The qualities of the home-office environment as a key to worker satisfaction in smart working

According to Politecnico di Milano’s Smart Working Observatory, in the emergency phases of the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy, the number of remote workers increased by more than 1000% compared to 2019. This form of work, which entails an overlap between the working and home environments, will become an intrinsic component of the working world’s future, according to the New Normal’s viewpoint. Based on the JD-R model, the physical environment can simultaneously constitute a significant demand or resource that strongly impacts occupational well-being. The study’s objective is to evaluate how the perception of the quality of the domestic work environment can influence satisfaction with one’s own condition in Smart Working (SW). A parallel mediation model using the Perceived Workplace Environmental Quality Indicators (PWEQI) as independent variable, satisfaction as dependent variable, stress, and engagement as mediators, was evaluated involving 464 Italian smart workers. The results show how the perception of good environmental qualities of the work-home environment is crucial to reducing stress, increasing engagement, and consequently satisfaction for the SW; future developments could aim to analyze whether this well-being and job satisfaction also lead to an increase in productivity.