Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
situation where the user spent hours learning to use free program to find out if it is suitable
for his purposes - it was not and the time was wasted.
Fig. 3. The elements impacting the functional fit or misfit of virtual workplaces
4.3 Psychosocial comfort and fit in the virtual workplace of a mobile employee
The discourse concerning the psychosocial fit of virtual places dealt with the concepts of
territoriality, privacy and control (fig. 4).
When the employees described the matters of territoriality, they stressed the importance of
selecting the right virtual communication tools and channels. For example, sending emails
was not the channel for enhancing
belonging
; more nuanced communication channels were
selected and used.
The interviewed subjects described the
virtual teambuilding methods
that enhance
belonging they have used or participated in. For this reason the normal working tools and
applications were used for sharing work divergent matters. For example they shared photos
of leisure time and discussed their holiday plans with live-meeting tools.
The managers of distributed teams expressed the essence to select and use the most suitable
virtual behavior for enhancing the belonging of individuals
.
For example the calls “for no
particular reason” played important role in enhancing employees' feeling of belonging.
According to the interview data, the concept of privacy consisted of three components. The
interviewed described privacy through problems in simultaneous co- and telepresence,
simultaneous use of many virtual communication and collaboration channels
as well as
problems followed from simultaneous use of work and leisure related virtual environments.
The ensemble of the privacy was related to the concept of accessibility: the feeling of fit
arose from the good control over the multidimensional opportunities to access both physical
and virtual worlds.
Simultaneous co- and telepresence enabled simultaneous use of many communication and
collaboration channels. For example, when taking part in a conference call without visual
communication employees tend to do many other duties too, i.e., mute the microphone and
