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/
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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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.
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.
Promoting hybrid is actually a smart move for them. Lower usage means less maintenance with the same rent.
Thank you for the summary! This is the investigation I was looking for.
Disallowing remote with when it’s possible is anti-worker.
This really isn't a study, so much as a lit review. Sort of. Anyway, in the fully remote section they cite three studies that argue show a fall in productivity. The first (Emmanuel and Harrington (2023)) found an 8% drop in call volume as a call center shifted to fully remote work at the onset of the pandemic. But their comparison group was a group of call center employees who were always remote. So even if you buy the argument that the change call volume is solely attributable to a drop in productivity, you cannot conclude that the productivity shift was caused by working from home, the group that shifted from on-location to remote work did 8% worse than the group than the always remote work!
The second study (Gibbs, Mengel and Siemroth (2022)) is, again, an analysis of call-center employees (this time in India) who shifted to remote work at the onset of the pandemic. They find no change in productivity, but that employees are working longer hours at home, which they argue means a real 8-19% drop in productivity.
The final study (Atkin, Schoar, and Shinde (2023)) is another firm from India which involved a randomized controlled study which finds an 18% drop in productivity for data entry work.
So, just taking their lit review at face value, one of their studies directly contradicts their argument, yet they somehow present it as if it is evidence of a causal relationship between working from home and productivity. Another study shows no effect, so they break out some razamataz math to try to turn no effect into a negative effect. Only one of the three studies shows a plausible effect.
Since these are the only three papers they cite to support their argument that fully remote work causes a drop in firm productivity, let's look at them in more depth.
If you go to their references section, you find that there is not a Emmanuel and Harrington (2023) cited. Hey, that a bad sign. There is an Emmanuel and Harrington 2021, but its an unpublished paper. Maybe it got published and they just forgot to update the cite? I plugged the title into google scholar, and find one result, with no copy of the working paper, and no evidence of any sort of publication record from any journal. Plugging the title into regular google returns a "Staff Report" of the federal reserve bank of NY. So not a peer reviewed article. They employ whats known as a difference-in-difference design to compare employees who shifted from fully in person to fully remote. They report a 4% reduction in productivity for these workers, not the 8% reported in the original article. I just skimmed the article, so maybe they get their 8% figure someplace else. What is interesting to me though is that their DID models seem to show there is not any difference between the different groups for most of the periods of observation. IDK. I'd have to read more in-depth to make up my mind.
It seems like these conclusions, whatever you make of them should really only be applied to call-center work during the pandemic.
Saying that a conservative economic school is pro-business and anti-labor is not what I'd call an ad hominem, but a statement of fact. Saying they want to prop up the commercial real estate business isn't ad hominem either.
The Chicago School itself says:
So maybe the school itself holds to some kind of political neutrality, but conservatives love their theories.
This. Economics is a social science where every theory or opinion aims to achieve different varying desired outcomes for different people and in achieved in different ways, with spectrums for every step along the process. The entire field is on a spectrum, that also generally aligns with the political spectrum because politics, like economics, strives to achieve a certain outcome for a certain group of people, in a certain way. Trying to disentangle the field of economics from people. and the politics that people create, is a red flag for not actually knowing what economics is.
Ah, so it's not that they're conservative, it's that they desire the same things conservatives want. But they're totally apolitical, and it's just a happy coincidence.
Neoliberals are conservative.
I would love to hear more about how neoliberals aren't conservative...
Just because the two options you have to choose from are shit doesn't mean they are still both shit - it is hilarious watching you Americans cry socialism about policies that in most of the civilised world would be considered right or centre-right.
Google the definition of conservative and tell me how that changes based on what country we are talking about.
" favouring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditional ideas."
I'd love you to try and convince me that neoliberalism doesn't fit under the above.
Actually, you are the one who assumed civilised was a dog whistle - how very problematic of you.
You absolutely did assume that, the implication of what I said is that I do not find the USA to be civilised. The racist crap is all you buddy.
Yeah tell that to Chileans
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?
I think they're right here
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.
I've responded to them, not ignored them.
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.
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?
Probably swimming in their Scrooge McDuck piles of cash since WFH became more widespread?
It's the landlords losing money and the owner/C-suites not being able to see their minions in one place that are pumping out these articles.
So I go back to my original question, is there a study that says remote work is more productive? Where is the science to back it up? The science should be out there if it is true.
And are you honestly telling me that major companies wouldn't love to sell all their real estate and go full virtual? Why not cut that business expense to save money? Major companies have cut everything else, why not cut this too? Why wouldn't an activist investor start pushing to release this capital as a dividend?
Hell, you can start depressing wages, since you can source your staff from lower QoL places and use those places as your bench mark for pay.
https://www.business.com/articles/are-employees-more-productive-working-from-home/
https://www.monitask.com/en/blog/are-remote-employees-more-productive#:~:text=A%20recent%20study%20by%20the,%244%2C500%20annually%20on%20commuting%20costs.
https://www.apollotechnical.com/working-from-home-productivity-statistics/
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/15259-working-from-home-more-productive.html
and just for fun, here's fortune straddling the fence:
https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productive-wfh-research/
https://fortune.com/2022/10/20/remote-hybrid-workers-are-more-productive-slack-future-forum/
I need to read these, but you are the first one to post several articles defending your thesis.
Thank you.
First off, thank you for providing. This was the most thorough list of sources given by anyone.
The buisness.com article is based on a survey of remote workers. The survey states that remote workers feel more productive at home and that they work longer hours. This correlates with anecdotal evidence presented here, but it isn't a measure of actual productivity.
The Monitask.com article refers to two studies that make the claim that remote work is more productive, but one study is blocked by a paywall and the other study isn't even linked. There is one article about a call center in China, which the Economist article I've posted notes that later data shows that the work was not as efficient as previously stated.
The ApolloTechnical.com has a lot of good articles, but there are some self reporting surveys. The article does note that not all research indicates increases in productivity, including one study in 2012 and reported in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization that found that creative tasks see increases in productivity at home while dull tasks see decreases in productivity; I like this study the most as it seems to do more academic rigor of creating an experiment to study against.
The businessnewsdaily.com article is another survey of remote workers, so no objective study on productivity.
There is some good science in the articles you posted, but there are also a lot of self reported surveys. Given what you presented, I can see someone believing that remote working is always more productive.
That said, there seems to be additional studies being performed that are making the claim more disputed. However, the articles you provide also give other very good reasons why remote work should still be allowed.
Just saw that I have responses to things! New Sync user, don't mind me.
Looks like you got your sources, but wanted to address major companies and real estate. Commercial real estate has way longer leases than residential. And their landlords don't have any incentive to let them break lease early. Who else is going to come rent that space?
Of course these companies want to "make use" of those wasted dollars. Even major companies aren't immune to sunk cost fallacy.
Corporate leases are longer than residential ones, but they only go for 3 to 5 years generally. We are seeing a shrinking of leases because of this, which is causing office occupancy rates to plummet. We're seeing companies shift to a hybrid model, but few companies seem to want to go full remote.
Yawn.... even if it's true, who give a shit. Even before the pandemic, when people had a lot to do, they stayed at home so they could focus undisturbed to meet deadlines.
Yeah. And it isn't like there aren't other reasons to maintain full remote work. It just happens to be that one of the reasons may not be accurate anymore based on further study.
I know in my line of work, employee retention is the main reason why full remote or hybrid is being maintained.