Software Companies Responses to Hybrid Working
Dron Khanna, Henry Edison, Anh Nguyen Duc, Kai Kristian Kemell
TL;DR
The paper analyzes how software companies responded to hybrid working prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic by collecting and qualitatively analyzing a large-scale, multilingual survey (N=124 valid responses). It adopts a three-level Paas framework (individual, team, organization) to classify responses as positive or negative and builds a taxonomy of impacts. The findings indicate overall positive effects on work-life balance, geography/time savings, and productivity, with team-level effects more mixed and organizational-level gains tied to cost efficiency and tool use, alongside investments and social interaction challenges. The study highlights the role of digital tools and flexible work arrangements in maintaining productivity while identifying persistent trade-offs, informing policy and tooling investments for software firms navigating post-pandemic work arrangements.
Abstract
COVID 19 pandemic has disrupted the global market and workplace landscape. As a response, hybrid work situations have become popular in the software business sector. This way of working has an impact on software companies. This study investigates software companies responses to hybrid working. We conducted a large scale survey to achieve our objective. Our results are based on a qualitative analysis of 124 valid responses. The main result of our study is a taxonomy of software companies impacts on hybrid working at individual, team and organisation levels. We found higher positive responses at individual and organisational levels than negative responses. At the team level, both positive and negative impacts obtained a uniform number of responses. The results indicate that hybrid working became credible with the wave of COVID 19, with 83 positive responses outweighing the 41 negative responses. Software company respondents witnessed better work-life balance, productivity, and efficiency in hybrid working.