How Much Home Office is Ideal? A Multi-Perspective Algorithm

The COVID pandemic made home office organization a necessity. Even beyond COVID-19, many employees will want to continue working, at least part-time, from home. The home office trend has various advantages and drawbacks from both the employer's and the employee's perspectives. Therefore, determining the ideal proportion of home office work for each employee to balance this potential is important. However, what is the ideal proportion? While research on the organization of home office focused on identifying the jobs, tasks, or activities feasible at home, there is a research gap on how companies can use these categorizations to determine the proportion of home office, which leads to the most efficient work, saves resources and coincide with the preference of each employee. Therefore, this work presents an algorithm that considers multiple perspectives for determining the ideal proportion of home office on individual and company proportions. Three perspectives are taken into account: (i) the employer's point of view, (ii) the demographic and social factors of the employee, and (iii) the preferred proportion of home office from the employee. We combined the findings of several prior studies on the organization of home office and developed an algorithm that serves as a practical approach for determining the proportion of home office and can be used to identify potential discrepancies between the three perspectives.