JLL unveils new priorities of Belgian employees in its '2025 Employee Preferences Barometer'
Brussels, October 8, 2025 – JLL, a leading real estate services firm, today publishes the exclusive results of its 2025 Employee Preferences Barometer for Belgium, revealing a major transformation in professional expectations across the country.
Global insights with local precision for decision-makers
This benchmark study, conducted in June 2025 among 8,709 employees across 31 markets worldwide, including 110 in Belgium, perfectly illustrates JLL's philosophy: "Worldwide insight to local precision." This approach enables Belgian specificities to be contextualized within a globalized world where work and our relationship to it have undergone profound transformations accelerated by the pandemic. This study therefore provides local employers with a nuanced understanding of both global and local challenges.
"JLL's 2025 Employee Preferences Barometer provides Belgian employers with essential insights to adapt their HR and real estate strategies to the new realities of the labor market," notes Jan-Maarten Van Damme, Lead Consultant Belgium Work Dynamics at JLL. "This data enriches our strategic consulting approach, enabling companies to transform their workspaces into genuine performance drivers."
Work-life balance: The absolute priority for Belgian employees
In Belgium, work-life balance has emerged as workers' number one priority, with 68% placing this aspect at the heart of their professional concerns in 2025. This trend, already observed in 2022, surpassed salary considerations at the time; 62% prioritized work-life balance versus 44% their salary. Today this gap is widening to 68% versus 48%, with salary remaining the second priority ahead of meaningful work, wellness promotion, or recognition. This evolution reveals a profound shift in professional expectations, where quality of life takes precedence over traditionally financial motivations.
"The widening gap between work-life balance and other priorities reflects a new maturity in the Belgian labor market. Employees no longer negotiate their well-being against salary," analyzes Jan-Maarten Van Damme. "We are witnessing an irreversible shift: work-life balance is no longer a 'nice-to-have' but a selection criterion as decisive as salary. Companies that ignore this condemn themselves to losing their best talent."
Return-to-office policies find mostly favorable reception in Belgium
In Belgium, 72% of employees are subject to structured office presence policies (well above the European average of 64% and global average of 66%). Despite this employer demand which could be perceived as an injunction, this measure receives a positive reception. Indeed, 63% of Belgian employees express favorable sentiment regarding the obligation to work a fixed number of days in the office, compared to only 37% who view it negatively.
In practice, Belgian companies require an average of 3.4 days of weekly office presence. Nevertheless, the challenge persists in winning over the 37% of employees expressing reservations, with main concerns focusing on quality of life (61%), employer disengagement from hybrid work (50%), and organizing daily life around hybrid work (39%).
Flexibility priorities are evolving from location to time management. While hybrid work arrangements have reached equilibrium and are widely available, the survey reveals that access to flexible hours now constitutes workers' primary preference for improving their quality of life. The 4-day week ranks second, with a significant gap between expressed preferences and current access to this form of flexibility (42% desire it and 14% already have access). This shift from place to time marks a paradigm change in professional expectations.
High expectations for office experience
Belgian employees maintain high standards for their work environment: 59% believe their office experience could be significantly improved, with priority demands focusing notably on workspaces offering outdoor access (41%), acoustic comfort (37%), 'green' elements including proximity to plants (37%), modern design (34%), and thermal comfort (28%).
"Every trip to the office must now be justified by an experience that exceeds what the employee can accomplish from home. Workspaces must offer concrete added value to merit the commute," specifies Jan-Maarten Van Damme. "These high expectations underscore the crucial importance of a thoughtful workplace strategy to create truly attractive work environments."
"For our future headquarters at Tour & Taxis, we collaborated with JLL's Work Dynamics team to jointly design user journeys through immersive workshops bringing together diverse user profiles. These sessions help us better understand how our colleagues work today and envision how they want to work tomorrow. By integrating their ideas into design, facilities, technology, culture, and workplace experience, we are shaping a human-centered workspace that will inspire the Proximus group and its partners to connect, collaborate, and innovate in the new headquarters," shares Margaret Denis, Director Workspace Transformation at Proximus Group.
Workplace well-being: A persistent challenge
The survey reveals that 32% of Belgian employees feel they suffer from burnout and 25% feel isolated at work, though these figures remain below global averages of 39% and 35% respectively.
Even though 54% of employees declare their company is not an 'ideal workplace,' only 15% are considering changing employers within the next year. The main reasons for taking the leap are, in order of importance: better salary, access to flexible hours, and career advancement opportunities.
Conclusion
JLL's 2025 barometer marks a turning point for the Belgian labor market: Belgian employees confirm their priorities by placing work-life balance before salary, with this trend already noted in 2022's previous study now amplifying.
In an economy where "every trip to the office must be justified by tangible added value," Belgian companies that fail to quickly adapt their HR and real estate strategies risk losing their talent to more agile employers.
Transformation is no longer an option, it's a competitive survival necessity that calls for a holistically reimagined real estate approach covering portfolio analysis, workplace strategy, change management, and service optimization to create professional ecosystems combining flexibility, environmental excellence, and authentic well-being.
"The data from our barometer confirms the evolution we observe in the market," notes Sebastien Giordano, Country Lead JLL Belux. "Organizations now recognize that their offices constitute a strategic performance lever, requiring an integrated approach that takes into account employees' real expectations."
This evolution is reflected in transformation projects recently conducted with companies like Proximus, Engie, Bayer, Freshfields, and Orange, which illustrate the diversity of sectoral challenges and the need for tailored approaches integrating urbanization, diversity & inclusion, and job-specific requirements.
About JLL
For over 200 years, JLL (NYSE: JLL), a leading global commercial real estate and investment management company, has helped clients buy, build, occupy, manage and invest in a variety of commercial, industrial, hotel, residential and retail properties. A Fortune 500® company with annual revenue of $20.8 billion and operations in over 80 countries around the world, our more than 106,000 employees bring the power of a global platform combined with local expertise. Driven by our purpose to shape the future of real estate for a better world, we help our clients, people and communities SEE A BRIGHTER WAYSM. JLL is the brand name, and a registered trademark, of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. For further information, visit jll.com.