Page 113 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch

Reconfiguring workplaces
centrality but were able to reconfigure around a different type of center, as we explain hereafter.
Second, the other center that became apparent was around the company’s digital collaborative work tool (CWT). The following quote was a response to how work has changed during the closure, “I don't get that many emails, my work really just revolves around the [CWT]. And that has probably been the most trans-formative thing in the way I've worked.” (P19, employee, low tenure). The employees’ reliance on the CWT for their core and mid-layer relationships increased and substituted for the lack of a shared office. For example, it became common to send someone a private chat message to check whether they were available for a meeting or questions (instead of checking in face-to-face). As one employee put it, “The most frequently asked question is: Where are you?” (P04, employee, medium tenure). However, coworker response rates were more variable digitally because the remote nature of the communication allowed colleagues to disregard their colleagues reaching out when it was inconvenient. One of the middle managers described how the distributed and the co-located context differed when one needed to reach a colleague:
"If you send people a ping [instant message], it's just one of the numerous notifications that you see. And then you read it, and maybe you get an answer, or it's just put aside. Versus that you just ask someone, and you are standing next to them, and you can immediately show them. That's so much faster, more direct, and actually a better experience for both parties. So that is a crucial difference." (P22, employee, low tenure)
Upon return to their new shared office, this new way of checking colleague’s availability continued (next to taking up old ways again). Thus, employees coped with the change to their workplace configurations by shifting towards new centers. While we presented the centers separately for analytical reasons, it is important to realize that the two types of centers often existed simultaneously, thereby making the workplace configurations polycentric. Also, the workplace configurations became more diverse
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