The inclusive potential of activity-based working: The case of disability

Abstract

Organisations are increasingly adopting activity-based working, replacing assigned desks and private offices with open, shared workspaces while shifting some tasks to employees’ homes. Management promotes these changes through explicit ‘efficiency-gain claims’ and subtler promises of flexibility and de-hierarchisation, thus making an implicit ‘inclusion-gain claim’. Drawing on 35 interviews, this study challenges the inclusion-gain assumption by examining activity-based working through the lens of visibility. The case of disabled workers reveals how the nature of disability and impairments complicate visibility in diverse and often ambiguous ways. Our findings show that while perceptions of diversity have increased with activity-based working, meaningful inclusion relies on universal flexibility and higher accessibility standards. Yet, disabled workers’ exclusion from the design phase resulted in retrofitting and exceptional territoriality, threatening inclusion. We contribute to the flexibility–visibility debate by showing that flexible organisational spaces not only influence the visibility of employees in terms of work recognition through spatial dispersion but also shape the visibility of embodied differences through spatial othering. Finally, this study reconceives disabled individuals and their allies not as passive users but as active re-designers of ableist workspaces, redefining visibility as a socially constructed, contested process shaped by the spatial and organisational structures of work.

Keywords

activity-based working disability diversity inclusion new ways of working telework visibility

Introduction

Following the growing demand for more flexible workplaces, several workspace innovations have emerged, demarcating a new trend among organisations that rely on knowledge-based work (Sivunen and Putnam, 2020). Some examples are co-working spaces, hot desking (i.e. a system where employees can use any desk rather than having their own), and the more recent phenomenon of workations (i.e. working while travelling). One innovation that has proved to be particularly popular over the last years is activity-based working, which entails a combination of an activity-based office design and telework that allows people to choose their own work location in accordance with their work activities: the home office to concentrate on complex, individual tasks, the gas station café to optimise time in between client visits, the hot desking area on-site for day-to-day tasks, the closed soundproof office pod to make confidential phone calls, the library space to quietly finish a file, the lounge to meet and socialise, and the whiteboard-equipped standing desk to brainstorm with the team.

This way of working marks an important behavioural shift for both managers and employees, from occupying fixed private offices or cubicles to constantly alternating between different shared office spaces (Kingma, 2019). This shift is believed to decrease facility costs with desk-to-person ratios below one, and increase collaboration and productivity, enhancing overall efficiency. Yet, recent research associates workspace innovations characterised by flexibility, such as activity-based offices and hot desking, with efficiency threats, such as a decreased quality of workplace relationships (Haapakangas et al., 2019; Taskin et al., 2019).

A subtler but important aspect of these new workspaces is that they offer an underlying promise of inclusivity, reasoning that they would foster greater equality among workers by accommodating diverse needs and flattening hierarchies, thus making an inclusion-gain claim. One way this plays out is through enhanced flexibility in how and when employees schedule their work (Kingma, 2019). This flexibility enables workers to better accommodate their individual needs, fostering a greater sense of autonomy (Gaudiino et al., 2023), which may be particularly beneficial for individuals with high flexibility demands (Knappert et al., 2025). Another way is through arguments of de-hierarchisation, as these new workspaces provide a spatial arrangement that is (arguably) equally accessible to all employees without hierarchical distinctions (Aroles et al., 2019; de Vaujany et al., 2021; Picard et al., 2021), thus reinforcing the promise of an ‘inclusion gain’. Still, to date, there is little evidence to sustain such a claim, and we do not know whether such workspace innovations benefit minoritised workers equally. Some studies on hot desking and shared open spaces cast doubt, showing how minoritised workers are made to feel uncomfortable by being objectified, overwhelmed, or grouped together with other minoritised members in spaces designed with (majority) others in mind (Hirst and Schwabenland, 2018; Holck, 2016; Knappert et al., 2025; Nash, 2024).

To problematise the ‘inclusion-gain’ assumption of a specific workspace innovation, that is, activity-based working, this paper uses a lens of visibility. In this context, we define visibility as the socially constructed process by which workers become seen and unseen depending on how work is organised and spatially embedded within the workplace. These processes emerge from the presence or absence of voice and shape how individuals are perceived as either conforming to or diverging from the dominant norms of bodies, behaviours, and identities (Simpson and Lewis, 2005). Scholars have developed typologies of deep- and surface-level visibility to assess the extent to which visibility can be harmful to minoritised workers (Simpson and Lewis, 2005). They have also introduced a range of concepts to describe its adverse consequences, including hypervisibility, self-invisibilising, and blind policies (Räber, 2023; Settles et al., 2019). Importantly, invisibility also equals power, as dominant groups enjoy the privilege of disappearing against organisational backdrops designed to suit their needs (Acker, 1990). Rather than being opposite or mutually exclusive, being seen and unseen collide in the workplace, creating complex outcomes for workers with positive and negative effects on their well-being and career advancement (Settles et al., 2019; Simpson and Lewis, 2005).

Although visibility is a potential concern for all employees, those whose bodyminds more easily solicit the (unwanted) gaze of others may feel the effect more acutely, as is the case for disabled¹ workers (Jammaers and Ybema, 2023). Bodymind is a term used to stress how disabilities not only manifest visibly in people’s impaired bodies, but can also manifest visibly through the embodiment of people’s minds, as ‘[mental] disabilities are not exactly “visible” or “invisible,” but intermittently apparent’ (Price, 2015, p. 271). Because disabilities include a range of conditions that manifest in many ways within a spectrum of visibility (e.g. from predominantly invisible mental and cognitive conditions to clearly visible physical ones), the case of disability adds another layer of complexity to the visibility lens. Visibilisation processes not only make impairments more visible (e.g. a missing limb) but also make the disabilities themselves more visible (e.g. the inability to move freely in spaces with a wheelchair due to socially constructed barriers). For this reason, we use the case of disability to problematise the inclusion-gain assumption of activity-based working, drawing on a lens of visibility.

To achieve this aim, this study asks three questions: (1) how is disability visibilised in activity-based working?, (2) how does visibilisation affect inclusion? and (3) what agency do disabled people have in this process? It draws on interviews in six private multinational organisations at various stages of implementing activity-based working. Twelve interviews were conducted with disabled employees, while 23 were conducted with employees and managers who work closely with them, as well as project leaders. Our contributions are twofold. First, this study contributes to the flexibility–visibility debate (Sewell and Taskin, 2015; Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2021), highlighting that employees do not enjoy the same opportunities to be seen for their work contributions while remaining unseen for their embodied differences and, by extension, heard in this setting. Second, it contributes to debates on the visibility of minoritised groups in organisations (Simpson and Lewis, 2005) by showing how voice both precedes and is a consequence of visibility, extending the agentic dimension of the visibility framework which has until now underscored the power of resistance from minoritised individuals and their allies at work.

Inclusion in new workspaces

Workspace innovations such as co-working spaces, workations, or activity-based offices promise to reduce facility costs through hybrid work, while promoting freedom, flexibility, and collaboration to enhance employee engagement, well-being, and productivity (Kingma, 2019; Sivunen and Myers, 2022). Alongside these overt efficiency-gain claims, we argue that an (underassessed) assumption of their ‘inclusive potential’ also lingers within the theory and practices of these new workspace innovations. While not the primary motivation of these new workspaces, they entail a subtle inclusion-gain claim, which is noticeable through two distinct sets of arguments. First, by offering extensive flexibility on how and where to work, these workspace innovations offer the potential to better accommodate individual differences and work preferences (Kingma, 2019), thereby helping to reduce inequalities, especially for people with high flexibility needs (e.g. parents, elderly caregivers, young people with hobbies) (Knappert et al., 2025). Second, in such workspaces, hierarchical spatial arrangements such as corner offices are made redundant, and workers can ‘freely choose where to sit, regardless of hierarchical boundaries’ (Picard et al., 2021; p. 11), making it common for high-level managers to sit next to entry-level workers. This is intended to elicit a sense of de-hierarchisation at work (Aroles et al., 2019; de Vaujany et al., 2021), shifting from a logic of formal hierarchies to a logic foregrounded in ‘equivalence’ (Kingma, 2019).

Studies have begun to nuance the efficiency-gain claims, calling out the negative impact of workspaces designed around flexibility, including poor quality of workplace relationships (Irving et al., 2020; Taskin et al., 2019), mixed results in employees’ sense of belonging (Gao et al., 2021; Haapakangas et al., 2019), as well as the risk of having one’s work contributions overlooked, negatively affecting career advancement (Ajzen and Taskin, 2021). Another example is the persistence of status differences that are reported despite the abolishment of status-based territorial distinctions in space (Kingma, 2019; Sivunen and Myers, 2022). Some additional studies featuring minoritised workers have also begun to problematise the inclusion-gain claim, although these investigations remain dispersed. One study, for instance, found that women working from home often lost the battle over who occupied the comfortable home office space rather than the kitchen-table desk, thereby negatively affecting gender equality (Waismel-Manor et al., 2021). Another study describes how women, who typically benefit from the flexibility in time and work location after childbirth (Chung and Van Der Horst, 2018) and from the reduction of gender-segregated workspaces (Sargent et al., 2021), actually felt more stared at (Morrison and Smollan, 2020) and scrutinised on the basis of attractiveness (Hirst and Schwabenland, 2018) in the open office environments that often accompany activity-based working. In the latter study, bodily functions such as crying and using the toilet also became more visible in the workspace, prompting women to put more effort into keeping them private.

Inclusion is also espoused as an important value in the co-working spaces examined by Knappert et al. (2025), yet minoritised workers were almost nowhere to be found. Still, co-workers continuously denied existing inequalities and legitimised segregation. Lastly, in an ethnographic study of a municipal centre, Holck (2016) found that although hot desking is intended to encourage employees to sit at different desks, employees with the same ethnic background tended to sit close to each other. This trend created an ethnic zoning in the office, where groups of people marked by their ethnicity occupied delimited spaces and had their own behavioural norms, which reinforced an inequality culture in the organisation.

A few studies further problematise the inclusion-gain claim, specifically for disabled workers in new workspaces. Nash (2024), for instance, highlighted the challenges that neurodivergent employees face in shared workspaces, as noise and constant interactions are burdensome, and they often must ‘put on a mask’ to fit in the workplace’s social norms. A study by Jammaers (2023) about guide dogs and their visually- or mobility-impaired ‘owners’ showed how diverse types of office spaces led to diverse ways of including and excluding the pairs. In one activity-based office, clear zones were demarcated, and spatial restrictions were imposed on the pair, undermining full inclusion. Finally, some studies show that while telework facilitates disabled people’s work experiences by accommodating impairment-related needs and avoiding struggles with commuting (Hoque and Bacon, 2021; Schur et al., 2020), it may also contribute to their isolation and, thus, exclusion (Klinksiek et al., 2023).

Overall, literature on how minoritised groups experience flexible workspaces remains limited. Existing studies suggest that such workspaces can perpetuate inequalities, thereby problematising the persistent inclusion-gain assumption. The few studies on disabled people’s experiences with new workspaces designed around principles of flexibility suggest that further research is needed to understand the complexity of workspaces built on ableist foundations (i.e. assuming able-bodiedness). Hence, in this paper, we contribute to the debate on the inclusive potential of such workspaces by analysing how they influence the visibility of minoritised groups, in this case, disabled people. We argue that visibility is a rich lens to analyse activity-based working arrangements because of the wide variety of spaces where work is performed, increasing the opportunities to be seen or heard (Hirst and Schwabenland, 2018; Taskin et al., 2019).

Varieties of visibility

In general, workers benefit from ‘being seen’ in the workplace when this signifies that their colleagues regard and recognise them for their contributions to the organisation (Settles et al., 2019; Sewell and Taskin, 2015). There is a clear connection between this type of ‘becoming seen’ and common definitions of inclusion that stress the satisfaction of a person’s ‘needs for belongingness and uniqueness’ (Shore et al., 2011: 1265–1266) and equate it to the feeling of being ‘safe, heard, engaged, fully present, authentic, valued, and respected, both as individuals and as members of multiple identity groups’ (Ferdman, 2017; Janssens and Steyaert, 2020: 1146). Critical scholars have extended the lexicon with a variety of ways of being seen, which we categorise here into surface- and deep-level ways of being seen, building on and extending Simpson and Lewis’ (2005) framework.

Surface-level visibility

Surface-level visibility refers to the numerical imbalance of minoritised group members and the visibility they are allocated when they become one of the few representatives of their underrepresented social group in a specific setting (Simpson and Lewis, 2005). Several studies have alluded to the negative consequences that result from being highly visible at the surface level, which has resulted in a plethora of related terms. For instance, Benschop and Doorewaard (1998) highlighted how the few women in highly powerful positions in the banking organisation they studied were used as ‘showpieces’ by management to demonstrate there was no issue with gender diversity. Yet, being put on a pedestal to perform these shiny high-level roles also meant the women managers were scrutinised more intensely for small ‘mistakes’. This phenomenon is also known as hypervisibility. Several empirical studies have replicated how hypervisibility leads minoritised employees to be more susceptible to adverse reactions compared to those who can blend in more easily (Nash and Moore, 2022; Settles et al., 2019). Hypervisible employees experience both a sense of having to prove themselves harder than the majority members and a sense of representing an entire group of minorities (Kim et al., 2019). For instance, Settles et al. (2019) found that faculty members of colour responded to their experiences of hypervisibility by attempting to hold high-performance standards. Similarly, women stand-up comedians felt they carried the burden of proving that an entire group of women was unrightfully misperceived as not funny (Jammaers et al., 2024).

Paradoxically, hypervisibility for minoritised employees also comes to signify social invisibility, as people are perceived through distorted notions and assumptions associated with the social group to which they belong, making them visible only as members of their socio-demographic group, while their unique selves and contributions are downplayed (Buchanan and Settles, 2019; Nash and Moore, 2022; Owen, 2023; Räber, 2023). The lack of social recognition beyond superficial identity traits results in a feeling of being silenced by the dominant norm (Räber, 2023). Given the negative consequences of hypervisibility and social invisibility, minoritised group members may attempt to mask or self-invisibilise their status by assimilating into dominant norms and expectations to avoid discrimination and gain acceptance (Follmer et al., 2020; Räber, 2023). Gay men may invisibilise parts of their identity in masculine, heteronormative workplaces (Rumens and Broomfield, 2012), religious workers may practise their religion in the workplace only invisibly (Van Laer and Essers, 2023), and women in male-dominated fields may dress in a masculine way (Van Den Brink and Stobbe, 2009). In sum, surface-level visibility makes employees seen as belonging to their social group, which subjects them to judgments based on attributes associated with that group rather than on their unique individual characteristics (Owen, 2023; Räber, 2023; Simpson and Lewis, 2005).

Deep-level visibility

Deep-level visibility refers to the invisibility that majority group members enjoy because they represent the normative standard. This echoes ideas of an ‘ideal worker’, who is often a white, male, and non-disabled worker, free from care duties and fully available for work without constraints (Acker, 1990), thus enjoying the privilege of working in spaces designed for him, leading to a (false) belief of ‘disembodied normativity’, or neutrality. Invisibility ultimately signifies power (Simpson and Lewis, 2005). Typical markers of difference are race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Employees marked by ‘negative’ differences then become seen as deviant from the norm and are denied the privilege of being invisible to scrutiny and questioning. For instance, the ‘wasted’ energy neurodivergent employees must expend dealing with sensory overload on public transport or in landscape offices designed according to neurotypical standards leaves them tired even before the working day begins, and often goes unnoticed by others (Klinksiek et al., 2023; Praslova, 2024). Still, some organisations deliberately choose to ignore differences by claiming that ‘differences do not matter here’, and then use this stance to their advantage, presenting it as a socially just commitment to meritocracy. Yet, such (e.g. gender- or colour-) blind policies have been criticised for denying systemic forms of oppression, such as microaggressions and racial bias (Kim et al., 2019; McCluney and Rabelo, 2019). Similarly, ignoring how women carry greater responsibility in the private domain perpetuates existing gender disparities and helps sustain inequality in organisations (Acker, 1990; Dovidio et al., 2015).

Contrary to popular definitions of inclusion, being invisible can thus signify power. In their framework, Simpson and Lewis (2005) clarify how voice comes before visibility, with visibility being a consequence of (lack of) voice. Visibility, as such, is the result of gendered, racialised, heteronormative, or ableist structuring of organisations and the numerical disadvantage of minority members in the organisation where they work. Overall, the process of visibilisation entails complex dynamics at the deep and surface levels, where discourse and socially learned habits and dispositions serve to make minorities visible against an invisible dominant norm. Apart from clear signs of visibility, we, as scholars, need to pay attention to ‘the power of invisibility that accompanies the norm’ (p. 1259), where being a part of the dominant group not only grants the power to establish the culture but also grants the power to ‘critically assess the behaviour and performance of the minority’ (Simpson and Lewis, 2005: 1259).

Drawing on the aforementioned studies that allude to how varieties of visibility more often than not threaten the inclusion of minoritised groups, this article aims to use the case of disability and draw on a visibility lens to problematise the ‘inclusion-gain’ assumption of activity-based working. Although new workspace arrangements, such as activity-based working, promise flexibility and de-hierarchisation and thus claim an ‘inclusion gain’, we know little about how this way of working impacts the inclusion of minoritised groups and about the agency people who are deemed different have in this process. We argue that minoritised employees, such as disabled and neurodivergent employees, are not passive recipients of spaces that are designed by non-disabled professionals and from which they are often – but not always – excluded. Figure 1 presents a summary matrix of key dimensions and conceptualisations of visibility in past research. Their location on the axes indicates whether they relate to making an individual visible for their embodied differences or for their contributions at work, and to which group – minority or majority – they are most relevant.

Figure 1.

Mapping ‘varieties of visibility’ in past research.

Methods

Research context: Activity-based working and disability

This paper intends to problematise the ‘inclusion-gain’ assumption of activity-based working by analysing (1) how activity-based working visibilises disability, (2) how this visibilisation process affects inclusion, and (3) the agency that disabled people have in this process. Activity-based working is centred on the idea of placing individuals in locations where they can perform their work activities most efficiently, whether in an on-site designated office space (e.g. from enclosed, small rooms, such as silent pods, to open, shared spaces), or in the home office (Kingma, 2019). As they move from one space to another, workers are expected to flexibly self-organise, interact, change spaces, and self-isolate for concentration. Such behaviour is enabled through the latest information and communication technologies (e.g. laptops instead of desktops; hybrid meeting setups), ensuring that employees can swiftly exchange crucial information, inside and outside the office (Sivunen and Putnam, 2020). Disability offers a compelling case of visibility in this context, as it covers a spectrum including both highly visible (e.g. wheelchair users) and mostly invisible (e.g. fibromyalgia) conditions. This enables a more nuanced understanding of visibilisation processes by allowing for an analysis of the conditions under which individuals’ differences are visible, invisible, or situationally disclosed, depending on the context, the individual, and workplace structures.

Design of the study

To empirically investigate disability in activity-based working spaces, we draw on multiple-stakeholder interviews from six private-sector organisations in the knowledge economy that employ disabled people. Although obtaining research collaboration is more challenging in this context (Restubog et al., 2021), private-sector organisations in the knowledge economy are particularly interesting, as they tend to be motivated to engage in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives for business reasons, such as to attract talent and customers, in addition to moral or legal incentives that also affect the public sector (Bend and Priola, 2021; Richard and Hennekam, 2021). Lastly, by using multiple-stakeholder interviews, it was possible to locate disability within a socio-relational model that attributes responsibility for disabling and enabling workers with impairments to the environment, while remaining attentive to the lived realities of different bodyminds (Thomas, 2004).

The process of data collection started in the fall of 2021 by composing a list of 17 organisations that met the criteria of operating in the private sector, having implemented activity-based working on their premises or being in the process of implementation, and employing disabled people at those premises. The authors contacted the organisations either through personal ties to (HR) managers who worked in those organisations or through general contact information available on their websites. Some of the contacted organisations responded that ‘they did not employ any disabled people at the moment’, while many others simply did not respond. Six organisations accepted to participate in the study. Five were located in Belgium, and a sixth organisation referred us to their French² division, where ‘more disabled people were employed’. All but one of these companies were profit-driven. Although the organisations differed mostly in size and sector, the focus here lies on what they had in common: having an active DEI policy and a recently implemented activity-based working regime. The organisations are described in Table 1.

Table 1.

Description of the organisations.

Sector of the case (and employees)	Activity-based working information			DEI information
Sector of the case (and employees)	Year (and stage of implementation)	Desk-to-person ratio and obligatory on-site presence	Type of spaces on-site	Staff dedicated to DEI	Formal policies	Focus on disability
BankCo Finance (18,000)	2018 (fully)	0.5 desk-to-person ratio and 50% obligatory on-site days per month	Co-working zones, silent pods, collaboration areas, conviviality and informal interaction zones, and meeting rooms.	8 FTE	✓	Yes, includes disability networks, collaboration with a disability organisation, and digital accessibility attention.
PharmaCo Chemicals (3,700)	2021 (ongoing)	0.5 desk-to-person ratio and 1 day a week obligatory on-site day	Hot desking, collaborative zones, focus zones, semi-concentration zones, laboratory rooms.	1 FTE	✓	Yes, includes disability networks, monitoring, and a disability support unit.
InsurCo Insurance (3,000)	2015 (fully)	0.6 desk-to-person ratio and 4 obligatory on-site days per month	Hot desking, interaction zones, quiet zones, semi-concentration zones, meeting rooms, silent bubbles.	1 FTE	✓	Yes, includes collaboration with a disability organisation and monitoring.
TechCo Research, innovation and technology (3,000)	2019 (ongoing and partial)	0.6 desk-to-person ratio and 1 day a week obligatory on-site for non-laboratory workers.	Open desk zones, silent focus areas, closed collaboration areas, meeting rooms, and clean rooms.	0.5 FTE	✓	Limited, includes collaboration with a disability organisation.
TEL Co Telecommunications (1,300)	2018 (fully)	0.7 desk-to-person ratio and 40% obligatory on-site days per week.	Open desk spaces, collaboration spaces, focus areas, and informal interaction zones.	0.5 FTE	✓	Limited, includes collaboration with a disability organisation.
SoftCo Software development (200)	2000 (fully)	Desk-to-person ratio not specified, and 2 obligatory on-site days per week.	Hot desking, formal meeting rooms, creativity rooms, leisure rooms, and informal interaction zones.	0.3 FTE		No.

To get to know the organisations beforehand, a total of 62 documents were collected, including videos, press releases, reports, and website content that offered information about the activity-based working project and DEI in these organisations. To familiarise ourselves with the studied spaces in these organisations, we also collected pictures of their office premises from publicly available websites or pictures spontaneously shared by participants. A couple of these pictures are presented in the findings section as anonymised images to facilitate the readers’ visualisation of diverse types of spaces. The primary data collected through interviews were, however, the main data source for this study. The first author had an initial interview with the contact person who worked in the HR department and was responsible for either the activity-based working project or DEI. Then, interviews were set up with the additional respondent categories. To abide by GDPR regulations, the contact person requested authorisation from potential participants prior to sending their contact details to the first author. This resulted in a total of 35 semi-structured interviews, including eleven employees who identified as disabled persons, six employees who worked closely with disabled employees, six supervisors of disabled employees, and 12 project leaders responsible for DEI and/or activity-based working initiatives (see Table 2 for an overview). We distributed the interviewees evenly across the six organisations and assigned them pseudonyms to preserve their anonymity.

Table 2.

Overview of pseudonymised interviewees.

Organisation	Pseudonym	Gender	Category
BankCo	Théo	M	ABW project
	Claudia	F	HR
	Sabrine	F	DEI
	Marta	F	Supervisor
	Louis	M	Colleague, DEI
	Luc	M	Employee with visual impairment
	Elsa	F	Employee with autoimmune disease
	Nadia	F	Employee with hearing impairment
	Peter	M	Employee with visual impairment
PharmaCo	Julia	F	ABW project
	Monique	F	DEI
	Yannick	M	Supervisor
	Mark	M	Colleague
	Marianne	F	Colleague, employee with a hearing disability
	Richard	M	Employee with motor and mobility impairment
InsurCo	Paul	M	ABW project
	Roger	M	DEI
	Hendrik	M	Supervisor
	Anna	F	Colleague
	Jan	M	Autistic employee
	Carla	F	Employee with ADHD
TechCo	Laetitia	F	DEI, ABW project
	Jordi	M	Supervisor
	Eef	F	Supervisor
	Jana	F	Colleague
	Samuel	M	Employee with Parkinson’s disease
TEL Co	Marloes	F	DEI, ABW project
	Claire	F	Colleague
	Julian	M	Employee with cerebral palsy
	Simon	M	Employee with multiple sclerosis
SoftCo	Louise	F	ABW project
	Josh	M	DEI
	Robert	M	Supervisor
	Daniel	M	Colleague
	George	M	Employee with a mobility impairment

To further guarantee the anonymity of participants and foster trust in the research, the interviewer stressed to the contact person that the colleague, supervisor, and disabled employee would not have to belong to the same team. While this internal selection of potential interviewees constitutes a limitation, as it may lead researchers to interview staff members who are in favour of and informed about organisational policies, the answers provided by the interviewees show that they remained able to critically reflect on the lack of support or implementation failures. We used three different semi-structured interview guides. For staff responsible for the activity-based working and/or DEI, the key themes included the ‘new ways of working’, employer expectations, and diversity and inclusion. For supervisors and colleagues of disabled employees, themes covered the ‘new ways of working’, working with someone with a disability, disability in the ‘new ways of working’, and diversity and inclusion. Finally, for disabled employees, themes focused on flexibility, space, social relationships at work, and management style in the ‘new ways of working’. Example questions included ‘How does your disability influence the way you use the office spaces?’ and ‘How is working from home different from working in the office?’.

Data analysis

The authors conducted the interviews in either French, English, or Dutch and collected most of the data over a 25-month period that ended in December 2023 (except for one interview collected in 2024), illustrating the difficulties encountered in accessing the field. The interviews lasted between 38 and 89 minutes and were transcribed verbatim. The data analysis followed a classical approach of data reduction (i.e. the process of selecting, coding and categorising data), data display (i.e. presenting the data by building tables and selecting quotes), and drawing conclusions based on patterns in the data (Miles and Huberman, 1994). We used NVIVO14 to systematically conduct the coding process. In the first phase of open coding, the authors assigned codes to fragments of text, remaining close to the literal meaning of the text. In the second phase of axial coding, we compared the codes, merged and split them, building higher-order codes and themes, and carving out a framework of relations between them (Gioia et al., 2013). In the final phase, selective coding was used to zoom in on coding categories that were more directly relevant to processes of visibility, keeping in mind the first and second research questions: ‘how is disability visibilised in activity-based working?’ and ‘how does this visibilisation process affect inclusion?’. Five coding categories gathering a total of 217 fragments were analysed with special attention: (1) display of diverse bodyminds (66 mentions), (2) exceptional territoriality (52 mentions), (3) universal flexibility (56 mentions), (4) individualisation of self-care and health issues (24 mentions), (5) accessibility standards in newly built (physical and digital) spaces (19 mentions). Finally, in a last reflexive round, the authors discussed the levels of agency and choice disabled employees had in the visibilisation of their differences, keeping in mind the third research question: ‘what agency do disabled people have in this process?’. Our data structure is presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Data structure.

Inclusion through visibilisation in activity-based working

We outline here how the duality of working both regularly from home and from the activity-based office³ intersects with the surface-level and deep-level visibilisation of differences, and what this means for perceptions of diversity and inclusion. Figure 3 offers a schematic overview of this complexity. We display five different processes that carry different potentialities for surface- and deep-level visibility and hence for inclusion, which may be simultaneously experienced by the same individual within a single working week. Ahead, we outline each of the five processes and consider what agency disabled people and their allies have in these processes.

Figure 3.

Mapping the process of visibility in activity-based working.

Individualisation of health issues

The possibility to work from home in the activity-based working regime gave disabled employees a variety of possibilities for reducing surface-level visibility. For instance, impairments and their effects became invisible to colleagues when disabled people worked from home. While technology-mediated interactions allowed employees greater control over working hours by allowing them to work asynchronously with colleagues, they also enabled greater control over the visibility of their bodyminds and behaviours. Assistive devices, such as wheelchairs or braille readers, and (self-)care work, such as taking breaks and administering medication, could remain more easily hidden when working from home. As such, health issues became more individualised, as disabled and neurodivergent employees had more control over hiding them, as ‘when you only see them on the screen, you can’t really tell that a person has disabilities’, concluding ‘there’s no distinction’ when working from home (Mark, colleague, PharmaCo). At home, employees had more ‘freedom’ to attend to their impairment-related needs, unlike in the office space, where people could not simply ‘put a bed in the back of my office’ and ‘take a nap for an hour’ (Samuel, employee with Parkinson’s, TechCo). Working from home, therefore, brought ‘relaxation’, ‘the ability to just carry on working uninterrupted without having to wear hearing aids’ (Nadia, employee with hearing impairment, BankCo), and was recognised by supervisors as a way for their disabled employees to ‘use that [teleworking] day, I imagine, to decompress’ (Eef, supervisor, TechCo). Yet, the invisibilisation was never complete and supervisors could still spot when something was off during video calls, like Jordi (supervisor, TechCo), who noticed his employee ‘looked really unwell, yet is so motivated and driven that she wants to be part of everything’.

The move to activity-based working also meant that employees had fewer opportunities for sustained, long-term caring interaction with the same colleague, which could function as an informal support system. The hot desking regime and the way spaces were now arranged, together with frequent working from home, meant that prior deep bonds forged in assigned, fixed desk areas were replaced with more superficial small talk. However, for disabled people, such continuous caring interactions with colleagues were important aspects of workplace well-being and of being ‘seen’ in a holistic way. Consider the following example:

This person I worked with in the past was sitting on the same team and she had a visual impairment. [. . .] I think in the beginning it was difficult, but because she did not immediately make her disability explicit to us. [. . .] But then after a few weeks, she was opening up and she was talking about it. [. . .] We used to have regular discussions at the desk at that time. We did not have the Smart Workplace yet. So, we had a big desk, and I was sitting opposite her and had a lot of informal chats. (Jana, colleague, TechCo)

Hence, apart from the individualisation of health issues through working from home, the new constellation of shared desks at TechCo also meant people would be less likely to share health concerns with changing, neighbouring colleagues, further contributing to this individualisation when working in non-home office spaces.

Finally, rather than passively undergoing the individualisation of health issues that came with working more frequently at home, some disabled interviewees described how they flexibly chose when and to whom to disclose medical information, even if they were no longer formally required to do so. Consider the following examples:

I’m quite free to come in or leave the office, early or late. I choose whether I want to inform my manager of the fact that “okay, sorry, this day, I have a physiotherapy appointment” or not. And when I’m teleworking, then I may adjust my schedule even more flexibly, if I desire so. (Simon, employee with multiple sclerosis, TEL Co)

I won’t hide it when I must go to the rheumatologist, I put it in my open calendar. And then when I get back, my manager will sometimes say, “Oh I saw you went for a consultation, how was it, you okay? Any progress made?” I really appreciate him doing this. (Elsa, employee with autoimmune disease, BankCo)

As the examples show, employees could ‘play with’ the disclosure of medical details at their discretion, thus actively visibilising their disabilities, whenever they deemed this favourable.

Displaying diverse bodyminds

The office spaces characteristic of activity-based working entailed major spatial and behavioural changes, which increased surface-level visibility when on-site and enhanced ideas of being a ‘diverse’ company in terms of numerical representation. In all the organisations studied, office spaces had open areas where people worked or relaxed in the presence of other employees. Individuals became highly mobile, as the office’s spatial arrangement and hot desking regime encouraged them to occupy different spaces, depending on their activities. This made the bodyminds of disabled employees as well as their assistive devices more noticeable to others. For instance, interviewees often brought up the high visibility of wheelchair users in their workplace, and were now able to give an immediate and accurate count of ‘two employees in wheelchairs working here’ (Josh, DEI, SoftCo) as they were seen by everyone using the multiple common spaces that the office had to offer, such as shared collaborative workspaces and socialisation and leisure areas. Consider the following quote:

Before, [my colleague who is a wheelchair user] was inside an office room, in a corner. So, people weren’t really aware that on the floor where they worked, there was a disabled colleague. The simple fact of being in a common space where there are no walls, there’s nothing, makes the person visible. (Mark, colleague, PharmaCo)

For Nadia (employee with hearing impairment, BankCo), who could not help talking ‘louder than average’ because of her hearing impairment, her difference was negatively highlighted by the large landscape office. She recalls how colleagues have repeatedly had to remind her ‘through signing’, ‘to lower my voice’ when taking short calls, which she recalls being ‘really, really rough to digest, embarrassing really’.

In the activity-based working arrangement, employees had more possibilities to interact with people outside their team. The new spatial arrangements and hot desking regimes facilitated encounters across teams and with former colleagues, increasing expectations and opportunities for social interaction. Peter (employee with visual impairment, BankCo), for instance, explained how when he moved to a new prestigious building, there was ‘a mix-up of [. . .] different teams’, ‘you meet again people from certain teams you didn’t see for years’, which benefitted him socially. Mark (colleague, PharmaCo) explained how others were more inclined to engage in small talk with his disabled colleague now, as ‘at times there are people who say “how are you, John? How is it going?”’ which helps others understand ‘through these interactions, the difficulties he may be encountering more’.

This increased level of interaction also made cognitive and neurological differences stand out more. Jan (autistic employee, InsurCo) explained how the stress of managing ‘15 deadlines at the same time’, typical of outcome-driven ways of working, was something he had to learn to keep under control and out of colleagues’ sight as ‘I sometimes showed some of my frustration to the team and quickly learned this is a big no-no because then they get frustrated as well and then [the situation] explodes’. Louis (colleague and DEI, BankCo) further mentioned how ‘we’re asked to interact and communicate a lot’ and ‘for a person with a cognitive disorder that poses a problem’. The fact that neurodivergent employees were perceived as having difficulty keeping up with the interaction demands of activity-based working was also noticed by the following interviewee:

There’s somebody in our department who I think is on the autism spectrum, [. . .] you notice it from the person and their interactions. [. . .] If you encounter somebody in the hallway, you know, they say ‘hi’, that person prefers to look at the ground and pass without interacting. (Jana, colleague, TechCo)

Beyond spatial changes in the physical environment, the move to activity-based working also transformed the digital space. This made visible to the organisation the lack of digital accessibility and challenges faced by some employees (e.g. colleagues with visual impairments) when using software, as there were now colleagues ‘who regularly bumped into accessibility problems’ and ‘problems with the [digital] training’ (Louis, colleague and DEI, BankCo).

The greater awareness of the numerical presence of disabled employees in the office spaces, which came with the display of diverse bodyminds, motivated colleagues to ensure work activities would take place in spaces accessible to their disabled team members. For instance, Mark was very careful ‘not to book any of the rooms with completely inaccessible furniture’ with ‘tables of 1.20m’ that are too tall for wheelchair users (Mark, colleague, PharmaCo) and Monique (director and responsible for activity-based working, SoftCo) explained that since wheelchair users are ‘more visible around the office’, ‘we pay more attention to them when organising a team-building [event]’. The increase in surface-level visibility thus helped the inclusion of disabled colleagues in some ad hoc, retrospective ways.

Some disabled people, however, did not wait for the activity-based office space to portray them as different users. On the contrary, they proactively took the lead in designing the space to accommodate their needs, rather than only the needs of non-disabled, ‘typical’ employees. For instance, George (employee with a mobility impairment, SoftCo) ‘proposed some help in reviewing the furniture’ before moving to a new building, to ensure he could use the same furniture as the rest of his colleagues and avoid being othered (see Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Example of unusable furniture for George in the old building at SoftCo.

Laetitia (activity-based working and DEI, TechCo) mentioned how several employees ‘who appeared to be on the [autism] spectrum’, ‘raised concerns during the preparatory meetings prior to the move’ and in this way decided to, individually from one another, speak up about their neurodivergent identity and spatial needs.

However, Peter (employee with a visual impairment) and the rest of BankCo’s disability resource group had no opportunity to offer their input in the design of the costly, prestigious new headquarters. He recounted cynically that ‘I’m sure it’s fancy and all, with sustainable steel and no more fossil fuels, apparently, but for me and my [guide] dog, a building without a single straight wall is an absolute nightmare. So rather than improving the accessibility, things have become worse’.

This process of visibilisation, where diverse bodyminds are displayed at the surface level in activity-based working, clearly links visibility to voice: those who proactively made their voice heard could avoid being ostracised as different or ‘atypical’ users of the space (e.g. George), while those who were not listened to were unable to do so (e.g. Peter).

Universal flexibility

The universal flexibility inherent in activity-based working rendered the immaterial accommodations (e.g. schedule changes) for disability less visible, as the organisation did not have to create exceptions for disabled employees. This decreased deep-level visibility, as it broadened the notion of who could represent the standard worker and provided alternatives to ableist organising. The enhanced spatial-temporal flexibility granted by the activity-based working regime reduced the need to request individual adaptations in schedules or work locations for disabled employees, as flexibility was interpreted as ‘to do whatever you want’ (Eef, supervisor, TechCo). George (employee with a mobility impairment, SoftCo) explained how ‘when I need to visit my doctor, I don’t need half a day off. I just block an hour in my agenda and go’ and how this luxury was ‘not specific to me [and my disability]’, but rather ‘the same for everyone’. Indeed, the desk-per-person ratio of less than one and the consequent high requirement of working from home, characteristic of activity-based working, benefitted employees with high self-care needs. Consider the following:

You don’t see that he has a disability, he has an immune system that doesn’t work. So, a simple cold could get him sick for three weeks or even hospitalised. So, he needs to be protected by not being with a lot of people. So, for him, it is perfect to just come four times per month to work [in the office]. That makes sense. He can preserve his health and he’s really extremely happy to work here. (Roger, DEI, InsurCo)

The benefits brought by universal flexibility were also expressed by Elsa (employee with autoimmune disease, BankCo), who purposefully switched to an admin job as her health worsened in order to enjoy regular telework and allow her to ‘remain productive despite unpredictable flares that may come up’. Yet, it is important to point out that the change from a full-time client-facing to a part-time back-office role, which facilitated telework and reduced work-related stress, weakened Elsa financially, while safeguarding organisational profits. Jordi (supervisor, TechCo) also noticed how his chronically ill employee flexibly ‘takes on additional tasks that she can do at home, in her bed, and even in the hospital [when her illness flares up heavily] [. . .] because she’s so very motivated and determined to not let her poor health stop her’. Again, this experience indicates a potential unidirectional benefit of flexibility for the employer and may even allude to a concern for job loss on the part of the chronically ill employee.

Telework was presented as a solution for everyone, regardless of health status. As such, it could offer support without singling out a group and thus without making disabled employees more detectable as different, leading some of the interviewees to express how they felt ‘included’, as ‘I can choose to come in or not, it’s not imposed on me’ (Richard, employee with a motor and mobility disability, PharmaCo). Employees, in general, mentioned that it made it ‘easier to handle things’ as ‘no one complains about the fact that I’m never at nine at the office’ (Daniel, colleague, SoftCo). Because everyone had equal access to spatial-temporal flexibility, no ‘special’, impairment-related requests were needed, and supervisors like Robert (supervisor, SoftCo) felt they could ‘treat him [disabled employee] like any other, I mean. . . because of the way we do things. . . flexibility and so on’. In addition, for some disabled employees, avoiding the energy-consuming commute to work made their working lives easier, as it gave ‘I won’t say some comfort, but an improvement in life quality’ (Richard, employee with a motor and mobility disability, PharmaCo).

In sum, the universal flexibility facilitated by (freely choosing) home office days contributed to the equal treatment of employees, irrespective of their health status. The relatively small number of obligatory days on-site, however, did enhance the risk of isolation for some disabled employees, who became less seen when working from home. Such working from home ‘more than on average’, ‘for medical reasons’, as was the case for Simon (employee with multiple sclerosis, TELCo), could come to signify reduced career progress. He explained how he was ‘denied a promotion’ since the management deemed it improper to work from home ‘even once a week’ in that function. This example shows how, even within the activity-based working regime, working from home was seen as less suitable for high-level functions.

Even if the universal flexibility offered by the small number of obligatory days on-site worked well for most employees, some disabled employees still resisted on-site rules. On the one hand, some went to the office more often than allowed to counteract the isolation resulting from extensive use of telework, as they ‘wanted the social contact’ (Marloes, DEI and activity-based working, TEL Co) that ‘energised’ them (Samuel, employee with Parkinson’s, TechCo). Jan (autistic employee, InsurCo) ‘simply ignored’ the maximum allowed office days, as he ‘loved having different colleagues sitting beside me, or next to me, or around me’. On the contrary, other disabled employees negotiated for permission to be at home even more than what was prescribed in the activity-based working arrangements. Luc (employee with visual impairment, BankCo) explained how he negotiated a deal for 100% working from home:

‘I’m becoming slower with age, and as digitalisation progresses. . . Young people see a new tool and they intuitively understand how to use it, but I must remember how to use it [due to visual impairment] and my [mental] drive is somewhat full [laughs]. I always tell people: if I must remember one more new thing, I have to delete something else from my [mental] drive first! I now have a sweet deal, but they won’t come and offer it to you, I’ve had to negotiate for it pretty damn hard!’.

Other ways of resisting prescribed behaviours in the activity-based office appropriated by disabled employees consisted of refusing to hot desk and instead making informal arrangements with team members on where to sit together in the open area. As Eef exemplifies:

‘My employee with autism often goes to a different floor with an old team member of his, they have found their own sort of ‘safe space’ in the building, an abandoned lab room where there is little passage [people passing]’. (Eef, supervisor, TechCo)

For disabled employees in particular, this was important, as Peter explains:

My colleagues don’t have a fixed location anymore on the working floor. That is extra tough when you can’t quickly scan the room to see where people are sitting, like in my case. Sometimes I don’t know where someone is, and I can only assume they would be in one place, to then arrive there, and find out: there is actually no one from my team sitting there. That just really sucks. (Peter, employee with visual impairment, BankCo)

Higher accessibility standards in newly built physical and digital spaces

The activity-based offices came with higher accessibility standards for the newly constructed built environment. This decreased deep-level visibility by incorporating more universal design principles, thereby broadening the notion of who counts as a standard user of a space. For instance, ‘everything is way more ergonomic than before’ (Eef, supervisor, TechCo) and there are now fewer doors and wider corridors, decreasing the need for people with motor or mobility impairments to ask for help. This made them less evident as ‘dependent’, since ‘the fewer doors there are, the better off I am, as I can move around freely without obstacles’ (Richard, employee with a motor and mobility disability, PharmaCo). Equally beneficial in invisibilising disabled people as ‘needy’ were the now improved sound-absorbing panels throughout the newly built spaces and the various designated silent rooms with strict behavioural rules to follow. For some neurodivergent employees, these noise-free spaces accommodated their needs perfectly and could be used to relax when overstimulated. Consider the following example:

The regular solution we have now is much better than it was before. So, we first look at whether this regular solution fits the needs. [. . .] I did have some people also asking me about autism and saying, ‘Okay, for me, open spaces are not good, I cannot work there, and also changing a lot is not okay for me’. But they are, up until now, I have to say, using just the libraries and those places which are in complete silence, and, most of the time, they also always use the same desk. It is enough, actually, as a solution for them. So up until now, I’ve always got the feedback that’s okay, it works for me like this. (Laetitia, activity-based working and DEI, TechCo)

The following interviewee emphasises well how, although activity-based working was not conceived with diversity and inclusion in mind, it benefitted him as a disabled employee:

I don’t know if we can talk about inclusion, because [activity-based working] wasn’t designed to include disabled people. It just turns out that it suits us in a way. [. . .] We move around better at work, we work better, we have fewer constraints, the spaces are bigger. There are collaborative spaces, focus spaces, in-between spaces. . . You feel a bit freer. So that’s it. This side of things, I find, can include a person like me, it suits disability if the office spaces are adapted. (Richard, employee with a motor and mobility disability, PharmaCo)

The idea that activity-based working induced changes that benefitted disabled people and others ‘by coincidence’ was also expressed regarding the online space. Louis (colleague and DEI, BankCo) noted how in their very internationally oriented, bilingual organisation, people who were insecure about speaking or understanding other languages could now ‘turn on the subtitles during [online] presentations, with a direct translation of their choosing’, which, of course, also benefitted ‘colleagues with hearing impairments’ who are less apt in lipreading and understanding different languages. Because the accessibility solutions of activity-based working were not only thought for and used by disabled employees, they also enhanced the equality of a wider group of employees with mixed competencies, abilities, and skills.

Yet, despite overall higher accessibility standards, it is important to note that not all physical and digital spaces were accessible to everyone, and design failures to include everyone still occurred. For instance, Richard (employee with a motor and mobility disability, PharmaCo) pointed out that ‘I can’t access the silent bubbles with my wheelchair’ (see Figure 5) and Nadia (employee with hearing impairment, BankCo) complained how ‘they forgot about soundproofing materials, in a meeting room that is all glass and concrete’ making echoes really bad. Such failures to include disabled people’s voices in the design required disabled people to step up and bring their own little hacks, retrofitting the space to give hearing-impaired people a voice again, reclaiming their ability to engage and be heard at work. For Nadia, this meant searching for the right digital device to connect to her hearing aids, to cancel out irrelevant noises in the meeting, something she went on to advise to another worker with a hearing impairment, who ‘after having socially excluded himself for a long time from work, is now really proud apparently, so that’s nice to hear’.

Figure 5.

Example of silent pods at PharmaCo that are inaccessible to wheelchair users.

Creating exceptional territoriality

Finally, a last possibility offered by activity-based working arrangements was creating exceptional territoriality. This, we argue, increased deep-level visibility, as it underlined how not everyone could use the same space freely, in similar ways as others. Some disabled employees needed reasonable accommodations that required them to become an exception to the hot desking habits at the activity-based office that characterised activity-based working. These accommodations required designating materials and spaces to disabled employees, as they often consisted of equipment that ‘nobody else can use’ (Laetitia, activity-based working and DEI, TechCo). For instance, when there was a need for special computer screens and other specialised desk equipment, assigning fixed desks was necessary. This was important for visually impaired employees who could then ‘easily find their reserved desk’ and ‘so it’s not a problem’ (Théo, activity-based working project manager, BankCo). Sometimes remaining in the open space with others, even when assigned a fixed desk, was not a viable option. For instance, Eef (supervisor, TechCo) sees ‘a pattern of people who are presumably neurodivergent hanging around the lab more and not coming into the flexdesk offices at all’, mentioning how ‘these new workspaces were designed thinking everyone is extraverted and a lot of people are just not’. Also, consider the following excerpt by Samuel, who was offered to take the department head’s closed-off office:

I have speech recognition software. [. . .] If I have to write a long email, then I can just dictate it. But, of course, because we’re sitting in an open office. . .I said, yeah, I don’t do that. [. . .] So officially everyone, I think, is subjected to flexdesk, apart from me and one other guy. Him, I think, for [high] status reasons. And for me, it’s just because of medical reasons. (Samuel, employee with Parkinson’s, TechCo)

Speech-to-text technology to perform key work duties here necessitated the occupation of a closed room, normally reserved for very ‘high-status’ colleagues. Although it offered a quick-fix solution, it was not ideal, as Samuel could no longer socialise with the department head, who now only came onsite on days when Samuel worked from home, sharing the closed room in this way. When other employees, presumably non-disabled ones, occupied single offices, it was looked down upon, even for ‘regular’ managers. This kind of behaviour was reported by others and considered as stubborn, with people being called out for ‘pretending an enclosed call room is their own’ (Julia, activity-based working project manager, PharmaCo), thus demonstrating how management tried to keep control of the new conventions that de-hierarchised relations in the office.

Again, disabled people were not solely victims of exclusive spatial constructions that relegated them to a special status, hoping others would be understanding of their apparent privileged use of closed-off or fixed spaces. Instead, some actively forged allyship with their managers who advocated their right to spatial exceptions. Consider the following example:

I always tell managers of the next [activity-based working] rollout phase about this previous manager who told his team in an all-hands meeting, ‘That [autistic] person has more difficulty with changes and noises around her, so she asked to be in the same spot in the library and I totally understand that. I hope you all understand it too.’ (Laetitia, activity-based working and DEI, TechCo)

Discussion

New workspaces, such as activity-based working, have become increasingly popular in knowledge-based organisations, proposing a working environment that is arguably more inclusive. In this study, we sought to problematise this ‘inclusion-gain’ claim that underpins activity-based working from the perspective of disabled people and by drawing on the theoretical lens of visibility (Simpson and Lewis, 2005). By answering our first research question (i.e. how disability was visibilised in activity-based working), we found five different visibilisation processes taking place in the new workspace. To answer our second research question (i.e. how visibilisation affects inclusion), we related these five processes to inclusion by examining how they increased deep- and surface-level visibility. While surface-level visibility reflects the numerical representation of diversity and signals a more superficial form of inclusion, deep-level visibility captures the extent to which individuals deviate from normative standards and is tied to a more substantive experience of inclusion. Our findings showed that activity-based working decreased surface-level visibility by individualising health issues and increased it by displaying diverse bodyminds (see Table 3 for a summary), leading to an overall increase in the perceptions of diversity in the participants’ organisations compared to a past of working at assigned desks and in enclosed office spaces. Meanwhile, deep-level visibility was increased by creating exceptional territoriality, but decreased by the universal flexibility and the higher accessibility standards in the newly built spaces, as the last two broadened the notion of ‘standard workers’ and allowed disabled workers to better attend to the expectations of the dominant norms (see Table 3 for a summary). Lastly, in answering our third research question (i.e. what agency disabled people have in this process), we found that the undesirable visibility created by design failures was not only preceded by (a lack of) employee voice but also led to concerns being voiced agentically. Being visibilised was responded to – or even ‘hacked’ – by disabled employees and their allies by voicing their dismay. For instance, autistic people disclosed their discomfort to project managers, people with visual impairments cynically mocked prestigious new buildings, people with chronic illnesses ensured their line managers kept track of health milestones, and various interviewees negotiated deals to divert from home or on-site office rules or simply disregarded them altogether. A graphic overview of the findings, research questions, and how they relate to one another is presented in Figure 6.

Table 3.

Summary of the effects of surface-level visibility in activity-based working (ABW) for disabled people’s inclusion.

Type of visibility	Visibilisation process	Direction of effect on visibility	Lived experience of the process:
Type of visibility	Visibilisation process	Direction of effect on visibility	Day-to-day consequences for inclusion	Examples of resistance
Surface-level effects on visibility	Individualisation of health	↓	Fewer opportunities for quality interaction (and being seen holistically) due to working from home and hot desking; more control over disclosure.	Intervening in the visibility process by sharing an open calendar of medical appointments, “playing with” disclosure of medical info.
Surface-level effects on visibility	Displaying diverse bodyminds	↑	Becoming seen as “deviant”; more opportunities for interacting with different colleagues.	Proactively choosing furniture, speaking up during meetings about the move, and expressing concerns.
Deep-level effects on visibility	Universal flexibility	↓	Special requests and exceptions become redundant.	Refusing to set rules for working from home, from the office, or hot desking; reclaiming abandoned spaces to avoid socialising.
	Higher accessibility standards	↓	Corridors become wider; online spaces become more accessible from the start.	Design failures still occurred, inciting hacks and retrofitting demands.
	Creating exceptional territoriality	↑	Not being able to use space in the same way; being mistaken as a “stubborn” misuser of the space.	Forging allyship from managers.

Figure 6.

Graphic overview of the findings.

Overall, these findings reveal that the ‘inclusion-gain’ assumptions that underlie activity-based working are not fundamentally true, as inclusion takes a complex form in these new workspaces. When zooming in on the surface level, colleagues could spot impairments, neurodivergence, and their effects more easily amongst peers as traffic has increased in the on-site office, while employees had more control over hiding their health conditions and self-care needs when working from home. This may have beneficial short-term effects for inclusion, as the ‘how are you’s?’ are more common when on-site (see Table 3 for a summary). Still, at a deeper level, we argue that such short-term gains do not fundamentally alter the ableist ways in which work and workplaces are organised. Yet, reasons for optimism emerged from our findings of what happened to deep-level invisibility in activity-based working, and thus power. Specifically, granting universal flexibility and higher accessibility standards in newly built spaces demonstrated to hold real potential to challenge ideas around ideal workers and allow disabled people to enjoy the feeling of disembodiment, traditionally reserved for dominant – non-disabled and neurotypical – groups (see Table 3 for a summary). Yet, the poor involvement of disabled people in the design phase, stemming from a lack of voice, jeopardises such potential, necessitating retrofitting through the creation of exceptional territorialities. This unnecessarily makes disabled people noticeable again as needing ‘special treatment’, despite the promising new avenue organisations took – and spent millions of euros on. If only they had involved their own employees and accessibility experts more by giving them more agency over the implementation and construction of designs, the implementation of activity-based working could have led to better, more inclusive outcomes for disabled people.

This paper contributes to two ongoing debates in the organisational literature. First, we contribute to the literature on flexible work practices by extending the flexibility–visibility debate. Prior studies investigating visibility in the context of flexible work practices, such as telework and activity-based offices, have addressed visibility in its association with control and the recognition of employees’ work contributions, focusing on the impact of the spatial dispersion of employees on their visibility (e.g. Sewell and Taskin, 2015; Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2021). For instance, these studies have shown teleworking employees run a higher risk of being overlooked by managers due to their physical distance, with negative consequences for their career (e.g. Golden and Eddleston, 2020), and that activity-based offices can make colleagues in the same team less visible as they become spatially spread across the office premises, thus impairing communication and collaboration (Wohlers and Hertel, 2018). These studies thus portray invisibility as an undesirable consequence of spatial dispersion and highlight the efforts of employees to become visible at work.

While flexible office spaces may indeed reduce the visibility of close colleagues, such as team members and managers (Wohlers and Hertel, 2018), our findings show that these spaces enhance the visibility of employees in general, exposing their differences. We label this phenomenon ‘spatial othering’ and define it as an organisational othering process (Mik-Meyer, 2016) by which bodies become displayed as deviant through the way office spaces are organised and spatial expectations are maintained. Hence, we extend the flexibility–visibility debate by showing how flexible work practices shape the visibility of employees’ differences in bodyminds through spatial othering, looking beyond how spatial dispersion affects the visibility of employees’ work contributions. By shifting the focus from visibility as recognition to visibility as embodied difference, this study shows that flexibility not only has consequences for employees’ work outcomes, such as career progression, but can also have consequences for the visibility of minoritised employees and their inclusion. In addition, our findings highlight that whilst past research has shown that flexible work practices can come with negative repercussions for employees, such as a loss of sense of belonging (Picard et al., 2021; Taskin et al., 2023), these practices can still benefit the inclusion of people with high self-care needs.

Finally, we extend the visibility lens (Simpson and Lewis, 2005) by assessing how spatial arrangements, rife with subtle ‘inclusion-gain’ claims through enhanced flexibility and de-hierarchisation, can also make minoritised groups more ‘seen as’ and reaffirm rather than loosen ableist standards of moving, thinking, and interacting. Although voice is closely connected to visibility, and particularly preceding visibility in the design phase, we have brought a focus to voice as a consequence of the visibilisation processes (in our study, following specifically from the display of diverse bodyminds and the creation of exceptional territoriality, see again Table 3) after spatial changes have been implemented. Furthermore, whereas Simpson and Lewis’s (2005) framework refers to ‘voice’ and its relationship with visibility by focusing on the power of the discourse perpetuated by those in power and the silencing of opposing voices, our study brings a more embodied and material perspective to the concept of ‘voice’ (see Figure 7 for a graphic overview of this contribution). Specifically, we found that ‘voice’ becomes materialised through embodied agency. This was particularly evident when disabled employees defied activity-based working rules to accommodate their impairments (e.g. by appropriating closed spaces to use their reasonable accommodation) or when they used activity-based working to their advantage (e.g. by using flexible schedules to attend to their self-care needs). Rather than passively accepting the ableist design failures of both the physical environment (e.g. inaccessible furniture) and social conventions (e.g. unassigned desks), disabled people and their allies (department heads, project managers, colleagues) used their voices to do world-(re)building work, and to ‘hack’ or ‘crip’ (Hamraie and Fritsch, 2019) innovations that worked against their inclusion.

Figure 7.

Graphic overview of the contribution to the voice–visibility relationship (Simpson and Lewis, 2005).

Future research could examine more closely the mitigating role that workplace allies play in helping to forge hacks or, better still, in ensuring universally inclusive designs from the outset (Doussard et al., 2022). Although the organisations selected for this study had a formal DEI policy and dedicated staff to follow up on these plans, the generally low level of response from organisations and participants within these organisations suggests that the inclusion of disabled people was low on their agenda, making informal allies even more crucial. More detailed case studies of ‘disability-champion’ organisations would be useful to better assess the role of inclusive climate and leadership in mitigating the negative effects of hypervisibility and social invisibility in spaces designed with a non-disabled body and a neurotypical human brain in mind.

Conclusion

This study sought to adopt the perspective of disabled people to problematise the persistent claim of an ‘inclusion gain’ that underpins new workspaces. Our findings showed that the flexible use of the home office and higher accessibility standards in newly built physical and digital spaces invisibilised differences, both at a surface level and, more importantly for inclusion, at a deep level by altering ableist norms. Overall, this exploratory study is cautiously optimistic about the ‘inclusion gain’ claimed by proponents of activity-based working, noting that disabled people must be included in the design phase of the newly built physical environment and conceived social conventions. Their ability to voice concerns proactively, before designs and conventions are implemented, is crucial, as this may mitigate negative states of being rendered hypervisible, socially invisible, or ‘seen as’, which stem from ableist organising. Still, many behaviours expected in these spaces remain grounded in ableist norms that enforce an ideal way of moving and interacting that is unattainable for a considerable proportion of the workforce by no fault of their own (Dobusch, 2017). This is especially problematic given the strong neoliberal undertone within these new spaces, which treats employees as individuals responsible for their own outcomes (e.g. Kingma, 2019; Picard et al., 2021).

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

None

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S. – FNRS). The first author is a Research Fellow of the F.R.S. – FNRS.

AI usage declaration

The authors acknowledge that they have followed Human Relations’ AI policy. Accordingly, AI was used only for copy editing or proofreading the manuscript.

ORCID iDs

Ive D. Klinksiek

Eline Jammaers

Laurent Taskin

Notes

Ive D. Klinksiek is a PhD candidate in Management Sciences at UCLouvain (Belgium). Her research interests include disability in the workplace, diversity and inclusion in organisations, new ways of working, and flexible work practices. She has published her work in journals such as Human Resource Management Review, New Technology, Work and Employment, and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal. [ Email: ive.david@uclouvain.be]

Eline Jammaers is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Business Economics at Hasselt University (Belgium). She holds a PhD in Business Administration from Hasselt University (Belgium). Drawing on disability studies and critical management studies, her research investigates dis/ability in waged employment and entrepreneurship and how organising norms are built around able-bodiedness. Her work has appeared in journals such as Organization Studies, Human Relations, Organization and Journal of Business Ethics. [ Email: eline.jammaers@uhasselt.be]

Laurent Taskin is a full professor of HR and Organization studies at UCLouvain, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations. His main research interests include working communities, new ways of working and humane management. His work has been published in outlets like Organization Studies, Human Relations, Journal of Business Ethics and Human Resource Management Review; he has (co-)authored twenty books in the field, including Critical Management Studies: Global voices, local accents (Routledge, 2016, with C. Grey, I. Huault and V. Perret). [ Email: laurent.taskin@uclouvain.be]

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