Dr. Sandra Milanovic Zbiljic

by Dr. Sandra Milanovic Zbiljic, Faculty of Economics, University of Niš - secondment to PARE, Estonia

Quote: “Working side by side with HR practitioners at PARE and researchers at TalTech showed me how much richer a research question becomes when you look at it from both the city’s and the employer’s side.” (exposure to 3I)

What was your secondment challenge / question:

Most discussions of the 15-minute city focus on where people live. But many of us spend the largest part of our waking day at work, and the neighbourhood around the workplace also shapes how we feel, move and perform. My secondment at PARE in Tallinn, Estonia, within Work Package 3 (Mobility – Building Resilient, Restorative & Regenerative Transport Systems), contributed to Innovate3X-7: Improving Resilience of Multifunctional Neighbourhoods within the 15-Minute City Concept: Workplaces Perspective.

The question was simple: can the area within a 15-minute radius of a workplace – its walkability, green spaces, safety, local services and mobility options – make a difference to key HR outcomes such as employee well-being, stress, engagement and turnover? For PARE, whose network brings together HR professionals from Estonian businesses and public organisations, this offered a new lens on employee well-being and retention. For SMAR3TS, it builds a bridge between urban planning and human resource management that has rarely been crossed.

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I started with a scoping review of the literature linking urban planning and work-related outcomes. Based on it, I developed a theoretical and conceptual framework – a theory of change – that sets out how the dimensions of the 15-minute city may contribute to outcomes at work.

Building on the framework, I co-designed an HR-focused employee survey together with PARE's HR professional Maria Kütt. The questionnaire combines validated and adapted measures of how employees rate their workplace neighbourhood (walkability, green spaces, safety, local services and their use, environmental quality, social and community life, and mobility options) with measures of turnover intention, well-being, job satisfaction, perceived stress, absenteeism, work engagement, productivity and workload. We adjusted it to the Tallinn context, and kept it practical for organisations to use.

PARE then shared the questionnaire through its network of companies and public organisations. Alongside this, I visited Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) twice to exchange ideas with researchers working on urban mobility and resilience, and met with Liis Ojamäe, leader of WP7, to explore links between our work packages. The highlight was a research seminar at TalTech on 1 October 2026, where I presented my institution – FEUN, and the framework and the questionnaire to researchers and practitioners.

The secondment produced two tangible tools: a theory-of-change framework connecting 15-minute city dimensions with work-related outcomes, and a context-adapted employee questionnaire that organisations and researchers can apply. Data collection started among Estonian organisations through PARE's network.

Equally valuable was the feedback from practitioners. The seminar discussion at TalTech helped refine the instrument and identify possible interventions – for example, partnerships between employers and the city, with Ülemiste City as a promising setting. This moves Innovate3X-7 forward by bringing the workplace perspective into the conversation on resilient, multifunctional neighbourhoods, and it strengthened collaboration between the Faculty of Economics, University of Niš, PARE and TalTech.

The next step is a journal paper on the relationship between workplace neighbourhood characteristics and work-related outcomes, based on the data collected in Tallinn, together with a presentation of the framework and first results at an international scientific conference.

Back home, the same study will be carried out in Niš, Serbia, using the questionnaire developed during the secondment, so that results from the two cities can be compared. I also look forward to continuing the conversation with WP7 on joint activities and publications within SMAR3TS.