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Claudia Senik

Work from home and subjective wellbeing

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Encyclopedia of Happiness, Quality of Life and Subjective Wellbeing (book cover)

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Claudia Senik. Work from home and subjective wellbeing. Hilke Brockmann; Roger Fernandez-Urbano. Encyclopedia of Happiness, Quality of Life and Subjective Wellbeing, Edward Elgar Publishing, pp.449-454, 2024, 978-1-80088-966-8. ⟨10.4337/9781800889675.00071⟩. ⟨halshs-04815738⟩

Topic: Well-Being at Work
Claudia Senik
Book section in:
Encyclopedia of Happiness, Quality of Life and Subjective Wellbeing
Edward Elgar Publishing
July 2024

Everyone expects telework to ‘stick’, but will this make workers happier? On the one hand, work from home (WFH) is clearly desired by a majority of workers, as evidenced by their willingness to pay for this arrangement. This finding is supported by all choice experiments, either real, on a recruitment platform for example, or hypothetical, via surveys. But, on the other hand, working entirely from home seems to be detrimental to their life satisfaction and their mental health, as shown by difference-in-differences studies based on the COVID-19 natural experience. Is hybrid work the optimal solution, the ideal compromise between the pros (saving commuting time) and the cons (loosing social integration) of WFH? This seems to be the aspiration of most workers worldwide. Does the demand for hybrid work also reflect a trade-off between life satisfaction and job satisfaction?