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. 2022 Aug 3;12(8):e063279.
doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-063279.

Working from home during COVID-19 in a Danish hospital research setting: experiences of researchers and healthcare providers, explored by Group Concept Mapping

Ina Olmer Specht  1 , Karoline Winckler  2 , Robin Christensen  2   3 , Claus Bomhoff  2 , Rie Raffing  2 , Eva Ejlersen Wæhrens  2   4
Affiliations

Working from home during COVID-19 in a Danish hospital research setting: experiences of researchers and healthcare providers, explored by Group Concept Mapping

Ina Olmer Specht et al. BMJ Open. .

Abstract

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the working environment, how we think of it and how it stands to develop into the future. Knowledge about how people have continued to work on-site and adjusted to working from home during the COVID-19 lockdown will be vital for planning work arrangements in the post-pandemic period. Our primary objective was to investigate experiences of working from home or having colleagues working from home during a late stage of the COVID-19 lockdown among researchers and healthcare providers in a hospital research setting. Second, we aimed to investigate researchers' productivity through changes in various proxy measures during lockdown as compared with pre-lockdown.

Design: Mixed-method participatory Group Concept Mapping (GCM).

Setting and participants: GCM, based on a mixed-method participatory approach, was applied involving researchers' and healthcare providers' online sorting and rating experiences working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. At a face-to-face meeting, participants achieved consensus on the number and labelling of domains-the basis for developing a conceptual model.

Results: Through the GCM approach, 47 participants generated 125 unique statements of experiences related to working from home, which were organised into seven clusters. Using these clusters, we developed a conceptual model that illustrated the pros and cons of working from home.

Conclusion: The future work setting, the role of the office and the overall work environment need to respond to workers' increased wish for flexible work arrangements and co-decision.

Keywords: COVID-19; human resource management; organisational development.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: The authors all work at the study setting and have all been working from home during the study period in varied degrees. The authors have no financial or personal interests in the study results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Cluster rating map with seven clusters. Proximity of clusters on the map indicates how related they are. The height of a cluster signifies its relative importance, with higher clusters (ie, the number of layers) containing statements being rated as more important.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Conceptual model. Pros and cons balancing on the cluster ‘flexibility’.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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