Mid Sweden University

Projekt syftade till: 

1.     Att skapa fördjupad kunskap om hur medarbetarengagemang, ledarskap, sociala- och organisatoriska faktorer påverkas av övergången till aktivitetsbaserat arbete med inslag av hemarbete. Vidare syftade projektet till att longitudinellt studera medarbetarnas upplevelser av den fysiska och psykosociala arbetsmiljön samt sitt välbefinnande. 

2.     Att skapa fördjupad kunskap om metoder för att stärka känslan av sammanhang (meningsfullhet, hanterbarhet och begriplighet) för samtliga medarbetare i kommunen ur ett salutogent perspektiv. 

3.     Att studera hur kommunen kan stärka medarbetares kunskap och attityder om delaktighet i kommunens styrning och organisering. 

4.     Att studera hur kommunens arbetsgivarstrategi kan bidra till att skapa attraktion för kommunen som arbetsgivare och på så vis attrahera framtida arbetskraft med relevanta kompetenser. 

5.     Att genom kunskap från insamlad information skapa underlag för strategiska åtgärder med syfte att stärka medarbetarengagemang, känslan av sammanhang samt generell fysisk, social och organisatorisk arbetsmiljö. 

Projektets övergripande syfte har varit att ge fördjupad förståelse av medarbetarskapets betydelse gällande offentliga arbetsgivares attraktivitet. Skillnader mellan olika offentliga verksamheter gällande medarbetares benägenhet att rekommendera organisationer som attraktiva arbetsgivare samt interna och externa faktorers betydelse har studerats. Resultat från projektet kan ligga till grund för åtgärder med syfte att stärka den studerade organisationens arbetsgivarvarumärke samt bidra med kunskap för chefer och HR-avdelningar för att kunna skapa en attraktiv och hälsofrämjande arbetsmiljö och positiva värderingar bland ledare och medarbetarbetare.  I projektet har olika metoder syftande till att nå fördjupad förståelse av de identifierade forskningsfrågorna. 

Background: Municipal employees in Sweden often describe their work as meaningful and socially valuable yet carried out under complex psychosocial conditions. While intrinsic motivation and a sense of public contribution are recognized as protective factors for wellbeing, the public sector is also characterized by limited resources, high workloads, and bureaucratic distance. Understanding how employees perceive and navigate these psychosocial dynamics is essential for promoting sustainable engagement and mental health. This study explores how municipal employees experience their psychosocial work environment, with particular attention to the contrast between attachment to the immediate workplace and perceived distance from the employing organization.

Method: Data were collected through ten focus group interviews (N = 33) conducted within the project Medarbetarskap och rekommendationsvilja (“Co-workership and willingness to recommend”) in Sundsvall Municipality, Sweden. Participants represented diverse occupational settings, including social care, culture and leisure, technical services, educational support, and planning administration. Both managers and employees of varying ages and professional backgrounds participated. The interviews, lasting approximately 60–90 minutes, were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). An inductive and iterative process was used to identify shared and contrasting patterns of experience across occupational groups.

Results: Three main themes emerged from the analysis. First, meaningfulness and pride in contributing to the public good were described as powerful motivational resources that promoted well-being and commitment. Second, trust and collegial support functioned as essential conditions for psychological safety and sustained engagement, particularly in care and service environments where relational work was central. Third, participants expressed a pronounced disconnect between the meaningfulness of their daily work and their relationship with the employer. Employees identified strongly with their local workplace but viewed the municipality as distant, bureaucratic, and inattentive to recognition and fairness. This perceived organizational distance coexisted with strong team cohesion and professional pride, forming a psychosocial tension at the heart of public sector work.

Conclusion: The findings reveal a psychosocial paradox of public service: employees’ wellbeing is rooted in proximity to their work and its social purpose but undermined by organizational distance and insufficient recognition. Strengthening relational and recognition structures between employees, line managers, and the wider organization is crucial to bridge this gap. By addressing both the emotional and structural dimensions of the psychosocial work environment, public sector employers can promote sustainable engagement, retention, and mental health among their work force. 

PurposeThis study explores how leaders and employees make sense of working conditions in a recently introduced activity-based workplace (ABW) in a municipal setting in Sweden. The analysis draws on Weick (Citation1995) concept of sensemaking.MethodsTranscripts from focus group interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis to examine how different staff groups experienced the transition from traditional cellular offices to ABW, and how these experiences framed their sense-making of ABW within the organisational context.ResultsThe analysis shows that ABW create working conditions marked by both increased interaction and persistent challenges related to privacy, confidentiality, noise, leadership, and ergonomics. Sensemaking was structured around five themes: Contrasting; Rationality; Collective process; Working from home; and Focusing on the ideal.ConclusionSensemaking of ABW is closely tied to how well concrete working conditions support core work tasks. Acceptance of ABW depends less on the concept itself and more on its ability to accommodate sector-specific demands, particularly confidentiality and focused work. The findings underscore the importance of aligning ABW design and implementation with everyday work practices in the public sector.

Introduction: Activity-based work in combination with working from home (WFH) has become more prevalent in recent years. However, research on these work environments remains limited regarding managers leadership practices and working conditions within the context of public sector organizations. This study seeks to address this gap by examining how managers within a municipal organization experience and adapt their leadership approach following the transition to activity-based workplaces in conjunction with working from home. The aim of the study is to explore the challenges managers reported in relation to risks, opportunities, and expectations. Moreover, the study seeks to offer both practical and theoretical implications for how managers can effectively apply successful leadership approaches within these emerging workplace configurations.

Methods: Data was collected from 71 managers through open-ended survey responses addressing expectations, opportunities, and risks, as well as from in-depth interviews with six managers. A content analysis was conducted to reveal patterns from both data sources.

Results: The results revealed four categories: changes in leadership approach, supporting employees, physical work environment, and social and organizational conditions. These categories involved both risks and opportunities in activity-based and homeworking environments. The findings indicate that managers perceive a shift in their leadership approach toward more relationship-oriented and trust-based behaviors following the transition to the new environments. The managers become more formal and need to be more visible. Other results are that the managers' report the need to manage and detect employees well-being and make individual adjustments.

Discussion: This study suggests that managers should be provided with the appropriate tools, training, and support to navigate these new work environments, particularly for managing employees in both remote and physical settings. Future research should expand the scope by investigating activity-based workplaces in combination with homeworking across a broader range of public sector organizations and sectors, employing both longitudinal quantitative methods and in-depth qualitative interviews.

Hybrid work, in which employees divide their time between on-site collaboration with colleagues at the office and homeworking, is expected to become prevalent in the future (Engelen et al., 2019; Bloom, 2021). These work arrangements are frequently integrated with activity-based workplaces (ABWs), which organize the workspace into designated zones tailored to different levels of interaction. These zones typically include a completely silent area, a space for quiet conversations, and a zone where unrestricted discussions and phone calls are permitted (Eismann et al., 2022).

Sweden has one of the highest proportions of employees working from home (Eurofound, 2024). However, according to a review by Carrasco-Garrido and De-Pablos-Heredero (2023), there is a lack of research on these work arrangements within public sector workplaces. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of attendance behaviors among both employees and managers in public sector organizations operating in ABWs alongside hybrid work. Employing a mixed-methods design, the study analyzes data from a survey with open-ended questions conducted among 448 employees. It compares an intervention group, which adopts a holistic approach to the transition to ABWs, with a reference group that follows a top-down approach. The study examines differences in attendance behaviors, remote work practices, psychosocial factors, and expectations, opportunities and risks related to the transition.

The main findings reveal that a broader, more comprehensive, and holistic transition process outperformed an expert-oriented and less integrated process. Participants in the intervention group provided more favorable assessments of the transition process, reported more satisfactory psychosocial conditions, exhibited higher self-rated health, and experienced lower levels of sickness presenteeism. The qualitative findings highlight both positive and negative expectations, as well as potential risks and opportunities associated with hybrid work and ABWs.

The way office workers work was greatly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, when most office workers had to start working from home. Since the restrictions following the pandemic lifted people started going back to their offices, but for many the possibility to work from home remained. Hybrid work, when the office worker can alter between working in the office and from home, is now very common.

Earlier research has shown conflicting results whether office workers’ productivity is affected by working from home or not. Some studies shows that there is no difference in productivity outcomes between people who work from home compared to those who work in offices. Other studies suggest that productivity outcomes are higher among office workers working from home than the ones who only work at the office.

There is a trend among some employers wanting their staff to come back to work in offices full time again. With this study we search to investigate if this is conflicting with productivity output (and by extension economical goals) and if it is in the best interest of the office workers’ health.

This study has two aims:

1. To compare self-rated productivity between office workers who work a small amount of their working hours from home, office workers who work a medium amount of their working hours from home and office workers who work a large amount of their working hours from home.
2. To investigate if and how productivity and health related variables (such as stress/burnout) can be explained by work-life balance, emotional demands, proportion of hours working from home and aspects of the physical work environment (such as disturbing noise).

The study population is office workers who work in a municipality in northern Sweden. They have answered two different surveys, one was based on the COPSOQ III-survey with some additional questions and the other one compiled of questions about the physical work environment and work productivity. The later survey was originally designed and used in their research project in another municipality in northern Sweden. 

Activity-based workplaces have become increasingly prevalent in many organizations. However, research on their implementation regarding perceived productivity within the public sector remains limited. The study’s purpose was to examine differences in perceived productivity, and perceived physical and psychosocial work environment factors, among public sector office employees in activity-based workplaces, in association with the amount of perceived concentration-demanding work. The study was conducted by two surveys responded during the spring 2024 by 450 respectively 320 employees in one Swedish municipality. The results were analyzed by analysis of variance, correlation- and regression analysis. The results indicate that employees with a high amount of perceived concentration-demanding tasks reported lower perceived productivity and experienced poorer perceived physical and psychosocial working environment. Notably, regression analyses revealed that particularly lack of privacy and dissatisfaction with work premises were significantly associated with lower perceived productivity. These findings underscore the importance of considering work task requirements when implementing public sector activity-based workplaces to mitigate potential productivity losses. Further qualitative and quantitative research is needed, particularly those with a longitudinal design, to increase knowledge about how different concentration-demanding work tasks are affected by work in activity-based workplaces.

Many public organizations are striving to develop sustainable workplaces with a focus on employee engagement. Different models are used in different countries and contexts to measure employee engagement. In Swedish public sector workplaces, a model consisting of three components is used: motivation, leadership and strategic management. There is a need to enhance understanding of the model and its relation to employee advocacy. This study aimsto provide greater understanding of employee engagement dynamics in the public sector, including team climate and work-life balance components,and how this relates to aspects of employee advocacy. Statistical analyses of key components were carried out using survey results from 6020 employees and managers in municipal workplaces.The findings highlight significant relations between the components investigated and the employee-advocacy-related measurement employee Net Promotor Score. Based on OLS regressions, motivation emerged as the most influential component, followed by leadership. It was possible to classify the participants into three categories: Promoters, Passives and Detractors.The promoters exhibited higher scores on all components, and managers had higher scores on several components compared to employees. The results confirm that it is important to use a multi-dimensional approach when studying employee engagement in public sector workplaces.