You Can't Have a Remote Work Debate Without Remote Work Research
Missing in the broader national clash over the forced returns to the traditional office is a simple look at what quite a bit of research is showing us
Publisher’s Riff
The office-space, “knowledge-worker” and 9-5 white collar middle working class is having an understandable fit over the acceleration of mandates from employers to return back to “normal.”
It really isn’t so unbelievable once we come to the realization that traditional “9-5” work has always been very restrictive on human movement and all about control. Hence, it’s not all that surprising to witness a last-lap of pandemic wave of business owners, managers and employers demand the return back to the physical space. Worse yet is that the pandemic is not even officially over and only 40 percent of the American public has been fully vaccinated. That’s sparked not only debate, but an endless news cycle of reporting on that debate: cruel bosses who don’t know any other way to make their positions relevant than to, well, boss and micro-manage other people pitted against powerless employees who discovered new value and a little sanity in “WFH” or “working from home.” Mainstream news media, in its typical group-think and intellectually lazy way, pokes fun at the conversation, and some of us laugh along. But, it’s not funny, there are some real equity, economic and environmental consequences to this clash that must be thoroughly unpacked.
Right now, as far as the popular narrative, the micro-managers and irrational bosses are winning. Op-eds from career theorists and professional workplace consultants abound on the gospel of cubicle theology. Those resistant to it seem portrayed as unreasonable and simply showing their laziness.
What’s missing from the broader public discourse is a simple fact: Remote working on a grander scale actually works. It didn’t come as a surprise to those in the “gig” and virtual economy who were already doing it and organizations that have been building entire operations around agility and cloud-based operations. It seemed to come as a shock to belligerant, unimaginative and inefficient corporatists who can’t imagine a world without a sea of colorless cubicles with their sleek open window office taking up a quarter floor and housing numerous pieces of expensive designer furniture. For some, it is the escape from miserable and sometimes lonely home lives - including rambunctious kids they can’t handle - but that’s another tale for someone else’s column. Ultimately, we can not have any debate about remote work without presenting the evidence of how it worked. Of course, true to form, corporate media - which represents the corporate mindset - won’t do that. But, the evidence was always there. Prior to pandemic, a Stanford study was showing that it’s something employers should explore for increased productivity …
A rising share of employees now regularly engage in working from home (WFH), but there are concerns this can lead to ‘‘shirking from home.’’ We report the results of a WFH experiment at Ctrip, a 16,000-employee, NASDAQ-listedChinese travel agency. Call center employees who volunteered to WFH were randomly assigned either to work from home or in the office for nine months. Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9% was from work-ing more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days) and 4% from more callsper minute (attributed to a quieter and more convenient working environment). Home workers also reported improved work satisfaction, and their attrition rate halved, but their promotion rate conditional on performance fell. Due to the success of the experiment, Ctrip rolled out the option to WFH to the whole firmand allowed the experimental employees to reselect between the home and office. Interestingly, over half of them switched, which led to the gainsfrom WFH almost doubling to 22%. This highlights the benefits of learning and selection effects when adopting modern management practices like WFH.
University of Queensland economics professor John Quiggin caught on to this mid-way through …
The average worker spends an hour on commuting every work day. Remarkably, this is a figure which has remained more or less stable since Neolithic times, a finding known as Marchetti’s Law.
If working from home eliminated an hour of commuting, without changing time spent on work or reducing production, the result would be equivalent to a 13% increase in productivity (assuming a 38-hour working work).
If half the workforce achieved such a gain, it would be equivalent to a 6.5% increase in productivity for the labour force as a whole.
A September Mercer HR survey of 800 companies also showed …
Ninety-four percent of 800 employers surveyed by Mercer, an HR and workplace benefits consulting irm, said that productivity was the same as or higher than it was before the pandemic, even with their employees working remotely.
"Historically, there has been a perception in many organizations that if employees were not seen, they weren't working—or at least not as effectively as they would in the office," said Lauren Mason, a principal and senior consultant at Mercer. "And in most cases, this forced experiment around remote working as a result of COVID-19 has shattered those perceptions to prove that most employees can actually be trusted to get their work done from home. As organizations are thinking toward the longer term, they are looking at how they can execute flexibility at scale to deliver on the value of flexible working, like enhanced performance and productivity, a better employee experience, an expanded talent pool, and, in some cases, potentially reduced costs."
By December, a Prodoscore study showed …
Looking at data from May to August, Prodoscore assessed over 105 million data points collected from 30,000 U.S.-based Prodoscore users, the same sample size as a report released earlier this year evaluating the March and April timeframe.
While productivity levels decreased slightly (3%) in May - August compared to early in the pandemic, when measured against pre-pandemic levels they remained strong.
The data revealed a 5% increase in productivity comparing May - August 2019 to May - August 2020, challenging the assumption by business leaders that employees working from home are less productive than when working on-site in an office.
Of course, it all depends on the management mindset, culture and the industry. Are they all about striving towards efficiency to begin with? Here’s Harvard Business Review …
The companies that are the very best at managing scarce time, talent and energy — that is, the average of the top quartile of companies in our research — are 40% more productive than the rest (the average of the remaining three quartiles). This enormous productivity gap is a key source of competitive advantage for the very best companies.
Covid-19 has affected all three drivers of workforce productivity — time, talent and energy. But the best have felt the impact very differently from the rest.
The productivity gap between the best and the rest has widened during the pandemic. We estimate that the best companies — those that were already effective in managing the time, talent, and energy of their teams — have grown 5% to 8% more productive over the last 12 months. Additional work time, access to new star talent and continued engagement have bolstered productivity at these companies. Most organizations, however, have experienced a net reduction in productivity of 3% to 6% (or more) due to inefficient collaboration, wasteful ways of working, and an overall decline in employee engagement.
Meanwhile, a Canva survey of 2,000 Americans nationwide revealed …
50 percent say remote work has improved their productivity;
76 percent say their relationships with co-workers are stronger as a result of the shift to work-from-home during 2020;
75 percent have a new-found confidence in their role and position within a team;
Almost half (46 percent) say remote work has improved collaboration with colleagues;
52 percent want a flexible work-home arrangement in 2021, and 30 percent want to continue working from home full-time indefinitely.
This was the catch, however: it all depends on the management of the organization. A good blend of culture, innovation, ideation and the type of leadership that’s more concerned about quality outcome than meandering process is what makes that work. It’s also the type of leadership that inspires.
Naturally, as a February 2021 Great Place to Work study found, the lack of commute time provides demonstrable benefit ….
As a result, working from home “will stick” according to researchers in a new April 2021 study: 20 percent of employers will adjust to it versus the small 5 percent who were doing so before pandemic.
First, employees will enjoy large benefits from greater remote work, especially those withhigherearnings. Second, the shift to WFH will directly reducespending in major city centers byat least 5-10 percent relative to the pre-pandemic situation. Third, our data onemployer plans and the relative productivity of WFH imply a 5 percent productivity boost in the post-pandemic economy due to re-optimized working arrangements. Only one-fifth of this productivity gain will show up in conventional productivity measures, because they do not capture the time savings from less commuting.
The stress of working, of course, will never go away. But, at least you can stress out and cope in the comfort and privacy of your own home. On a more serious note, the public debate is not complete without a comprehensive overview of the research. There is plenty of it showing this does, indeed, work. Many employers persistent on pushing employees back into on-site situations, even in the face of abundant evidence showing the experiment worked, are probably more concerned about control than productivity.