Home office na prática: as práticas no trabalho profissional exercido em ambientes domésticos na pandemia do COVID-19

Abstract

The measures taken as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on everyday life. Several areas were affected: health, education, work... To contain the spread of the virus, face-to-face meetings were restricted. All of a sudden, domestic environments began to concentrate families and also activities that were not carried out in these places. So, to keep working, the home office was adopted in a fast and growing way. But what “what” and “how” are you doing to work? This study sought to understand the practice of professional work in domestic environments since the pandemic. In this sense, an approach based on the Practice Theory was adopted, providing an analysis of an entire context, not limiting the observation to the worker agent. The individual is constantly connecting and disconnecting elements, forming a set of practices, composed of doings, material things and meanings. This qualitative study employed several data collection procedures inspired by ethnography, involving self-directed interviews, observation using video and audio, and interviews using images. Therefore, the content analysis revealed that the evidenced information positively extrapolated the expected limits for an interview, resembling “extended cases” (Extended Case Method). The understanding of home office work resulted in the structuring of two dimensions, relating to: a) perception of time and b) perception of space.