Hide and Seek at Work: Scripts and anonymized data

Adoption of remote work has enabled organisations to downsize offices and introduce flexible seating with shared workstations, creating radically different spaces for employees to work and meet. With this study, I examine such spaces in a Danish company using an extensive mixed-methods approach: Through network analysis of 16,000 bookings from a desk-booking app, combined with qualitative data from participant observation and interviews, I explore patterns in employees’ office attendance and their spatial and collegial preferences. I find that flexible offices are shaped by managerial ideals of efficiency and identify two dominant tactics through which employees circumvent prescriptions of space: The first tactic involves hiding through extensive use of remote work, and the second is repeatedly seeking familiar colleagues and preferred places in the office. The study contributes to current debates on flexible work by showing how employees seek autonomy in their everyday working lives through subtle and non-confrontational spatial practices.