The Productivity Implications of Working from Home Across 150,000 Employees by @ttunguz

Are we extra productive on the workplace or at dwelling? Researchers from the College of Chicago printed information on the productiveness developments throughout 150,000 staff of a big IT companies firm to reply that query. It’s the primary time I’ve seen evaluation on the identical enterprise by way of the interval. The enterprise had deployed software program to observe worker habits earlier than COVID and used it all through.

Quoting from the paper: WFH diminished whole commuting time amongst US employees by greater than 60 million hours. So, did we accomplish extra by commuting to our kitchen counter as a substitute of the workplace park?

Staff completed the identical quantity however spent 2 hours extra per day (7h vs 5h) on the workplace. So regardless of a discount in commute hours, this firm’s productiveness declined (defining productiveness as output per hour.)

Let’s get extra granular. When working from dwelling, staff spend 5h per week extra working, extra after hours, with fewer focus hours, extra conferences with managers, and extra time on e-mail. However that’s not the ultimate phrase.

Right here’s the tough half: the usual deviations on these figures are substantial. For instance, focus hours have customary deviations of 9.2 and 9.9. What does that imply? In brief, the info isn’t sturdy sufficient to make a case that WFO is superior to WFH (working-from-home) or vice-versa.

The analysis delves into different matters together with the influence of kids on males’s and girls’s productiveness working from dwelling, variations for managers and particular person contributors’ productiveness, and fluctuations in inside and exterior assembly volumes which are value exploring.

That is the primary report of undoubtedly many on the topic. The tradeoffs between totally different environments shall be debated typically within the subsequent few years by executives and other people leaders globally. The information isn’t clear; there’s simply an excessive amount of variance to attract broad conclusions on whether or not the workplace or dwelling are extra productive from this evaluation.

Relatively than asking broadly which venue is best, we would ask which is best when and for whom? In brief, the optimum reply is nuanced, and sure team-specific moderately than a blanket coverage. Each methods can work. However they may require totally different administration strategies and types.