Mismatch in preferences for working from home – evidence from discrete choice experiments with workers and employers

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Date:
2024-12-07
Authors:
Piotr Lewandowski
Katarzyna Lipowska
Mateusz Smoter
Publication year:
2024
Publications category:
Abstract:

We study workers’ and employers’ preferences for remote work, distinguishing between hybrid and fully remote arrangements. Using discrete choice experiments with over 10,000 workers and 1,500 employers in Poland, we find a shared preference for hybrid over fully remote work. However, workers’ estimated benefits from remote work fall significantly short of employers’ estimated costs, with average gaps equivalent to 5.2% of earnings for hybrid work and 24.6% for fully remote work. Only 25-35% of employers – those with positive views on remote work productivity and high-quality talent management – value remote work costs in line with workers’ willingness to pay, particularly in non-routine cognitive occupations.

Additional information:

We thank Daniel Hamermesh, Sarra Ben Yahmed, Jose Barrero, Nick Bloom, Steve Davis, and the participants of the Remote Work Conference at Stanford, 2023 SOLE Annual Meeting, 2022 EALE Annual Conference, IAB LISER Conference on Labour Markets During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic, COPE 2024, and the Ce2 workshop in Warsaw for useful comments. This paper was financially supported by the European Social Fund – Operational Programme Knowledge Education Development as a part of the “System for forecasting the Polish labour market” project. The European Social Fund bears no responsibility for the results and the conclusions, which are those of the authors. The usual disclaimers apply. All errors are ours.

Published in:

Accepted in ILR Review

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