Unmet demand for flexibility: remote work preferences of office workers in Poland

Purpose Remote-work preferences are usually explained either by what jobs technically permit or by workers' household circumstances. This study proposes a third reading, in which preferences reflect a worker's position in an ongoing negotiation over flexibility, and tests it against a needs account using original survey data on office workers in Poland. Design/methodology/approach An original survey of 639 office workers in Polish cities of over 100,000 inhabitants, fielded in June 2024 once post-pandemic attitudes had stabilized. Ordinal logistic regression relates stated preferences to socio-demographic, employment-related, and experiential factors, entered jointly, allowing their relative weights to be compared directly; a partial proportional odds model then tests whether the same factors govern the move from office-based to hybrid work and from hybrid to fully remote work. Findings Preferences align with position within the employment relationship rather than household need: ownership and tenure predict strongly, while gender, education, and children do not; age is the sole demographic exception. Lived experience, especially perceived gains in non-work-life quality, is the strongest predictor, but its effect is asymmetric. It determines whether workers want any remote work far more than whether they want all of it, which makes hybrid work a distinct settlement rather than a stepping stone. The apparent gender gap is fully explained by differences in reported experience, and unmet demand is concentrated almost entirely among fully on-site workers. Originality/value Where prior Polish studies examine single channels in isolation, this study models three channels jointly: the socio-demographic, the employment-related, and the experiential. This provides novel evidence from Central and Eastern Europe. Theoretically, it turns negotiated flexibility from a framing device into a testable claim and finds evidence consistent with it: demand tracks the discretion workers hold more closely than it tracks their household needs. In a dependent market economy without sectoral bargaining, the resulting shortfall is best read as the residue of an unresolved negotiation.