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In contrast to prior studies examining burnout in academic employees, this paper explores how academic employee agency mitigates burnout risks in the context of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) and how this agency facilitates research productivity and influences well-being in the face of changes in learning and teaching practices.

The authors use collaborative auto-ethnography (CAE) in the higher education (HE) sector to probe how an employee productivity group supported the group's members during the pandemic.

Thematic analysis revealed four emerging themes: burnout, beneficial habits for research productivity, blocking-out-time and belonging. The authors' findings suggest that by acknowledging and legitimising employee-initiated groups, feelings of neglect can be combatted. Purposeful employee groups have the potential to create a therapeutic, safe space and, in addition to the groups' productivity intent, diminish the negative effects of a crisis on organisational effectiveness.

This paper contributes to the literature by utilising a CAE approach to provide greater insight into how academics enact agency by creating digital research workspaces, attending to the spatial dimensions of well-being especially during turbulent times.

Digital technologies have changed the way we work and live since their advent; they affect individuals, businesses and society, especially the business world. Digital transformation has become a significant concern for all companies now, and it is hard to find a company that has not embarked on a digital transformation project. The main question of our study is to understand the most significant digital transformation challenges companies are facing and how they can overcome these challenges.

The research contains an analytical study of some recent studies on this topic. Findings indicate that technology is not a huge barrier to companies, but digital skills, digital culture and digital strategy are the biggest. Furthermore, we present several practical solutions to overcome these challenges at the end of this research.

In this paper we present a model‐based approach for the development of physical hypermedia applications, i.e. those mobile (Web) applications in which physical and digital objects are related and explored using the hypermedia paradigm. We describe an extension of the Object‐Oriented Hypermedia Design Method (OOHDM) and present an improvement of the popular Model‐View‐Controller (MVC) metaphor to incorporate the concept of located object we illustrate the idea with a framework implementation using Jakarta Struts. We first review the state of the art of this kind of software systems, stressing the need of a systematic design and implementation approach we briefly present a light extension to the OOHDM design approach, incorporating physical objects and “walkable” links. We next present a Web application framework for deploying physical hypermedia software and show an example of use. We evaluate our approach and finally we discuss some further work we are pursuing.

The study aimed at understanding the relationship between supervisor and coworker support, psychological contract fulfillment, work engagement, well-being (different forms) and innovative behavior in the digitized workspace during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Data were collected via a structured questionnaire through Google Docs from 239 respondents working in the sales department of the consumer durable industry through snowball sampling.

Supervisor and coworker support was positively contributing to psychological contract fulfillment. Further, psychological contract fulfillment was positively contributing to work engagement. Along with innovative behavior, four forms of well-being, i.e. emotional, psychological, workspace and life were studied as outcome variables. Work engagement positively contributes to innovative behavior and well-being.

The study examined the relationship between various organizational variables in consumer durable industry. Future work should involve studying the effect in other industries and functional areas.

The study examined how the supervisor and coworker act as an enabler in fulfilling the psychological contract in the digitized workspace. Organizations also understand the importance of work engagement in maintaining well-being and innovative behavior.

The paper initiates the important debate on well-being and innovative behavior in the digitized workspace for the sales employees of the consumer durable industry.

This paper aims to focus on activity-based workplaces, which offer a diversity of typologies and configurations which, instead of being attributed to users, are shared according to the needs of their activities. Indeed, this paper questions the way these activity-based workplaces configure the ways in which individuals and collectives carry out their activity.

To do so, this paper established a two-phase methodology. Three days of observation amid three different units evolving in activity-based workplaces have helped us to identify the uses that emerged from these spatial typologies. Then, a set of two interviews with eight participants have been conducted based on the four dimensions of the situated acceptance model (Bobillier Chaumon, 2013) and on picture elicitation.

The results allow us to understand how activity-based workspaces can be considered as artefacts for the activity that needs to be appropriated to allow the worker to realise his activity.

The results provide an overview of the social and psychological consequences of activity-based workspaces on workers, their work collective and their activity. Thus, the conclusions can be mobilised in activity-based real estate projects, for example, during the design stage.

This research conducted with a situated approach based upon the study of the development of the activity proposes a change from the usual managerial approach about these activity-based workplaces, which prescribe an ideal way of working within the workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to explore educator collaborative inquiry in the shared workspace in professional learning communities (PLCs). Specifically, this investigation was part of an ongoing investigation of well-established PLC collaborative interactions and self-directed learning of educators as part of the shared workspace as a component of school improvement.

A qualitative design was used for this investigation. Participants were purposefully selected to provide qualitative data on existent, well-established PLCs and their practice as educators in the shared workspace. Qualitative data were collected about participant perception. Data were collected from each participant by conducting semi-structured interviews, observations, and the collection of document and artifacts.

Findings from this ongoing investigation point to positive collaborative physical interactions and intellectual discourse that lead to educator learning through the collaborative inquiry process.

Theories on PLCs and educator job-embedded professional learning are unique in this paper. The concepts of PLCs and the collaborative inquiry process have been well developed but not in the context of the shared workspace. Recent literature on effective collaborative inquiry educators undergo in PLCs as a continuing professional development model provides a foundation for the work done in this ongoing case study. Sustained collaboration and continued professional development of teaching innovations as a product of the collaborative inquiry process in the shared workspace are underdeveloped as yet but further developed in this paper.

This chapter explores how cloud-based office productivity suite(s) such as Google Workspace have been used to engage students in their learning while also preparing them for the workplace. Using these types of tools can make group-based in-class activities, assignments and projects highly engaging for a diverse student body while also developing skills valued in the workplace. Practical examples are shared regarding how the tools have been used with accounting and business students in courses such as communications and computing, introduction to business, sustainability and leadership. Some examples include how students can use the tools to collaboratively: provide feedback to a post-secondary institution regarding its orientation activities; complete a PESTLE and SWOT analysis of a business; use Google Forms with mobile phones to record observations of the emotional state of individuals and discuss in relation to emotionally intelligent leadership; and create a sustainability report for a post-secondary institution. The examples provided can be adapted as is or modified to engage learners in nearly any discipline at any education level in a face-to-face classroom or via remote delivery.

States that finding an effective method for helping teams to make better use of time is critical to the delivery of the current policy agenda within the UK National Health Service (NHS). Details the introduction of a communication technology into the work of the NHS, piloted by the Learning Alliance, a virtual team of development staff providing support to over 100 organisations, which hopefully will help solve the problem of time wastage. Concludes that the key to successful technology supported collaboration depends not only on the technology, but also on the organisation’s ability to adopt an entirely new way of working.

Human–robot collaboration (HRC) is on the rise in a bid for improved flexibility in production cells. In the context of overlapping workspace between a human operator and an industrial robot, the major cause for concern rests on the safety of the former.

In light of recent advances and trends, this paper proposes to implement a monitoring system for the shared workspace HRC, which supplements the robot, to locate the human operator and to ensure that at all times a minimum safe distance is respected by the robot with respect to its human partner. The monitoring system consists of four neural networks, namely, an object detector, two neural networks responsible for assessing the detections and a simple, custom speech recognizer.

It was observed that with due consideration of the production cell, it is possible to create excellent data sets which result in promising performances of the neural networks. Each neural network can be further improved by using its mistakes as examples thrown back in the data set. Thus, the whole monitoring system can achieve a reliable performance.

Success of the proposed framework may lead to any industrial robot being suitable for use in HRC.

This paper proposes a system comprising neural networks in most part, and it looks at a digital representation of the workspace from a different angle. The exclusive use of neural networks is seen as an attempt to propose a system which can be relatively easily deployed in industrial settings as neural networks can be fine-tuned for adjustments.

Many mental health clinicians have delivered services digitally in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Emerging research suggests that, despite some initial discomfort, therapists appear to adjust to remote working. The purpose of this study is to explore the views of clinicians working within a fully digital organisation towards digital service provision.

Clinicians (N = 52) providing digital mental health assessments and treatments at Healios anonymously completed a mixed-methods questionnaire.

In all, 85% of participants enjoyed working remotely and 71% thought they would continue to work online over the next 5–10 years. Of the participants, 40% reported low confidence in online work’s efficacy before working remotely, but 96% reported confidence at the time of questionnaire completion: suggesting confidence increased with experience. An exploratory “inverted” factor analysis generated a two-factor solution, grouping clinicians into two factors based on key views. Factor 1 was predominantly characterised by satisfaction with training received and factor 2 by quality of technical experiences (encountering problems less often and greater personal confidence in resolving them). Qualitative feedback described some benefits of, and barriers to, digital service provision. Clinicians reflected on a perceived change in cultural norms, with more openness to digital services following the COVID-19 pandemic. On a personal level, teletherapy was viewed more favourably with increased personal experience.

Clinicians’ confidence in providing services digitally is discussed, with reference to how this may be affected by extent of remote working experience and availability of technical support. Staff well-being within the digital workspace is also discussed.