Surveying the Twin Transition at the workplace: From concepts to measures

The Twin Transition is a cornerstone of EU policy, driving structural changes in European labour markets. However, a critical gap exists between policy and empirical evidence due to the lack of measurement instruments. This study addresses this gap by developing and testing the Twin Transition Survey, designed to measure synergies between digitalisation and sustainability at the workplace. Our results, based on experts' review, cognitive testing and a pilot survey, yield clear insights. First, the aim of capturing synergies should not be conflated with operational measurement. Workers are likely to perceive the green and digital transitions as two distinct phenomena because of their differential tangible impacts. Therefore, survey instruments should treat them as operationally separate to reduce cognitive burden and improve response validity. Second, some indicators used in the literature, e.g., those targeting company-level practices or perceived environmental impacts, can increase nonresponse rates and are prone to acquiescence bias, especially among frontline workers, potentially leading to overestimation. Data reliability is higher when based on factual, individual-level indicators grounded in workers’ direct experience with their daily tasks. These should be complemented with more generalizable measures of “soft greening”, whose reliability can be checked by segmenting responses by supervisory role. Finally, the study presents the questionnaire of the survey as a validated tool to measure the impact of the Twin Transition at the workplace.