Smart Workplace Past Covid-19: Perceived Challenges and Potential Smart Solutions for University Work Environment

The COVID-19 has reshaped work environment by introducing a lot of challenges and transitions in the way we work. However, there are still inadequate studies exploring the changes and challenges in the post-pandemic work environment. This study explores the changing dimensions of university work environment on post-pandemic return to campus to identify the key challenges and present implications for smart workplace solutions. A focus group was conducted with university staff and students after return to campus focusing on workplace experience past Covid-19. The findings revealed that the main workplace challenges consisted of three categories: 1) Technological challenges, 2) workspace challenges and 3) non-technical challenges. These results present users’ perception and experience with the workplace in post pandemic era. Moreover, implications are presented for smart workplace solutions to overcome the identified challenges in the post-pandemic work environment and design better workplaces from three perspectives.