The impact of work arrangements on the choice to work from home: a discrete-continuous choice experiment

Abstract

Abstract: An important question regarding the future of working conditions revolves around employees’ choice of whether to work from home or at their regular workplace. While many employees have become accustomed to working from home during the Covid19 pandemic and want to continue doing so, many employers want them to return to work on-site more intensively. In this study, we conduct a choice experiment with employees in Berlin and Brandenburg in Germany to investigate this rebalancing process. We examine how employers can influence employees’ decision to either work from home or on-site and how the allocation of workdays between home and the regular workplace reacts to a set of work arrangements for different occupational groups. These work arrangements include flexible working hours, fixed desks, canteens, the presence of colleagues on-site, and an employer allowance for days worked from home. The results show that the most important incentive to work from home is produced by the employer allowance for working from home. The most important pull factors for working at the regular workplace are the provision of both a fixed, own desk and flexible working hours granted during days worked on-site. Overall, however, the impact of work arrangements on the choice to work from home or on-site is rather small. JEL classification codes: J81; J22