How Will We Work in the Future? New BTH Research Seeks Answers

More days in the office or continued flexibility? As companies take different approaches to the future of work, clear answers about what works best remain elusive. In the new research initiative WorkFlex+, researchers at BTH, together with several major companies, will investigate how work can be organised to support sustainability, innovation and competitiveness.

How and where we work have changed rapidly in recent years. Hybrid work has become commonplace in many organisations, while several major companies are now introducing stricter requirements for office attendance. At the same time, artificial intelligence is transforming both work tasks and the conditions for how people work and collaborate.

But which path should organisations take? This is one of the questions at the heart of WorkFlex+ at BTH. Rather than searching for a single work model that suits everyone, the researchers will investigate what works, for whom and under what circumstances.

“The debate often gets stuck on the question of how many days we should work from home or in the office. But the real question is much broader than that. What matters is understanding what we need to accomplish together when we are in the office, and which tasks actually work better elsewhere. With WorkFlex+, we want to help organisations move away from general rules towards more thoughtful ways of organising work,” says Darja Šmite, Professor of Software Engineering and project leader.

Research in collaboration with industry
WorkFlex+ is an interdisciplinary research initiative bringing together researchers in software engineering and management. The research is being conducted in close collaboration with Ericsson, Telenor, NKT, Sony, Storebrand, Consid and CodeScene.

The researchers will follow and compare organisations that have chosen different ways of organising their work. The focus is not only on where people work but also on how working practices, leadership, governance, and the work environment collectively affect productivity, innovation, collaboration, well-being, and long-term competitiveness.

Conditions can vary considerably between organisations, but also between different teams, tasks and periods. A way of working that is well-suited to focused individual work, for example, may not be the best approach for onboarding, knowledge sharing or innovation. An important part of the research will therefore be to understand these differences and the trade-offs organisations need to make.

AI is changing the landscape
Developments in artificial intelligence make the issue even more relevant. AI can help individual employees perform certain tasks much faster and more independently. But an organisation’s long-term success is not determined solely by how efficiently each individual works.

Companies also need to be able to share knowledge, develop new ideas, learn from one another and adapt as circumstances change. As AI enables individuals to work more independently, it becomes even more important to understand how organisations can preserve and develop their collective capabilities.

“AI is changing not only what we do, but also why we need each other. As more tasks can be completed individually with the support of AI, we need to rethink what we actually need to do together and when there is value in meeting in person. This places entirely new demands on how we organise work,” says Darja Šmite.

From opinions to research-based decisions
The question of office work, remote work and flexibility generates strong opinions. But for organisations, these decisions involve much more than where employees spend their working day. They affect the ability to recruit and retain talent, build effective teams, share knowledge, foster innovation and achieve organisational goals.

WorkFlex+ will therefore develop research-based knowledge to provide companies with a stronger foundation for making well-informed decisions, rather than relying on assumptions or short-term trends.

As digitalisation, AI and changing expectations continue to shape working life, the question is therefore not simply where we should work, but how work should be designed to enable people, teams and organisations to develop and perform sustainably over time.

The project is funded by the Knowledge Foundation (KK-stiftelsen).