While one may have assumed that the Covid pandemic provided more than enough evidence as to the merits, or otherwise, of remote and hybrid working, the last few months have seen a growing number of employers demanding workers return to the office.
While it’s perhaps not the case that these decisions are being made with evidence in mind, the most comprehensive dose of evidence is now available via the latest research from Stanford’s Nick Bloom.
Everyone wins
The study, which saw over 1,600 workers in a large online travel company analyzed, found that hybrid schedules tend to benefit both employees and managers.
Indeed, Bloom found that not only were those who had a hybrid work schedule productive and engaged, but they were also promoted as often as their office-based peers. Indeed, so effective was hybrid working that resignations were 33% lower among hybrid workers, with this especially popular among women, non-managers, and those who had to commute a long way.
“The results are clear: Hybrid work is a win-win-win for employee productivity, performance, and retention,” Bloom says.
A growing trend
The findings are especially notable since around 100 million workers worldwide now split their time between home and the office each week, over four years after the COVID-19 pandemic changed how people work. Many of these hybrid workers are professionals like lawyers, accountants, marketers, and software engineers, most with a college degree or higher.
Yet, remote work has faced criticism from well-known business leaders. Elon Musk, head of Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter), and Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, argue that the downsides of remote work outweigh the benefits. They say that training, mentoring, innovation, and company culture suffer when employees are not in the office five days a week.
Critics often mix up hybrid work with fully remote work. Most studies on remote work focus on employees who never go to an office, often in jobs like customer support or data entry. These studies have mixed results, generally negative, suggesting that fully remote work has problems when not managed well.
“This study offers powerful evidence for why 80 percent of U.S. companies now offer some form of remote work,” Bloom explains, “and for why the remaining 20 percent of firms that don’t are likely paying a price.”
Everyone benefits
The study found that hybrid working was a fundamentally new concept for the travel company. Indeed, in 2021, when the hybrid experiment started, they had no official policy on hybrid working.
In total, nearly 400 managers and over 1,200 professionals participated in the experiment. Participants were selected at random based on their birthdays, with those falling on odd-numbered days working from home two days a week, and those falling on even-numbered days coming in every day. Of the participants, the majority were in their mid-30s, with around half having children.
The researchers found that hybrid work benefits both employees and companies by analyzing company data and worker surveys, including performance reviews and promotion records for up to two years after the experiment. Trip.com’s thorough performance reviews assess employees’ contributions to innovation, leadership, and mentoring.
The researchers also compared the quality and quantity of computer code written by the Trip.com software engineers who worked hybrid with those who worked in the office full-time.
Positive outcomes
The study found that hybrid work did not affect productivity or career advancement and greatly improved retention rates. However, there were some nuances: resignations dropped only among non-managers, while managers were equally likely to quit regardless of their work arrangement.
Interestingly, the study also identified a number of misconceptions, held not only by managers but also employees, about hybrid work. For instance, they found that many workers, and especially women, were hesitant about enrolling in the trial because they felt that they would be negatively judged for not being in the office five days per week.
This was perhaps born out by the belief among managers that working remotely would harm the productivity of workers. Thankfully, it was a mindset that shifted once they saw the evidence to the contrary. Bloom believes the findings are a timely reminder that many of the fears about hybrid work are not justified.
“If managed right, letting employees work from home two or three days a week still gets you the level of mentoring, culture-building, and innovation that you want,” he concludes. “From an economic policymaking standpoint, hybrid work is one of the few instances where there aren’t major trade-offs with clear winners and clear losers. There are almost only winners.”
