Kojo Quartey: Working from home and productivity
There’s been significant research on working from home and hybrid work. Articles in Forbes, the Harvard Business Review, Fortune Magazine and many others all shed some light on hybrid work and working from home. Working from home or some combination of office and home (hybrid) have become more popular since the pandemic. During the pandemic lockdowns, many of us had no choice but to work from home. For me, this has always been difficult to do. As a student, I always preferred to study in the library or at the graduate school office. And during the pandemic lockdown, I would regularly come into the office to work; I just could not do it well from home. But we are all different. Working strictly from home works for some but not for others.
According to a December 2020 article in the Economist, before the pandemic, only 5% of Americans worked from home. Six months later, that number was up to 62%, and a few months later, it was about 40%. Research conducted on call center workers of a major retailer by two Harvard economics doctoral students Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington, found that the ones who worked from home were 12% less productive (measured in time spent on the calls). There are lots of caveats here, all of which I cannot get into.
A 2022 article from Forbes, cites a report from Future Forum that states that workers with full schedule flexibility indicate 29% higher productivity and 53% greater ability to focus than those with no schedule flexibility.
Citrix produced a report based on a global survey of 900 business leaders and 1,800 knowledge workers - those who can work remotely, indicated that half of all business leaders believe that when employees are working “out of sight,” they don’t work as hard. And 48% of the business leaders installed monitoring software on the computers of their employees to check on their work. Trust may be an issue here.
A Future Forum survey suggests that this skepticism toward work from home tends to be more prevalent among older leaders in their 50s and 60s. Leaders under 50 are much more accepting of hybrid and remote work and focus on how to do it well. The type of organization, its mission and values, who it serves, and the nature of the work is also important. A two-year survey by Great Place to Work of more than 800,000 employees showed that the shift to working remotely in the pandemic boosted worker productivity by 6% on average. Other research has shown similar results. Is office work really more productive? Studies show that in-office employees only work between 36% and 39% of the time. What about the rest of their time in the office? They’re shopping on Amazon, checking social media, and may even be applying for new positions, especially if their supervisors are forcing them to come to the office full-time.
A Stanford study of 16,000 workers over nine months showed that working from home increased productivity by 13% This study also showed greater worker satisfaction, and attrition decreased by 50%.
Letting employees work from home has been the concern of many companies because they believe they will be less productive. This isn’t entirely wrong. At home, it’s easy to get distracted, procrastinate, or put in less work than those working in the office. Great Place to Work compared employee productivity from March to August of 2020, the first six months of stay-at-home orders, to the same six-month stretch in 2019. Productivity was stable or increased when working remotely from home, according to a two-year study of 800,000 employees.
In this new day and time, some of the challenges are that, many workers do not want to be forced back to the office, employers are not fully trusting of employees to be productive when they work from home and so they want them back, the lack of personal contact may erode some camaraderie, people are happier working from home, flexibility helps diversity, recruitment and retention.
As our world shifts, I believe there should be some flexibility, and we need to trust our employees to work from home or hybrid as appropriate, as long as it has no negative impact on productivity.
— Kojo Quartey, Ph.D., is president of Monroe County Community College and an economist. He may be reached at kquartey@monroeccc.edu.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Kojo Quartey: Working from home and productivity
