Understanding employee trade-offs in remote work: toward more sustainable workplace design

Abstract

Remote and hybrid work have become enduring features of digitally mediated organizations, yet questions remain about the conditions under which such arrangements can be sustained over time. Prior research on remote work sustainability emphasizes structural and technological enablers, often assuming that flexibility, compensation, or organizational support translates directly into employee acceptance. This study extends that literature by adopting a preference-based perspective. We conceptualize sustainability as grounded in how employees evaluate and trade off multiple, interdependent job attributes. Drawing on a choice-based conjoint experiment with 627 full-time U.S. workers, we examine how employees assess bundled features related to work location, salary, monitoring, scheduling, expense reimbursement, and organizational support. The findings indicate that employee acceptance is shaped less by isolated job attributes than by how these features are configured in relation to employees’ prioritized needs, with the degree of remote work and salary serving as central reference dimensions. By foregrounding employee evaluative logic and compensatory trade-offs, this study clarifies the micro-level conditions under which remote and hybrid work arrangements are likely to be accepted and sustained.