The past few years have been something of an experiment in working from home (WFH). After COVID lockdowns, it seemed like it was here to stay, but recent return-to-work mandates have sought to bring employees back to the office full-time.
But which approach is best? The evidence suggests employers should rethink blanket return-to-office mandates, says Economics assistant professor Colin Mang, who has spent four years researching the productivity impact of various remote-work policies.
“Forcing people back to the office full time is the wrong approach,” he said. “Our conclusion is that working from home, even if it’s just part of the time, increases your productivity.
“So if you are an employer who is interested in maximizing the productivity of your employees, you should let them work from home sometimes.”
Mang recently published the article “Does Working from Home Improve Employees’ Productivity? Empirical Evidence from a Meta-Analysis” with co-author Amar Anwar, a professor in the Shannon School of Business at Cape Breton University.
The paper examined 82 studies investigating how WFH affects employee productivity. It found that, broadly, it caused small but noticeable boosts to productivity, with gains in both hourly productivity and hours worked.
“On average, we found that employees do become more productive when you let them work from home at least some of the time,” said Mang.
“First of all, they become more productive because they actually generate more output per hour.”
Secondly, it turns out that people who work from home also work more hours.
“So not only are they doing more tasks per hour, but they’re working longer hours. So you get this extra productivity bump from them.”
Mang and Anwar note that the productivity bump can occur because remote employees typically work in a lower-stress environment with fewer distractions from colleagues.
The increase in hours worked can happen because some employees are able to bring work home with them, but also because reduced commuting for those working full days at home frees up time to work more.
Mang and Anwar also found that the best approach to WFH policies was a hybrid model, in which employees came to the office on some days, but were allowed to work remotely on others.
“Obviously, for an employer, it’s better to have your employees working harder than less hard,” said Mang. “And we found that hybrid work is what really does that.”
For instance, hybrid workers worked on average about 2.8 hours more per week than on-site workers, and produced 5 per cent more per hour than their in-office counterparts.
Hybrid work also eliminated many of the problems associated with fully remote work. Some of those issues were relatively predictable, such as reduced teamwork and increased isolation.
But others were more extreme, such as moonlighting, where employees work two jobs, sometimes simultaneously. In other cases, fully remote workers have been found to subcontract their tasks to others outside their organization, or have used fraudulent identities to gain employment.
“A lot of employers, particularly large employers that deal with a lot of sensitive data, like big banks, have been concerned about ghost employees, unauthorized outsourcing, and other types of employee fraud, which are only possible if roles are fully remote,” said Mang. “The hybrid model is important so that you know they’re real employees.”
Ultimately, hybrid was the best of both worlds, combining in-person connection at the office with distraction-free productivity at home, Mang and Anwar found.
“With hybrid, you can be in the office a few days a week with your colleagues, then go away to work from home and focus on your tasks,” said Mang.
“So hybrid work basically avoids most of the disadvantages of remote work, but you get all the advantages of remote work.”