Is remote work here to stay? A choicebased conjoint analysis study of employee preferences in the post-pandemic job market

Abstract

Hybrid working culture has become the new normal after global pandemic. This disruption in working life gives an opportunity to examine the preferences for expert work, for knowledge workers that are often educated and work at an office, with the possibility for remote work. This study tries to first bring more understanding to the attributes that knowledge workers see important whilst seeking a new job. This qualitative analysis is done based on the findings from focus group interviews, which were held to knowledge workers who have been working remotely during or after the pandemic.

Based on the most valued attributes, we further continue the analysis around knowledge worker preferences with a survey. In the survey we utilize choice-based conjoint analysis (CBC) and latent class analysis (LCA) to see if we can identify clusters with different preference structures, or to put different employee profiles another way. In addition to this, we also examine the willingness-to-pay (WTP) in salary for the option to work remotely. The WTP is measured by both direct and indirect methods.

We received 846 respondents in total to the survey, and after identifying “bad” respondents we were left with 444 respondents to the final analysis. The main findings show that our research around the most valued attributes while seeking a new job backs up the latest literature and convenience related values are seen important whilst seeking a new job. We were also able to distinguish different employee profiles with heterogeneous preference structures from the respondent data. The WTP-analysis proved that many people would be willing to reduce their salary to some extent in exchange for more flexibility. The WTP results from direct and indirect questions were differed, which is in line with previous literature.