The same 148 white-collar employees completed workplace surveys in 2017 and again in 2023. By the time of the second survey, the municipality had established a hybrid model that allowed employees to divide their time between home and the office.
Employees gave higher ratings to several parts of their working lives, including their ability to manage time, control the timing and pace of tasks, access their managers, and work under supportive conditions.
The improvement was greater among women than men, although the researchers could not determine why. They also caution that the study involved one organization and cannot prove that hybrid work alone caused the changes.
A before-and-after look at hybrid work
Much of the research into hybrid work has relied on one-time surveys comparing different groups of employees. The new study followed the same workers before and after a major change in how their organization operated.
The first survey took place in 2017, before the COVID-19 pandemic. The second was conducted in October and November 2023, approximately 18 months after Sweden’s national work-from-home restrictions had been lifted.
During the pandemic, employees who could work from home were asked to do so. The municipality supplied equipment such as computer monitors, input devices, and office chairs when requested.
After the restrictions ended, the organization introduced a formal hybrid model. Employees had different opportunities to work from home depending on their roles, teams, and managers. At the 2023 follow-up, around half of the participants said they normally spent two or three days a week in the office.
How the researchers measured work experience
The researchers used a questionnaire known as the Work Experience Measurement Scale, or WEMS.
It contains 32 statements covering six areas of working life:
- supportive working conditions,
- employees’ internal experience of their work,
- autonomy,
- time pressure and working hours,
- leadership, and
- experiences of organizational change.
The answers were converted into scores ranging from zero to 100. A higher score represented a more positive work experience.
Among the 122 employees who completed every part of the scale at both survey points, the average overall score increased from 71.2 in 2017 to 74.3 in 2023.
The increase was statistically significant, meaning it was unlikely to be explained by random variation in the survey responses. However, the 3.1-point rise was relatively modest and should not be interpreted as a dramatic transformation of the workplace.
Employees felt better able to manage their time
The clearest improvement involved what the researchers called “time experience.”
This part of the survey asked whether employees had enough time to complete their work, could finish tasks properly, and were able to avoid working beyond their normal hours.
The average time-experience score increased from 48.5 to 55.7. It was also the only area in which every individual survey question showed a statistically significant improvement.
This finding is notable because working from home is sometimes associated with longer working hours and weaker boundaries between work and personal life. In this particular organization, employees instead reported feeling better able to complete their work within regular hours.
The study did not measure employees’ actual working hours, however. It measured how they perceived and experienced the time available to them.
Workers reported more control over their tasks
Employees also reported greater autonomy after hybrid work was introduced.
In this part of the survey, autonomy referred mainly to control over work tasks.
Employees gave higher ratings to statements about deciding when to complete different tasks and controlling their own work pace.
The researchers examined work-location choice separately. They found that neither the number of days employees spent in the office nor the amount of freedom they had to choose their work location significantly explained the change in overall work-experience scores.
Managers appeared easier to reach
The overall leadership score also increased, but the detailed findings were more limited than that broad result might suggest.
Of the six questions covering leadership, only one showed a statistically clear improvement: whether an employee’s immediate manager was available when needed.
This suggests that access to managers was maintained and may have improved under the hybrid model. It does not necessarily mean that every aspect of management or leadership became more effective.
Managers themselves did not report the same improvement in overall work experience as other employees. However, the difference between managers and non-managers was not statistically significant, so the researchers could not draw a firm conclusion from that result.
Supportive working conditions also improved
Employees gave higher overall ratings to supportive working conditions.
Individual improvements in this area included how employees viewed workplace routines, the feedback they received, and whether they felt happy with their jobs.
Other parts of the category, including practical help from colleagues and the employer’s investment in employee health, did not show statistically significant changes.
This means the broader category improved even though not every part of employees’ working conditions changed in a measurable way.
The results may not apply to every workplace
The research involved white-collar employees from a single medium-sized municipality in Sweden. Most participants were women, and the average age at the second survey was approximately 50.
The organization had also introduced activity-based offices before the pandemic and had already begun moving toward more flexible ways of working. It provided employees with equipment for working from home during the pandemic.
Its experience may therefore differ from that of a company with less preparation for remote work, more rigid management, different job requirements, or limited access to suitable technology.
The results may also be less relevant to employees whose jobs require them to be physically present, including many workers in manufacturing, health care, hospitality, transportation, and retail.
What employers can take from the findings
The study does not show that introducing hybrid work will automatically make employees happier or create a healthier workplace.
It does show that hybrid work can coexist with a positive employee experience. In this municipality, workers reported less difficulty completing their work within normal hours, greater control over the timing and pace of tasks, better access to managers, and more supportive working conditions.
The findings also suggest that hybrid work should not be treated as a single, standard policy. Employees in the study had different arrangements depending on their roles, teams, and managers, and the research did not identify one schedule that worked best.
For employers, the more useful lesson may be that the quality of a hybrid workplace depends on more than the number of days employees spend at home. Job design, manager availability, appropriate equipment, communication, and employees’ ability to organize their work may all matter.
Source
Caroline Corneliuson, Maral Babapour Chafi, Andreas Tornevi, Albin Stjernbrandt, and Viktoria Wahlström. “Psychosocial work experience after implementing hybrid work: a longitudinal study.” BMC Public Health, volume 26, article 1359, 2026. DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-27487-x
