Changing work style in Activity Based Working (ABW)

Many countries have been advocating work style reforms that take work-life balance into account. However, progress has been slow as the reforms have only been slogans, and no concrete measures have been put into place. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to restrictions on going out, including to the office, and people are forced to work from home. This has led to various changes in work styles, although these changes vary depending on the industry and occupation. Here, changes in work style include not only changes in location, but also changes in working hours, freedom of task choice, etc. The authors conducted a survey of change during the pandemic on work content, work locations, freedom, etc., compared to before the pandemic. As a result, since it is still in the early stages, the percentage of companies that have introduced some form of work style reform was about 50%. However, regarding communication, many opinions were heard that the frequency of communication has decreased due to the sudden shift to online. In addition, it was found that these opinions differ depending on the management level, managerial level, and general employee level, and it was found that it is necessary to take into account the difference in position when analyzing. After the pandemic ended, various opinions were heard, such as returning to the pre-COVID-19 period, the same as during COVID-19, and further changes. Please refer to a separate report for details (HCII2025). At this time, it was also found that some changes were occurring, regardless of whether they were good or bad. It was found that these can be classified at the level of changes in the social environment, the environment in the company or at home, and the policies of the company or department. Therefore, we broke these down into more detail and conducted a new survey on the following items: Advancement of equipment, Advancement of tools, Changes in internal systems Improvement of the internal environment (network, etc.), Company and department policies, Changes in the social environment (increase in co-working spaces, improvement of Wi-Fi environments in public spaces, faster home networks, etc.). This paper presents a detailed analysis of the survey results and the requirements for introducing work style reform.