Workplace as Workspace

Research on well-being at work has identified one key trend: Researchers over time have conceptualized employees as fuller human beings, initially seeing them as bodies performing work, then as psychological persons with hedonic or eudaemonic aspects, and more recently as social beings.  This trend is aligned with how employees have long wished to see themselves at work. They know the truth so brilliantly shown in Chaplin’s Modern Times – employees are not mere automatons but full human beings who show up and hope to flourish in the workplace.

Despite being told to leave their personal problems behind when they cross the organizational door, employees have long seen the barrier between work and the rest of their life as an artificial one. This barrier is crumbling in the modern world of work, as employees stay long hours at work, take their work home with them, or work primarily from home. As a result, conventional work hours have become increasingly unconventional – work spills over into the night and onto the weekends, around meals and family time, spreading itself throughout the day and into the holidays.

Moreover, the conventional workplace has become a workspace which has no spatial boundaries. Work is now increasingly performed away from the office and even from home; in coffee houses, at co-working spaces, while on vacation, and wherever there is a place to sit and the Internet to access. Even the organizational workplace has been transformed, with offices turned into cubicles and open work spaces, dedicated desks turned into shareable “hot” desks, and office lounges turned into temporary work settings.

As a result of all these changes, it seems anachronistic now to talk of “workplace” well-being, when the definition of the workplace itself has changed so dramatically. Instead, we may need to see the workplace as a workspace that has spread over different spaces and times.  Given this pervasive nature of work and its lack of sharp boundaries with personal life, the modern workspace has become a way of life that has a major impact upon and is deeply influenced by all aspects of the person’s well-being.

Seen in this context, even the current view of workplace well-being is very limited in scope. What is needed is a fuller view of what it is to be a human being at work. We need a holistic view of well-being that sees the employee as a whole person striving and flourishing at work.