Tensions Between Career Orientations in a Hybrid Work Setting

The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated impacts have fundamentally altered how employees interact with each other, producing widespread changes. Through 52 ethnographic interviews in a single company I identify, how and why the COVID-19 pandemic for some employees has produced new preferences for working from home days, but at the same time for other employees have maintained a traditional preference for working from the corporate office five days a week. This leads to different career orientations, and I show how these differences lead to tensions such as extreme grouping of employees, depopulated office spaces, and lack of knowledge sharing. The new normal of work – hybrid work – both makes different career orientations more salient and requires balancing employees' different preference for working from home or from the corporate office.