging.Even when individual personalization is severely hindered, workers will express feeling like they belong to their workspace or are working towards developing this feeling.They will develop strategies and habits to develop a new feeling of appropriation through collective and individual processes (i.e., collective personalization, habits forming, team space regulation) more compatible with flex-offices.This study allows us to postulate that space appropriation goes beyond individual personalization and knowledge of the physical environment.When hindered, this complex and multifaceted psychological process can translate in many ways.This study points out the importance of letting employees turn their space into a place.It will be followed by quantitative research to further investigate these processes and their consequences in terms of behaviors and attitudes in the workplace.