The debate surrounding remote working arrangements continues to rage on between employers and employees. Were remote work policies nothing more than a mere business band-aid applied in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that have long outlived their usefulness? Or, are remote and hybrid work-from-home policies here to stay for good? Ask 10 executives and 10 employees and you’re likely to get a multitude of different answers and perspectives.
It’s well documented that some of the biggest companies and most well-known executives believe their workers should be reporting to a physical workplace day in and day out, but would spending just a few days per week working from home really be all that bad? A compelling new study, conducted by one of the nation’s leading work-from-home researchers, set out to answer that question. Read on to learn more about what they uncovered.
Everyone wins with hybrid working arrangements
Published earlier this month in the scientific journal Nature, the new report concludes hybrid work schedules benefit both employees and employers alike. More specifically, head researcher Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University, calls hybrid work schedules a “win-win-win” for all parties in terms of productivity, performance, and retention.
When employees are permitted to work from the comfort of their homes for just two days per week, the study found those workers remained just as productive and as likely to be promoted as their fully-on-site colleagues. Moreover, employees enjoying a hybrid work schedule were also far less likely to seek employment elsewhere or simply quit. Researchers recorded a 33% reduction in resignations among workers who switched from a full-time office schedule to a hybrid approach. It’s worth noting that women, employees in non-managerial roles, and employees with especially long commutes were deemed the least likely to resign following a shift to hybrid work.
“The results are clear: Hybrid work is a win-win-win for employee productivity, performance, and retention,” says Bloom, who is the William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), in a university release.
Hybrid work: The new normal?
To reach these conclusions, the research team assessed over 1,600 employees working for the Chinese company Trip.com, considered one of the largest online travel agencies globally. Regarding the lower rate of resignations among hybrid workers at Trip, study authors estimate all that reduced turnover saved the company millions of dollars.
Just five years ago a hybrid work schedule would have sounded like something out of a dream to most full-time employees. Today, roughly 100 million workers all over the world adhere to hybrid schedules that only call for a commute a few times weekly. Such employees come from a variety of industries; lawyers, software engineers, marketers, and accountants just to name a few professions.
The argument against hybrid work
The meteoric rise of hybrid schedules in recent years hasn’t gone unchallenged. A number of high-profile executives and business leaders like Elon Musk and Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPMorgan Chase) continue to speak out against what they perceive to be the dangers of hybrid work. Those firmly against hybrid schedules usually argue that multiple areas key to organizational wellbeing (employee training, mentoring, innovation, and company culture) fall by the wayside when workers aren’t in the office five days per week.
Prof. Bloom, in response to such criticisms, explains many critics mistakenly believe a hybrid work schedule is the same as a fully remote working arrangement. On a related note, most relevant research up until now had focused primarily on either employees who weren’t required to come into an office or on a specific type of job (customer support, data entry). This newest project, on the other hand, represents one of the few randomized control trials to analyze hybrid work schedules. As such, researchers stress their findings offer key lessons for countless companies and multinational organizations like Trip.com.
“This study offers powerful evidence for why 80% of U.S. companies now offer some form of remote work,” Prof. Bloom adds, “and for why the remaining 20% of firms that don’t are likely paying a price.”
Research methodology
Another particular strength of this project was its use of a randomized control trial, considered the gold standard in such research initiatives. The nature of the project allowed Prof. Bloom and his team to confirm the benefits they observed stemmed from Trip.com’s hybrid work experiment and not another factor.
Numerous datasets, such as worker surveys, performance reviews, and promotions, were used by study authors over the course of this initiative. For example, Trip.com’s performance review policy is quite extensive; including evaluations in relation to innovation, leadership, and mentoring. Importantly, researchers also compared the quality and amount of computer code written by hybrid workers against code composed by full-time in-office employees.
Hybrid work concerns are ill-founded
Another illuminating finding: While, on average, managers predicted a hybrid work schedule would hamper workforce productivity, the vast majority had changed their minds by the end of the study.
All in all, study authors believe their work should put to bed any lingering worries among corporate decision makers and executives regarding the risks of hybrid work schedules.
“If managed right, letting employees work from home two or three days a week still gets you the level of mentoring, culture-building, and innovation that you want,” Prof. Bloom concludes. “From an economic policymaking standpoint, hybrid work is one of the few instances where there aren’t major trade-offs with clear winners and clear losers. There are almost only winners.”
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