They can all fuck right off. Here’s the article if anyone’s interested: https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminlaker/2023/08/02/working-from-home-leads-to-decreased-productivity-research-reveals/
Here is a link to the actual study (PDF via GDrive)
One of the authors of this paper is from the Chicago School and the Hoover Institution. Both are pro-business, anti-worker think-tanks that have been this way for decades. They also don’t do any research of their own, but cite other papers that show the 5-20% reduction.
However, the methodology mentioned in the papers is suspect. First, they show that remote workers have the same productivity, but work longer hours. So the net output doesn’t go down, they just spend more time working. Which raises the question: How many more breaks were they taking throughout the day? Being remote means a much more flexible schedule, so it’s not uncommon to take longer breaks if you’re a salaried worker.
Another study was IT professionals shifting to remote work at one company at the start of the pandemic. This one showed an 18% reduction in productivity. But considering the timing of this and that company culture and procedures can contribute to this, it doesn’t seem to be a valid data point.
Then they bring up some common criticisms of WFH, which I’ve seen and refuted since I started working from home 2009: People can’t communicate, working in groups is harder, and people can’t control themselves. Yawn.
Honestly, the fact that they cherry picked hybrid work as being equally productive shows me this isn’t about productivity, it’s about keeping offices open. Which makes sense considering one of the authors is affiliated with groups that want to prop up the commercial rental business.
Then they bring up some common criticisms of WFH, which I’ve seen and refuted since I started working from home 2009: People can’t communicate, working in groups is harder, and people can’t control themselves. Yawn.
Exactly. I work for a global company, so the way I communicate with the people I work with everyday is via zoom. What’s the point of commuting to an office just to get on zoom anyway to talk to people?
Don’t forget that Forbes and The Economist were all in favor of outsourcing jobs, which leads to me having meetings with people all over the world even when I’m in an office.
So if working remotely hurts group work, a lot of it is their fault for sending jobs overseas. Unless they also want those jobs to eventually move back here so we can have happy group work fun time.
They want whatever keeps their property value highest and overhead lowest, they’ll claim they want onsite workers and then turn around and hire remote people in India because it saves money.
Everything that falls out of their mouths is a piece of shit intended to save some 7 figure earner enough money to buy another vacation home.
Thank you for the summary! This is the investigation I was looking for.
Disallowing remote with when it’s possible is anti-worker.
If the source of the article is suspect, where is the research by tech firms with a vested interest in cloud and communication platforms publishing counter studies?
Also, with both studies cited, the best argument is that workers are happy to work more than 8 hours a day. Does that mean you should expect workers to be on call for longer than an 8 hour day because they are working remote?
If the source of the article is suspect, where is the research by tech firms with a vested interest in cloud and communication platforms publishing counter studies?
Pick one. Otherwise you aren’t better than alt-right people on Facebook that say to “do your own research”.
Right, but you’re no better than alt-right people on Facebook ignoring the research that’s literally one click away because you’re afraid it will disagree with you
I’ve provided sources from reputable sources of journalism, you haven’t.
FYI, none of your posts in this thread have any links
And because jfc you’re lazy: Here is a study by the Harvard Business Review showing increased productivity.
It took three clicks from Google so I can see why you’d have trouble getting to it.
I’ve been posting the Economist link in several comments. I left it as presented to show where the link came from in case people argued with the source.
This source just states that there is a disagreement over whether work from home is more or less productive and provides survey information to show the difference in opinion.
That isn’t making the argument that remote work is productive, just that workers view it as more productive and the study isn’t conclusive. The closest this study gets to saying if productivity increases is “In theory, both sides could be right[.]”
Science. Is not about winning. Fuckface.
You and people like you are literally inhibiting the progress of the human race for personal gain. Congratulations.
So there is no scientific evidence that remote work leads to more productivity?
Ignores salient points made, what-about-isms to reassert bad point, doubles down on the science is a competition thing while illustrating complete lack of knowledge of scientific process
At least you are consistent.
Ignores salient points made
I’ve responded to them, not ignored them.
what-about-isms to reassert bad point
I’ve said that, if you want to argue the studies presented, present other studies. The only one presented I had comments on and quoted the text.
doubles down on the science is a competition thing while illustrating complete lack of knowledge of scientific process
Science is about presenting data in a way that can be reviewed and verified. I’ve asked for studies that back up the assertions made while providing references to my assertions. Where is the data to back up the claim that remote work is more productive?
I swear, when I’m called into the office I get fuck all nothing done. Like once in a while there’s a reason for me to be on site, and I do that thing and nothing else all day.
Distractions, interruptions, noise, general discomfort. Seems every time I actually start making progress on something, a person stops by my desk and that basically erases whatever I did. So it always ends with “I’ll do it tomorrow when I’m at home”.
I recognise that I’m probably a minority here, but I have a much harder time staying focused at home. At my office I share a room with a couple others, on a floor with a couple dozen more. Pretty much everything I do (outside 1-3 meetings a week) is individual work.
For me, something about physically “going to work” helps me “switch on” much more. Taking breaks with other people, rather than alone, also helps me structure the breaks, and it’s not uncommon that we get good ideas or resolve something that’s been bugging someone during a break. Lastly, I really appreciate the option of “just dropping by” when I want to ask someone about something, and the fact that they can do the same to me. In my experience it’s never gotten to the point that it happens maybe once or twice a day, so it’s not really that disturbing either.
That is great and you should have that option. Some of us work best from home and want that option. The idea that we all work the same is the problem, flexible is the solution. The ability to allow people to work in whatever way they think is best and trust them to get stuff done would solve this issue. Except it isn’t about that it is about office real estate and management thinking the only way people are working is if they are watched.
Same for me. I found having my workspace be outside my home is better for both my productivity and mood. But I will fight for whatever method of work people find works for them individually.
That’s me too. Sure it’s useful once a week to sit down with my team but the rest of our work is solo or on an ad hoc debugging call where sharing screens actually makes things easier.
Even worse my office doesn’t even have enough desks for everyone, and even fewer of them are properly setup with a monitor from this decade. Each of I ur 3 mandatory office days is a complete crapshoot on whether you’ll actually get a proper workstation or will you be stuck at a table with your laptop all day.
They’re write offs where fuck all gets done. Some of my colleagues who are in meetings all day seem to be okay with the office but if you actually need to do work there’s little point in being there.
I must be in like some weird alternate reality because my boss recognises that the office is a distraction, and doesn’t go there often himself. We go there very seldomly, primarily to catch up with colleagues, but not to work on our tasks.
I get maybe 15-20% of my normal work done at the office.
Granted this might increase over time if I came in regularly but it’d never touch how productive I am at home. This rhetoric about losing productivity working from home is dangerous and bullshit.
And you know, working from home I’m comfortable doing things otherwise I wouldn’t agree to doing - particularly coming online late hours.
They’re doing maintenance at 7pm, that’s no big deal, I’ll adjust my hours around and make it work. Not like I’m driving or just staying late, okay I’m not doing a 12 hour day at the office. And realistically 4pm-7pm would basically just be waiting. Guess I would if I really had to, but I wouldn’t be too happy about it. Heck just last week I checked to see if something applied correctly at 12am. No big deal, just log in and make sure.
And I fully recognize this could be exploited, become the norm. I’m careful to set boundaries, but I guess working from home has loosened my boundaries of what is and isn’t okay. Used to be I wouldn’t even answer my work phone after 5pm, but now it’s not so bad. Little annoying sometimes, but I’m okay with it.
Dude, same. I’ve never been more productive than working from home specifically because people have to engage with me via teams or email instead of barging into the office and disrupting my work flow.
Shit… Did I commit that router config before Becky needed my help fixing her user error? Oh no, I did but I forgot to change the DNS on the DHCP pool so now I can’t hit the domain for remote authentication because they’re still using public DNS.
Fuck! I’ll just do it tomorrow when I have my coffee in hand and my cat buzzing happily, with lo Fi beats to overhaul WAN circuits to blaring.
Im the same way, i just catchup with the coworkers and we spend most of the day chatting about various things and then a long lunch and at least two hours of meetings is basically my days in the office…at home no distractions, get shit done in the morning, make lunch, deal with any issues in the afternoon…can at least take a shit without smelling other peoples shit…
Im the exact opposite. At home there are way too many distractions and temptations than in an office environment.
It’s both decreasing productivity AND saving the economy!!! https://fortune.com/2023/08/01/remote-work-preventing-economy-from-recession/
Such an incredible paradox 🤯
Reminds me of the headlines trend a few years ago when Millenials were killing everything.
There are tons of other studies that show massive increases in productivity. These bullshit studies are probably sponsored by commercial real estate landlords. They’re losing $850B per year since 2020.
Awesome! Eat the rich!
Yup. Offices business is massive. Let them rot!
I am exactly as unproductive at home as I am at the office. I’m just more comfortable.
Something I’ve just realised going into the office is how much more unproductive I make everyone else.
If I’m not working at home, everyone else is free to keep working. But if I’m not working in the office I’m going to drag everyone in my team down to my level.
It’s funny how these kinds of articles always read exactly the same. I honestly want to know what offices they are using for these supposed metrics because it seems like people are doing everything they can to just endure and waste time while in actual offices.
Clearly they’re analyzing offices with fat commercial real estate bills going unpaid month after month. Think anyone at Forbes magazine is invested in that stuff?
They looked at the stats of two companies. That’s the extent of their “research”.
It’s a garbage article from the type of people that are responsible for 85% of what is wrong with the planet.
I’m okay with decreased productivity. I don’t own stock in the company.
You also most likely don’t get paid more for being more productive.
Let’s be honest, Forbes has been a trashhole for a while.
Totally bullshit. When I’m in the office I’m constantly approached by coworkers wanting to chit chat. Sometimes even when I’m in a Teams meeting with headphones on.
Same. We go into the office whenever the big bosses go in… so once every couple months. We get almost no work done on those days.
If only there was an objective way to measure the productivity of a commercial enterprise… like with money… oh wait, they have been making MORE money? With LESS productive workers? Curious
That’s obviously all due to the hard work and visionary leadership of upper management
Sure, some people work better when surrounded by colleagues. Those people usually know that and will seek out on-site work, because it probably also makes them happier.
People who are more efficient at home probably also feel better at home and will seek out remote work.
If you want a much smaller hiring pool, more office upkeep costs and more transport emissions, sure make everyone come into the office… it’s so dumb to do this.
IMO if your sector lends itself to remote work and it’s not working for your company, you’re doing something else wrong.
A lot of my colleagues want for everyone to be in office. Their justification is “well, when everyone is in office, I can just walk to a person and ask them for help”. Which is why it’s a bit annoying to work there as a knowledgeable person, everyone always asking you to help them, constantly.
Guess where are all the knowledgeable people going.Sure, some people work better when surrounded by colleagues. Those people usually know that and will seek out on-site work, because it probably also makes them happier.
Bingo, some of us actually do like to get out of the house and physically go to work. It seems like everybody except corporate shills think that the whole world wants to work from home, but it would honestly drive me crazy.
But as you said, people like me are going to seek out jobs where that’s the expectation at the outset. It’s shitty to pull a bait and switch and force everybody to come in when they are used to working from home.
Broski, my commute is typically 45 min by car each way. On the days I’m in the office I work 10+ days to avoid the traffic.
Yeah but they are also the ones who are gonna get promoted
Look I work from home, I think everyone who can (and wants to) work from home should work from home most of the time. But people are definitely less productive working from home, and I think the people who say that most people are more productive are delusional.
There are more important things than just raw productivity numbers, western workers have been working far too hard and far too long for the last half century, and I think we should return to a more humane approach to working.
Also froma purely selfish capitalist perspective I don’t neccesarily think the productivity boost of being in person is worth all the costs of a bigger office, cleaning staff etc.
But how do you define “productive”?
I work from home and I get the same amount of work done. However if you define it as, “Doing X amount of work in Y amount of time,” then yeah I’m less productive because nowadays instead of getting that work done in an 8-hour shift I take about 10–12 hours to do it.
Same work, same day, so my productivity hasn’t changed. I just take longer to do it by taking breaks, going out to long lunches with friends, and my stress level is almost non-existent!
I find that to be a very equitable trade-off: Almost no job-related stress for a slightly longer working day.
There’s also to take into consideration the fact that people experience dips of productivity throughout the day. Like, I’d never be able to start something that requires most of my brain power after 3.
For others it’s early morning.
So, when I was in the office I would just kill time, go on coffee breaks or just di fucking nothing until it was time to go home, and I know for a fact that it was like that for most of my colleagues.
No one works 8 hours straight out of a 8 hours work day. Working from home just removes the torture of sticking around looking busy.
I actually complete from home the she amount of tasks I used to at the office, really, because my productivity (and that of others) wasn’t constant there either.
I think people leave out the fact that their commute should also be considered time working. If you’ve got an hour commute and an eight hour shift, you really have a ten hour shift.
So you are taking ten hours to do eight hours of work, because part of it means dragging your brain through meatspace to be there. Since you don’t have to do that, you can take longer doing the actual job.
nowadays instead of getting that work done in an 8-hour shift I take about 10–12 hours to do it.
“For disappearing acts, it’s hard to beat what happens to the 8 hours supposedly left after 8 hour of work and 8 hours of sleep” – Doug Larson.
An 8-hour shift quickly turns into 10-12 clock-hours when you factor in all the extraneous crap that goes along with it. I mean, just lunch and a commute easily adds 60-90 unpaid minutes per day. Add the time spent getting ready for work and settling down after work, and you’re easily up to 10 hours a day.
But how do you define “productive”?
Studies that I’ve seen have seen both an increase in time to perform work and a decrease in quality of work.
You are noting that you take more time, but you work that additional time. Not everyone does that.
Increased employee happiness/retention and reduced office rent may be good reasons why to pick full remote over the increased productivity of the office, but the idea that people are more productive at home isn’t proving itself to be true.
but the idea that people are more productive at home isn’t proving itself to be true.
Except it is. Try harder.
But people are definitely less productive working from home, and I think the people who say that most people are more productive are delusional
Except pretty much every study done on this has said the exact opposite. I am much more productive when I’m home. My team is much more productive when working from home and hard data backs it up. I literally cannot think of one thing about the office that I miss or made me more productive.
I miss distracting coworkers with conversations instead of working! /s
What about the ice cold AC in the winter?
You are laughing. But with these hot summers I actually miss some of that artic wind. But more importantly I have a heavy hayfever and being in the closed office durning the summer was a relief. It all went considerably worse when I started working from home.
My ability to close a door and sit, focus, and develop in silence makes me not only more productive, but also happier. I’ve done some of the best work of my career over these past 3+ years. I used to wear headphones 50+ hours a week, now it’s only when i go for a walk every morning.
There’s really nothing like sitting in a darkened room with music blasting, code pouring out of your fingers while you have an out of body experience from caffeine overdose and lack of sleep. I’ve spent my entire career chasing that high.
Being happier directly leads to better productivity. I’m not going to try hard to do what I don’t like or what doesn’t help me to do what I like
What studies?
The audacity of you asking for sources when you provided none for your position.
I love it.
The article provides sources and the commenter is refuting that claim.
Also: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/06/28/the-working-from-home-delusion-fades
So, sources.
The few people I know who are against remote working are the type of persons that don’t have any non-family social life outside workplace and are freeking out, because their coffee break chit-chats disappeared.
They still base their view on the idea that people are spineless and sooner or later start slacking off.
The ones I see who are against WFH the hardest have pretty awful family lives and don’t want to admit it to themselves. They need the break from the shitty family they can’t face or deal with more than is absolutely necessary.
Yep. Either that or they’re just older and used to the way things were. Go to the office if you want but leave me out of it.
As a work from homer who gets twice as much done in half the time, I’m eyeballing your own delusion xD
And this isn’t a self assessment, it comes from my boss, who is fighting tooth and nail to keep us from having to go back into the office with numbers and spreadsheets proving it.
These decisions are top down and have very little to do with what’s actually happening on the front line.
All the studies show literally the opposite. Maybe you’re less productive, but that makes you the outlier.
Long term burnout also kills productivity.
And having to hire someone new and train them because the freedom they enjoyed is no longer available.
My team was more productive at home, no open space telephoning, discussing, interruptions etc etc etc. no hours on a car or public transport, etc etc and it seems it’s the norm (or about the same productivity).
What are you smoking :-D
Because showering, eating, driving are productive vs get up and get started?
But people are definitely less productive working from home
How so? I personally think it’s a somewhat personal matter, but people who are less productive are home seem to be people who can’t focus in general. I am far more productive working from home, mostly because I don’t get distracted by others. I have colleagues who spend hours bantering only to then stay in the company until later to compensate for the banter - I’d rather get my work done so I can end my day on time and go home do the fun stuff. But I do have colleagues who say they get distracted easily when working at home and they’d rather work at the office.
Overall though, my company used to be very against working from home, but after the period of mandatory work from home, management admitted overall productivity had increased. They still insist people should come to the office every now and then to maintain the “friendly” environment the company is supposed to have, though, which is fair I guess.
I’m definitely no specialist on this topic, but to me it seems questionable to generalize the conclusions of that review to all remote workers. From section 3.a, where they analyze the productivity of fully remote workers:
[…] Emmanuel and Harrington (2023) use data from a Fortune 500 firm which had both in-person and remote call centers pre-pandemic. […] Using the always remote call-centers as the control group they find an 8% reduction in call volumes among employees who shifted from fully in-person to fully remote work.
Extending the results of one call-center to all other companies would be very shortsighted. Still, it may be evidence that for this type of industry specifically fully-remote work may have a negative effect. Nonetheless, the authors of the paper offer a more nuanced analysis, finding that remote work actually increased the productivity of workers who were already in the company:
[…] We find that working remotely increased call-center workers’ productivity. When previously on-site workers took up opportunities to go remote in 2018, their hourly calls rose by 7.5%. Similarly, when COVID-19 closed on-site call centers, a difference-in-difference suggests that the productivity of workers who switched to remote work rose by 7.6% relative to their already remote peers.
What their results suggest instead is that people who are overall less productive are more likely to seek remote work:
Despite these positive productivity effects, remote workers were 12pp less likely to be promoted. If better workers are more concerned about being overlooked in remote jobs, remote workers will be adversely selected. Consistent with this theory, we find evidence that remote work attracted latently less productive workers. When all workers were remote due to COVID-19, those who were hired into remote jobs were 18% less productive than those who were hired into on-site jobs.
Going back to the main review, the next study they cite didn’t actually find a decrease in productivity, only finding that workers spent more hours working to do the same job:
Gibbs, Mengel and Siemroth (2022) examine IT professionals in a large Indian technology company who shifted to fully remote work at the onset of the pandemic. Measured performance among these workers remained constant while remote but they worked longer hours, implying a drop in employee productivity of 8% to 19%.
Indeed, working more hours doesn’t mean productivity will increase, but to frame this as a drop in productivity because workers can simply do their jobs at a more calm pace seems rather disingenuous to me.
Atkin, Schoar, and Shinde (2023) run a randomized control trial of data-entry workers in India, randomizing between working fully in the office and fully at home. They find home-workers are 18% less productive.
Similar to the first study they found that the workers who prefer to work from home are less productive when doing so, which partially explained the lower productivity:
[…] We find negative selection effects for office-based work: workers who prefer home-based work are 12% faster and more accurate at baseline. We also find a negative selection on treatment: workers who prefer home work are much less productive at home than at the office (27% less compared to 13% less for workers who prefer the office).
Still, because this study focused specifically on one data-entry company and only included 234 workers in their final sample, we should be careful with generalizing their findings.
Ultimately even if we take the conclusions of the review at face value, the authors themselves point out that mixing remote and in-person work doesn’t seem to lower productivity, and remote work can still be an attractive option for companies because it reduces on-site costs:
[…] Fully remote work is associated with about 10% lower productivity than fully in-person work. Challenges with communicating remotely, barriers to mentoring, building culture and issues with self-motivation appear to be factors. But fully remote work can generate even larger cost reductions from space savings and global hiring, making it a popular option for firms. Hybrid working appears to have no impact on productivity but is also popular with firms because it improves employee recruitment and retention. Looking ahead we predict working from home will continue to grow because of the expansion in research and development into new technologies to improve remote working. Hence, the pandemic generated both a one-off jump and a longer-run growth acceleration in working from home.
There are a lot of other studies on remote working with conflicting results, with some finding an increase in worker productivity, while others suggest the opposite, and as the section dedicated to COVID-19 states the effects of remote work can vary depending on the earnings and position of the worker.
As some of the previous studies point out the drop in productivity is in part due to less productive workers self-selecting into remote positions, and due to remote training at the start of the job being less adequate. Hence what seems like the most reasonable solution to me is in-person training for the first few weeks, then a mix of in-person and remote work for employees who want it - and even if there is some drop in productivity, I agree with you that the improved life-work balance and worker satisfaction that remote work gives to some people is worth the cost.
But people are definitely less productive working from home, and I think the people who say that most people are more productive are delusional.
Our productivity went up across the board according to my managers. We are letting our office go & finding a smaller space for our equipment.
Forbes is such a joke…
Not just Forbes. I don’t read Bloomberg but I’d assume this was there as well.
Mike Bloomberg had a similar op-ed in WaPo the other day in regard to forcing federal workers back into the office, quoting similarly questionable sources and literally calling reasons to work from home “excuses” (it’s in the headline as well).
It, too, reeked of desperation and rapidly souring real estate investment returns.
Lmaooooooo Forbes runs a story on a report that’s still in draft (the references section header reads very incomplete), just to spread propaganda that “working from home doesn’t work!!!”
I like going into the office sometimes and the one I’m in is real nice, but I know some are awful, and commutes can be way longer than mine! (one-way 40 minutes by bus).
The same study says hybrid work (1-4 of 5 days remote work) provided on average a small positive change in productivity.
Productivity has a long way to fall before it gets back in line with wages, so I don’t think workers should be too concerned.
Mid-managers are being given extra allowances for ‘team outings’. Then there’s ‘free breakfast’ and other ‘free’ things. Finally, managers are also being evaluated for the number of people in their team that they can get to come to the office - the more people in their team they can get to come to office, the more pat on the back they get.
It’s no longer a debate of whether you are productive at home or in office. They just want you back in office. Simple as that. The why? I don’t know.
/Friend works in corporate real estate. “Employees in IT companies just don’t want to go back and it’s a HUGE headache for companies…” is what he told me (roughly).
Employees at IT companies probably have a whole gaming room they spend most of their time in already and just swap out machines when they’re done with work.
Source: I’m an employee at an IT company.
The why is likely to justify office rent and also to more easily control workers. The place I work at was allowing me to 50/50 my work even before the pandemic (and they haven’t been forcing employees to come back after), and now with the war (I live and work in Ukraine) they had halved the office space rented in Kyiv but installed spare generators and stuff so that people can come work in case of power outages, as well as organized a shelter in the same building in case of air raids or other emergencies. Not once had I heard about there being not enough space in the new office, and people who prefer it still come there on the regular