Hybrid working has substantially reduced daily office attendance across large organisational portfolios, yet the spatial and behavioural characteristics that distinguish well-performing hybrid work environments remain poorly understood, particularly in the public sector, where real estate decisions carry significant financial and societal implications.
This study examines what layout and use characteristics contribute to the effective use of hybrid work environments in the Netherlands Police real estate portfolio. It integrates three data sources: building-level occupancy measurements from Measuremen across twelve office buildings; floor-plan analysis using the framework of Ruiz de Castañeda Altuna (2025); and employee perception data from the Werk in Transitie (WiT) Monitor survey, available for three buildings (n = 376 respondents). Seven hypotheses were tested through descriptive statistics, Pearson and Spearman correlations, one-way ANOVA, and hierarchical regression analysis.
The findings demonstrate that well-performing hybrid work environments are not distinguished by a particular layout typology but by the degree to which they provide adequate privacy, acoustic comfort, physical comfort, and collaborative infrastructure. Office layout typology and workspace ratio did not predict occupancy or perceived effectiveness. Privacy satisfaction, workplace comfort, and meeting space availability were the strongest predictors of perceived effectiveness, explaining 68.7% of the variance in the regression model. Targeted spatial quality improvements within existing layouts are likely to yield greater gains than typological redesign. The study contributes an empirically grounded analytical framework that integrates occupancy, floor-plan, and survey data and is applicable to other Police buildings as WiT coverage expands. ... Read more