Today, approximately 80% of knowledge workers prefer a hybrid work model, combining onsite and remote work. During and in the wake of the pandemic, there were indications that employees experienced improved well-being, work-life balance (WLB), and productivity while working from home (WFH). There were also reports on downsides, such as increased loneliness and challenges in segmenting work and non-work activities. To overcome WFH challenges, the private sector has been using coworking spaces (CWSs) for decades, since they can provide office infrastructure and social interactions during remote work. Therefore, with collectively gained remote work experiences, followed by strong requests for hybrid work, it became important to reinvest employees' experiences of hybrid work and supportive practices for sustainable work across the office, home, and CWSs. Additionally, since public actors in northern Sweden have traditionally followed the onsite norm in which work has been formally conducted at the office, and therefore, not utilizing hybrid work as a way to handle challenges in recruiting and retaining talent, this was an overlooked group within hybrid work research. Furthermore, since sustainable work involves incorporating sustainability principles into work practices, industrial and organizational psychological research with a promotive approach helps deepen understanding of supporting practices for decent work, employee well-being, and performance, and therefore, how to foster thriving individuals, organizations, and societies.
Amidst these aspects, this thesis aimed to qualitatively explore employees’ lived experiences of work across the office, home, and CWSs, and gather suggestions on supportive practices for sustainable hybrid work. The thesis is based on four studies, with a main (yet not exclusive) interest in public employees' perceptions and suggestions for hybrid work. With a focus on supportive practices for employee well-being and performance, the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) theory was used to explore factors that may facilitate (or hinder) sustainable hybrid work.
Study I aimed to explore employee perceptions of work conditions when using a hybrid work model and how they wanted work to be organized to support collaboration, WLB, and well-being. Thus, the intention was to obtain an initial understanding of hybrid work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thirty-three participants completed the online survey. Reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) was used, and the results indicated that participants appreciated combining WFH and working at the office, since they could tailor work settings to individual and team needs. In general, social interactions and collaborations were supported onsite, whereas WFH supported WLB and well-being. However, within this heterogeneous group, there were various perceptions and suggestions for supportive practices. For some, remote work mainly offered benefits such as saved time and reduced stress, while others encountered WFH challenges related to loneliness and having a hard time creating habits that supported WLB. Building on these insights, Study II explored via an online survey how hybrid work can be designed to support sustainable work among a niche group of 70 public employees in a sparsely populated area of northern Sweden. The results of the RTA indicated that key-supportive practices were trust-based leadership, flexibility, reasonable demands, clear policies, and adequate physical conditions. Within this niche sample, perceptions of supportive practices were more homogeneous. As in Study I, participants held that combining onsite and remote work provided them with increased resources and added value (compared to office and remote work separately), yet WFH challenges persisted. Related to the WFH challenges expressed in Studies I and II, Study III aimed to investigate whether adding a third workplace, a local CWS, could help address WFH challenges and maintain the benefits of reduced commutes during remote work. This one-year evaluation project with 15 public employees living in a sparsely populated area of northern Sweden used online surveys twice and interviews once. The content analysis showed that participants who had adequate pre- and onboarding processes, combined with CWSs having different work areas and enough members, used their CWSs more and perceived them to provide added value to WFH and the office. Notably, besides the goal of addressing WFH challenges, an improved understanding of their service users' needs and cross-organizational learning emerged. Building on this, Study IV explored whether a new CWS concept, called Samverket, could be used to improve Swedish public sector services. Two community-centered CWSs with one hub in Östersund and another in Stockholm were tested by employees from several public actors within these regions. This one-year evaluation project with, in total, 101 survey respondents (over three occasions) demonstrated via RTA that community-centered CWSs, when actively facilitated and supported by member organizations, have the potential to bridge the gaps within and between public actors, thereby strengthening innovation and improving public services.
All in all, contributes the thesis with complementary perspectives on employees' newly gained experiences of hybrid work in an early post-pandemic period (Studies I and II), and (to my knowledge) unique insights into addressing WFH challenges via local CWSs for public employees in northern Sweden (Study III), and addressing deficiencies in public services by using a new community-centered CWS concept designated for cross-organizational networking, learning and collaboration within and between public actors (Study IV). The studies illustrate how work across the office, home, and CWSs can meet different needs in ways that neither onsite nor remote work alone seems to achieve, and therefore, support sustainable work in ways that benefit individuals, organizations, and society. At the same time, it became evident that resources that empower one employee may inadvertently create demands for another; thus, achieving supportive practices within hybrid work seems complex. Therefore, consistent with JD-R theory, the findings underscore the extended importance of personal resources to be able to optimize the resources within different workplaces, and therefore, thrive in hybrid work settings. The studies offer implications for practitioners, such as implementing hybrid work with intentionality, building trust rather than control, providing balanced autonomy, ensuring clear communication and adequate ICTs, and most importantly, monitoring and continuously adapting the hybrid work design. Future research should explore how hybrid work arrangements can be refined and adapted across different contexts and over time.