Why do I prefer working from home and my colleague at the office? : A study on the preference factors of office workers relating to working from home or at the office.

Sammanfattning: The Covid-19 pandemic broadly affected the world together with the phenomena of digitalization, which quickly accelerated during the pandemic. This led to people working more from home (also called WFH or telework) or in a hybrid mix, which has workers reporting different opinions on the preferences for working at home or the office (Alexander et al., 2020). This change meant that managers and companies needed to rethink the structure of the organization and the effect of WFH or hybrid work form, to fit the preferences of the personnel and its productivity. Previous research shows that household characteristics have a significant impact on workplace preference. As Hill et al. (2003) reported that there were blurred lines between work and home life when working from home. The main purpose of this study was to find the factors that lead employees to prefer working from home or the office. This was done through the research question ”What are the factors which lead people to prefer working from home or at the office,  and how do these factors differ between Generation X and millennials?”. This study was done with a deductive approach for the qualitative research and consists of a cross-sectional design with a restrictive time frame. Interviews were conducted with ten participants, including five participants from the generation of millennials born between 1981-1996 and the other five from Generation X born between 1965-1980 (Kagan, 2021). These interviews were semi-structured, followed by a thematic analysis method to analyze the collected qualitative primary data The coded data were analyzed relating to the research question. However, this study was conducted with participants from Svealand, Sweden and it can be disputed whether this sample is large enough and whether this region can represent the whole of Sweden.   Further, the results of this study found that the main factors behind workplace preference, common to both generations, were the organizational factor and job characteristics which includes the support from the organizations in form of equipment, training, digital tools together with the nature of the tasks and the possibility to do them at home. This is significant since earlier research predominately discusses household characteristics and accommodating working-home life balance, which was a weak factor in this study.