Smart and Hybrid Workplaces from the Perspective of Municipal Employees: Preferences and Experiences in Office- and Home-Workplaces

Workplace design and use have undergone significant transformations in recent years, driven by advances in digital technologies and the rise of hybrid working practices. The shift towards smart workplace concepts and hybrid working has reshaped how employees experience, evaluate, and engage with their workplace environments, both at the office and at home. It is therefore important to examine these transitions from the perspective of employees. As workplace design and strategy can influence employee satisfaction, productivity, and sense of belonging, gaining insights into employee experiences, expectations, and preferences would be significant for workplace designers, facility managers, and policymakers. Additionally, while much research has focused on corporate settings, little is known about how these transitions are experienced within municipal organisations. This doctoral dissertation therefore investigates: ‘How do municipal employees experience and respond to smart and hybrid workplace transitions in terms of expectations, preferences, and workplace choices?’ To answer this research question, this dissertation employs a mixed-methods approach and is structured around two phases of data collection: Part A (qualitative research) and Part B (quantitative research). Part A, presented in Chapters 2 and 3, consists of qualitative research conducted with employees from the Municipality of Eindhoven after they relocated to a smart (and sustainable) office building, called ‘Stadhuistoren’. Eleven in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees, complemented by participatory observation. The data were analysed using grounded theory and thematic analysis, informed by a reflexive engagement with the literature. Chapter 2 reveals that a smart office is defined not just by advanced technologies, but by how well it supports daily work, adapts to individual needs, and fosters interaction that enhances the quality of the work environment. Two main themes emerge reflecting how employees interpret and evaluate smart office workplaces: ‘enhanced interaction’ with the social and physical office environment, and ‘sense-making’ of the smart concept. Within the two themes, basic and smart office aspects emerged, with employees referring to basic aspects as prerequisites before appreciating or engaging with smart ones. Chapter 3 examines how employees experience the relocation to a smart office, focusing on their behaviours and satisfaction. The chapter reveals that there are four phases of experiencing a new smart office environment: pre-relocation, confrontational, progressive, and stabilised. These phases reflect how employees’ relationships with the new environment evolve and how workplace attachments shape over time. Among participants, four distinct emotional trajectories are identified within the phase, which can be shaped by individual perceptions, expectations, and organisational dynamics. The phased model revealed in this chapter enhances theoretical insights into workplace adaptation and emphasises the need to support employees throughout the transition by anticipating emotions and aligning design with expectations. Part B, covered in Chapters 4–6, presents the quantitative component of the dissertation, based on the discrete choice experiments with 1,812 employees from the Municipalities of Amsterdam, Almere, and Eindhoven. This part explores employees’ workplace choice decisions in a hybrid work setting, considering the impact of smart technologies and the attributes of both home- and office-workplace environments. Chapter 4 focuses on choice decisions on Flexible Workdays, when employees can choose to work remotely or at the office, and analyses how seven office- and six home-related attributes. Using multinomial and mixed logit models, the study finds that both workplace environments significantly impact the choice behaviour. Commuting time and office occupant type are the most influential attributes, while office aesthetics and workspace access are less relevant. Secondary (social) spaces and smart technologies enhance the office workplace appeal, while ergonomic setups and smart technology at home increase the home-workplace appeal. Preferences for single offices are notably polarised. These findings provide practical guidance for designing hybrid workplaces aligned with employee needs and satisfaction, both at home and at the office. Chapter 5 examines preferences for the office-workplace attributes and reveals significant differences between Flexible Workdays (optional office attendance) and Office Workdays (mandatory office attendance). Using three multinomial logit models, preferences for seven office attributes across these two workday types are compared. Results show that preferences are generally more neutral on Flexible Workdays, except for a stronger preference for office events. Most preferences differ between the two workdays for office attributes, such as kitchenette type, events, occupants, workspace type, aesthetics, and workspace access. Only preferences for technology type remain consistent between the two workdays. Sharing the office-workplace with direct colleagues consistently had the strongest impact on making the office more attractive, while aesthetics had the least impact. These findings highlight the importance of tailoring office design to workplace preferences in hybrid work settings to better align with employee preferences and satisfaction.Chapter 6 examines the choice experiment data from 1,258 Amsterdam municipal employees and identifies two groups of employees with distinct hybrid workplace preferences: a home-preferring and an office-preferring group. A latent class model revealed how these distinct preferences relate to personal characteristics (i.e., age, education), living conditions, and satisfaction with current home and office environments. On the other hand, gender did not show any significant relationship with these preference groups. These insights provide important guidance for developing hybrid workplace design strategies that reflect differentiated workplace preferences. Chapter 7 synthesises the findings, showing that workplace preferences and experiences of municipal employees are significantly shaped by workplace attributes (at home and the office), their level of autonomy for workplace choices, and individual circumstances. The chapter highlights that ‘smartness’ extends beyond technology to include the usability and meaningful application of the workplace environment. Employees engage with smart and hybrid workplaces through diverse interpretations of smartness, and their preferences are context-dependent: high autonomy tends to emphasise needs for relatedness, whereas low autonomy increases the importance of competence. The chapter concludes that successful workplace strategies must address both fundamental needs and smart (motivational) expectations, while integrating design, change management, and hybrid planning. This chapter also presents an interactive WorkplaceTool (https://workplacetool.nl/), which offers a practical tool for facility managers and workplace designers to understand and apply the insights from this dissertation. This tool simulates workplace choice behaviour and estimates the likelihood of an employee selecting a workplace on a Flexible Workday or an Office Workday based on the findings of this dissertation. Finally, the chapter identifies avenues for future research on changing workplace patterns and their implications for workplace design and housing.