Work from Home (WFH) gained momentum as a result of the pandemic. When large portions of the world were under government mandated lockdowns, and forced to institute WFH, companies began to slowly realize that the WFH model come with significant benefits such as the possibility to reduce office space or obtaining access to talent globally. Employees too are incentivized to WFH as it allows them more freedom in where to live, reduce commuting costs, and allow employees to space out work during the day and better manage energy levels. The thesis investigated cybersecurity and information security risks connected to the WFH model through collecting qualitative data by conducting a systematic literature review to gain background knowledge on the topic which was then used to create the interview guide that was used to carry out semi-structured interviews with four heterogeneous Swedish companies of various sizes, working in different fields. The SLR identified social engineering attacks in general, and phishing attacks in particular, to be the greatest threat to employees working in a WFH model suggesting employee security awareness training to be the key security measure in protecting the WFH model. The semi-structured interviews revealed that companies working in a WFH model have also drawn the same conclusion and have made significant efforts to raise security awareness through employee training programs.

Titel: Covid-19s påverkan på produktivitet och arbetsförhållanden vid övergången till distansarbete.   Nivå: Examensarbete på Grundnivå i ämnet företagsekonomi   Författare: Sofia Axelsson och Jennifer Österberg   Handledare: Arne Fagerström   Datum: 2023 - Januari   Syftet med examensarbetet är att skapa förståelse för hur anställda upplever förändringen gällande arbetsförhållanden och produktivitet i redovisningsbyråer under Covid-19. Detta besvaras genom att titta på faktorer som påverkar produktiviteten och arbetsförhållanden. Uppsatsen består av en kvalitativ studie utförd med semistrukturerade intervjuer utförda på redovisningsbyråer. Resultatet tyder på att produktiviteten inte förändrats nämnvärt under Covid-19 pandemins distansarbete. Olika faktorer har genererat i förhalningar av arbetsuppgifter men respondenterna som tillfrågats har arbetat mer vid stora deadlines för att utföra sina arbetsuppgifter i rätt tid. Den psykologiska effekten vid distansarbete är stor vilket både tidigare forskning och empirin tyder på. Därmed har arbetsförhållandena förändrats. En idé till fortsatt forskning är att undersöka om anställda som arbetar hemifrån mår sämre än de som arbetar på kontoret och vad det kan ge för konsekvenser.   Nyckelord: “Covid-19”, “distansarbete”, “arbeta hemifrån”, “hybrid arbete” och “arbetsförhållanden”. / Title: The impact of Covid-19 on productivity and working conditions during the changeover to remote work.   Level: Bachelor's degree in the subject Business Administration   Author: Sofia Axelsson and Jennifer Österberg   Supervisor: Arne Fagerström   Date: 2023 – January   The puropse of the thesis is to create an understanding of how employeés experience the change in work conditions and productivity in accounting firms during Covid-19. This is answered by looking at factors that affect productivity and the work conditions. This thesis consists of a qualitative study with semi-structured interviews on accounting firms. The result indicates that productivity has not changed significantly during the remote work of the Covid-19 pandemic. Several factors have been generated in delaying work tasks but respondents who are asked have worked more around big deadlines to complete their work tasks on time. The psychological effect of remote work is big, as both previous research and empirical evidence indicate. Thus working conditions have changed. One idea for continued research is to investigate whether employees who work from home feel worse than those who work in the office and what the consequences may be.   Key words: “Covid-19”, “remote work”, “work from home”, “hybrid work” and “working conditions”.

Problematisering: Arbetsformen hybridarbete har efter covid-19-pandemin blivit vanlig. Det råder dock tvetydighet i hur ledarskapet ska utformas för att fungera på bästa sätt i det nya normala. Studier visar vidare att sociala dimensioner påverkas av förändringar i tillit, men även att självledarskap kan öka tilliten mellan ledare och anställda. Självledarskap lämpar sig väl i hybridarbete då en högre grad av eget ansvar efterfrågas av de anställda.  Syfte: Syftet med studien är att skapa förståelse för hur ledare i kunskapsintensiva företag upplever att ledarskapet har förändrats i samband med hybridarbete. Eftersom självledarskap kan motverka exempelvis tillitsproblem, undersöks även självledarskapets betydelse i förändringen.  Metod: Kvalitativ metod har valts i form av sex intervjuer av ledare som leder med självledarskap i hybridarbete. Resultat/slutsats: Resultatet visar att ledarna inte upplever stora förändringar i ledarskapet, däremot har tydlighet och kommunikation blivit viktigare. Självledarskapet har i princip samma betydelse som tidigare men användandet har ökat i hybridarbetet. / Problem statement: Hybrid work has become common after the pandemic. However, there is ambiguity about how leadership in the hybrid workplace should be designed to work best. Furthermore, studies show that social dimensions are affected by changes in trust, but also that self-leadership can increase trust between leaders and employees. Self-leadership is well suited to hybrid work where a higher degree of personal responsibility is demanded from employees.  Purpose: The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of how leaders in knowledge intensive organizations perceive that leadership has changed in the context of hybrid work. The importance of self-leadership is also investigated.  Method: A qualitative method was chosen, six leaders who lead with self-leadership were interviewed.  Results/conclusion: The leaders do not experience major changes in leadership, but clarity and communication have become more important. Self-leadership has not become more important but its use has increased in hybrid work.

As the COVID-19 pandemic became widespread around the world, the need to be able to work from home became clear to help reduce the spread of the virus, while at the same time showing that working from home could be successful in the future. While working from home can be positive, it also has drawback as reduce social interactions, hard to set working boundaries and more. This paper examines the viability to introduce a decentralized office space trough environmental sustainability, economic sustainability and social sustainability for a reference apartment building and an energy renovated one compared to a centralized office space. This study shows that working from a decentralized office space will reduce emissions with better utilization of the apartment building, saving the companies money and having a reasonable payback period for investors, while giving employees better personaleconomic and more free time without compromising on the social sustainability from not meeting people and having a hard time to different on working hours and non-working hours.

Teleworking has become increasingly common as the digital development has progressed. This has provided tools that can facilitate work and reduce the need for physical meetings. Previous studies have concluded that teleworking leads to, among other things, a great lack of social contexts, a blurred boundary between work and private life but also increased productivity. In 2020 the coronavirus pandemic spread across the world forcing many people to start working remotely. Studies on the experience of teleworking in early stages of the pandemic show similar results as previous research. However, there are few studies that deal with how teleworking affects a group. These studies show, among other things, that a work group's productivity decreases if many in the group work from home. This thesis aims to investigate the construction industry's transition to teleworking during the coronavirus pandemic by focusing on a design team's experience of teleworking. The report deals with what the current work situation looks like compared to before, how the work can technically be carried out remotely and how the design team experience this change. The results that have emerged in this report show that design can be carried out remotely and the question is not whether telework should take place or not, but to what extent. There are various factors that affect how much individuals want and should work from home and the conclusion in this report is that teleworking should take place two to three days a week. Social parts of the work are irreplaceable and are required for good cooperation and prosperous employees. At the same time, there is an opportunity to focus better at home. Therefore, the parts of the work that require more collaboration and communication should be performed at the office, while work that requires more focus can be done remotely. / Distansarbete har blivit allt vanligare i takt med den digitala utvecklingen som gett verktyg som kan underlätta arbetet och minska behovet av fysiska möten. Tidigare studier har kommit fram till att distansarbete bland annat leder till stor avsaknad av sociala sammanhang, utsuddad gräns mellan arbetsliv och privatliv men även ökad produktivitet. År 2020 bredde coronapandemin ut sig vilket tvingade många människor världen över att börja arbeta på distans. Studier om upplevelsen av distansarbete i tidiga skeden av pandemin visar på liknande resultat som tidigare forskning. Det finns dock få studier som behandlar hur distansarbete påverkar en grupp. Dessa visar bland annat att en arbetsgrupps produktivitet minskar om många i gruppen arbetar hemifrån. Detta examensarbete syftar till att undersöka byggbranschens omställning till distansarbete under coronapandemin genom att fokusera på en projekteringsgrupps upplevelse av att arbeta på distans. Rapporten behandlar hur den nuvarande arbetssituationen ser ut jämfört med tidigare, hur arbetet rent tekniskt går att genomföra på distans och hur projekteringsgruppen upplever denna förändring. Resultaten som framkommit i rapporten är att projektering kan utföras på distans och frågan är inte om distansarbete bör ske eller ej, utan i hur stor utsträckning. Det finns olika faktorer som påverkar hur mycket man vill och bör arbeta hemma och slutsatsen i denna rapport är att distansarbete bör ske två till tre dagar i veckan. Sociala delar av arbetet är oersättliga och krävs för ett gott samarbete och välmående medarbetare. Samtidigt finns det möjlighet att fokusera bättre hemma. Därför bör de delar av arbetet som kräver mer samarbete och kommunikation läggas till kontorstid, medan arbete där mer fokus krävs med fördel kan ske på distans.

The transition towards flexible work arrangements, notably work-from-home (WFH) practices, has prompted significant discourse on their potential to reshape urban landscapes. While existing urban growth models (UGM) offer insights into environmental and economic impacts, There is a need to study the urban phenomena from the bottom-up style, considering the essential influence of individuals' behavior and decision-making process at disaggregate and local levels (Brail, 2008, p. 89). Addressing this gap, this study aims to comprehensively understand how evolving work modalities influence the urban form and land use patterns by focusing on socioeconomic and environmental factors. This research employs an Agent-Based Model (ABM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), integrated with GIS technologies, to predict the future Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) changes within Roanoke, Virginia. The study uniquely explores the dynamic interplay between macro-level policies and micro-level individual behaviors—categorized by employment types, social activities, and residential choices—shedding light on their collective impact on urban morphology. Contrary to conventional expectations, findings reveal that the current low rate in WFH practices has not significantly redirected urban development trends towards sprawl but rather has emphasized urban densification, largely influenced by on-site work modalities. This observation is corroborated by WFH ratios not exceeding 10% in any analyzed census tract. Regarding model performance, the integration of micro-agents into the model substantially improved its accuracy from 86% to 89.78%, enabling a systematic analysis of residential preferences between WFH and on-site working (WrOS) agents. Furthermore, logistic regression analysis and decision score maps delineate the distinct spatial preferences of these agent groups, highlighting a pronounced suburban and rural preference among WFH agents, in contrast to the urban-centric inclination of WrOS agents. Utilizing ABM and ANN integrated with GIS technologies, this research advances the precision and complexity of urban growth predictions. The findings contribute valuable insights for urban planners and policymakers and underline the intricate relationships between work modalities and urban structure, challenging existing paradigms and setting a precedent for future urban planning methodologies. / Doctor of Philosophy / As more people start working from home, cities might change unexpectedly. This study in Roanoke, Virginia, explores how work-from-home (WFH) practices affect urban development. Traditional city growth models look at big-picture trends, but this study dives into the details of workers' individual behaviors and their residential choices. Using advanced computer models such as machine learning and geographic information systems (GIS), predictions are made on how different work arrangements influence where workers live and how cities expand. Surprisingly, fewer people work from home than expected. This hasn't caused cities to spread out more. Instead, Roanoke is expected to become denser in the next ten years because on-site workers tend to live in urban centers, while those who work from home prefer suburban and rural areas and, sometimes, urban. Different work arrangements lead to distinct residential preferences. By including the workers' individual behaviors in the models, the model's accuracy increased from 86% to 89.78%. Logistic regression analysis highlights the factors influencing land use changes, such as proximity to roads, slopes, home values, and wages. This research helps city planners and policymakers understand working arrangement trends and create better policies to manage urban development. It shows the complex relationship between work practices and city structures, providing valuable insights for future city planning.

Denna studie undersöker hur hybridarbetsmodellen påverkar anställdas arbetslivsbalans i Sverige efter Covid-19-pandemin. Det finns en brist på kvalitativa insikter i detta område, med särskilt fokus på deras personliga erfarenheter och upplevelser inom hybridarbetsmodellen. En kvalitativ studie genomfördes med hjälp av semi-strukturerade intervjuer med tio respondenter samt en tematisk analys med en induktiv ansats. Söktermer relaterade till COVID-19, hybridarbetsmodell, arbetslivsbalans, arbetar hemifrån, arbetar på kontoret, anställda och post-COVID-19 användes för att hitta relevanta studier. Resultaten visade att hybridarbetsmodellen förbättrar anställdas arbetslivsbalans genom att erbjuda flexibilitet, förbättrad arbetsmiljö, ekonomiska fördelar samt möjligheter för social interaktion och kommunikation. Hybridarbete minskar pendling och ger ökad flexibilitet, men introducerar även utmaningar som ergonomiska problem vid hemarbete och minskad social interaktion med kollegor. Utmaningar med att upprätthålla gränser mellan arbete och privatliv identifierades också. För att förklara förändringar i organisationer användes institutionell teori, medan resursbaserad teori användes för att förstå hur resurser kan bidra till en förbättrad arbetsmiljö. Studien bidrar genom att adressera hur arbetsgivare kan stödja anställdas balans mellan arbete och privatliv. Sammanfattningsvis visar studien att hybridarbetsmodellen, trots sina utmaningar, erbjuder betydande fördelar som kan bidra till förbättrad arbetslivsbalans och välbefinnande för anställda. / Purpose: This study aims to increase understanding of the impact of the hybridwork model on employees´ work-life balance in the post-COVID-19 era, while also identifying the advantages and disadvantages associated with this workmodel. Design/Methodology/Approach: A qualitative empirical study was conducted using semi-structured interviews analysed through thematic analysis with an inductive approach. The search terms included phrases related to the hybrid workmodel, work-life balance, work from home, work from the office, employees, and post COVID-19. Thorough screening of titles, abstracts, and full texts was performed to select studies that met the inclusion criteria.   Findings: The hybrid work model enhances employees´ work-life balance, encompassing various themes, including flexibility, the work environment, economic advantages, social interaction and communication, technological role, and challenges/boundaries between work and private life. Additionally, advantages and disadvantages were considered in this study. While these themes offer benefits such as flexible time and reduced absences from work and travel expenses, they also present disadvantages such as a lack of ergonomic furniture when working at home, weakened bonds between colleagues, concerns about maintaining a strong organizational culture, and potential decreases in collaboration and cohesiveness in team performance.   Research Limitations/Implications: This study is limited to ten (10) employees working in white-collar jobs in Sweden, and further research should include bluecollar workers and increase the number of respondents to gain deeper insights and understanding into the impact of the hybrid work model on employees´ work-life balance. Furthermore, the study solely focuses on the perspective and experiences of employees, and it could be beneficial to consider both the viewpoints of employers and employees in future research. Originality/Value: This study contributes to existing organizational policies and regulations by providing insights into how organizations can improve their support for employees to achieve a healthy balance between work and private life. By highlighting both the advantages and disadvantages associated with this workmodel in the post-COVID-19 era, organizations can better understand the importance of their role as employers in balancing employees' work life balance in the current hybrid work environment.

This report was about employer branding focusing on health promotion and a good psychosocial work environment at company A. The company and the company’s participants from the interviews are anonymous. The purpose in this report was to see how employees and HR managers at company A perceive the psychosocial work environment, the most important strategies for health promotion and the psychosocial work environment and lastly if there were any solutions to possible challenges? The material came from interviews by employees and HR in other words it was qualitative research. The material resulted in common themes of self-leadership, areas of development, organizational culture,benefits, and network of colleagues. In conclusion all employees thrive and are perceived to be in good health at company A due to good health benefits even if the tempo can be high sometimes. There were some areas that needed improvement such as: increased support from managers to employees, employees wanting to be more involved in decisions, access to further development, and the consequences of working too much from home and self-leadership resulting in decreasing social support, knowledge sharing and as well company culture.

Forskningsfråga: Hur hanterar chefer utmaningarna de möter i hybridbaserade arbetskontexter, och hur påverkas chefers arbetsuppgifter? Syfte: Syftet är att utifrån chefers erfarenheter, utforska hur chefsarbete och chefsrollen påverkas av hybrida arbetskontexter i en postpandemisk tidskontext. Genom att tillämpa en kvalitativ metodologi inspirerad av grundad teori, avser studien att belysa de utmaningar som chefer ställs inför i en hybrid arbetskontext i Sverige. Ambitionen är att studiens resultat ska vara relevanta och tillämpbara i både praktiska och akademiska sammanhang. Metod: Kvalitativ metod, grundad teori, intervjuundersökning & tematisk analys. Slutsatser: Hybridarbete förändrar chefers arbetsuppgifter och gör chefsrollen mer komplex. Chefsarbetet förändras främst av att chefen i en hybridarbetskontext behöver kompromissa mellan komplexa och ibland motstridiga intressen för att finna en sund balans mellan kontorsarbete och distansarbete. Genom att hantera utmaningar i en hybrid arbetskontext förändras chefens arbete avseende ytterligare tre aspekter, nämligen; arbetsuppgifter relaterade till styrning och vägledning, sociala och kommunikativa uppgifter samt arbetsmiljöoriterade arbetsuppgifter. Genom användning av grundad teori har det varit möjligt att identifiera chefsuppgifter som är unika för hybridarbetssammanghang. / Research question: How do managers handle the challenges they face in hybrid work contexts, and how is managerial work affected in hybrid work settings? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate managers experience of distance- and hybrid work settings and understand how it affects managers and their work in a post-pandemic context. The ambition is to highlight challenges that arise in these work contexts from a managerial perspective, as well as contributing with practical insights to optimize the construct of hybrid work settings. Method: Qualitative method, grounded theory, interview survey, thematic analysis. Conclusions: Hybrid work changes managers’ work and makes the role more complex. Managerial work changes primarily as a result of the manager in a hybrid work context needs to compromise between complex and conflicting interests in order to find balance between office work and remote work. By dealing with challenges in a hybrid work setting, the managers work changes in three additional aspects, tasks related to management and supervision, social and communicative tasks and tasks related to work environment.

Uppsatsen är en kvalitativ studie, med ett blandad induktivt- och deduktivt förhållningssätt med en kritisk realistisk lins, som har tillämpats under bearbetning och presentation av materialet. Uppsatsen avser att undersöka de strategier och resurser som bolag X har tillhandahållit för att skapa en sund social- och organisatorisk arbetsmiljö hos distansarbetande medarbetare. Strategierna och resurserna bygger på det arbetsmaterial som studenten fått tillgång till samt en gruppintervju med ansvarig HR-personal. Därutöver undersöka hur strategier och resurser mottagits av första linjens ledarskap och kundtjänstmedarbetare, har empiriskt insamlats genom 11 semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Respondenternas upplevelser med att arbeta på distans presenteras utifrån ett upplevt, socialt- och organisatoriskt arbetsmiljöperspektiv. Likväl presenteras de förbättringsåtgärder som framkommit under intervjuerna. Resultatet visar på att HR-avdelningen i sitt arbetsmiljöarbete har försökt att skapa strategier och resurser riktade mot distansarbetet. Däremot saknas det en gemensam vision och riktning som dikteras av högre ledning. Det återspeglas i respondenternas svar, upplevelser och rekommendationer. Arbetsmiljön präglas av bristfälliga organisatoriska resurser med höga krav och förväntningar. Det resulterar i en betoning och framarbetning av sociala- och personliga resurser i arbetsmiljön bland medarbetare och teamledare, vars syfte är att täcka upp den organisatoriska arbetsmiljöproblematik som existerar.