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.
Promoting hybrid is actually a smart move for them. Lower usage means less maintenance with the same rent.
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.
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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.
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The Chicago School itself says:
Conservative politicians like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher championed Friedman’s ideas
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.
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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 more than 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.
I absolutely agree that flexibility is the way to go. I also have to admit that a large part of what makes me function better in the office is that my coworkers are there as well. As such, I think a compromise that everyone can be as happy as possible with is the best thing.
Remember: Some people would prefer to work from home everyday, and function best when the do. People like me would prefer that as many as possible people are in the office as often as possible, and function best when that is the case. The optimum (both regarding satisfaction and productivity) is clearly somewhere in-between.
That means flexibility is very important, but “full flexibility”, i.e. everyone always working from where they would prefer, is probably not the global optimum.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I think you’re saying, essentially “I work better in the office with others, so others should be here to make me work better” and I would submit that a better solution is for you to find a company that hires like minded folks so you can all work together in an office.
I can see why you would say that, but my point is that in any reasonably large group of people there’s going to be diversity regarding how often people prefer to be at the office (if ever). It’s also well documented that things like training and meetings are much less efficient if people are remote. Together, I think this means that the solution to having as efficient and satisfied employees as possible is to do some coordinating, such that everyone has their needs met.
I don’t think it’s realistic to have some companies consisting only of people that prefer to work from home every day, and others where everyone wants to be in the office every day. Flexibility and coordination is key.
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…
I’m like this too, but also social. I screw around with my coworkers so much in the office. I have to be home for my own good!
“Please send the planet further into its end with global warming by heating it with transportation needs just so I can talk to your face in real”
These people should be fired. Also they should be penalized by never being permitted to have a warm shower ever again. Reused water all the way down. They can do double time when it comes to mending the planet.
just so I can talk to your face in realJust so we can keep the value of our office buildings high
They don’t understand that I’d do just as little work in an office as I do from home. In fact, that’s what I did, long before I worked from home. I’m really good at exploring hallways and bathrooms and just disappearing for some time.
I get more work done at home.
Personally, I dissappear a lot during work from home just from pooping more because I’m not stressed out due to being around people all day
Shit job?
Seems crappy
I am exactly as unproductive at home as I am at the office. I’m just more comfortable.
I’m shocked people still read: Forbes, fortune and business insider.
What ever legitimacy they once held in the business world is long gone. All three of them went click bait long before COVID (BI was always a click bait outfit) and I find their content to be on par with UK gossip rags or the National Enquirer.
Suggestion, start filtering out these three sites from your news gathering and stop sharing articles on social media from them. It’ll make the world a better place!
I had to chuckle after I saw that Forbes now reports on League of Legends patch notes. Wtf bruh.
Once Forbes realized they could influence a stock price, it was over for any journalistic integrity they had. I don’t know how anyone can take them seriously, when literally all they write can be condensed down to “Ultra-capitalism”
There’s like 50 articles i know of that say otherwise.
There are peer reviewed studies saying otherwise
My raises aren’t tied to my performance, so… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Sorry about your arm, I hope it heals quickly.
I definitely pasted it correctly. But you know, accidents happen.
Oh, I know. I went through it once.
The tricky bit is that a lot of scripting/programming languages reserve the backslash for special stuff. For example, “\n” means a line break. When you pasted the right arm (which is seen on the left ; ) ), lemmy’s editor expected a special thingy, so it was kind and removed the backslash for you, so that you don’t have to. The secret is to post it with a double backslash, like this: “\\” (for example, I actually had to use FOUR backslashes in a row, since it’s two double backslashes, because each means one backslash).
EDIT: Lol, I have bamboozled myself, too. I had to edit this a few times.
I’m familiar with this particular way of handling characters, was unaware lemmy did it tho, cheers!
Can’t decide if I should change my post. I suppose leaving it is armless.
Simply working leads to reduced income. If your raises aren’t keeping up with inflation, you’ve been effectively paid less with every paycheck. And now the worker is expected to increase expense and lose free time in order to get paid less, just to prop up someone else’s real estate investments? Fuck that. You want me to come in? Start by paying me more.
But but…but aren’t you working NOT for the money?! Money isn’t important! We are all family here!
/s
I dunno giving people more freedom tends to improve their productivity and they get more work done in less time than some micro manging wanker
Linking the paper “cited” in this article here. It’s almost like the author didn’t even read the executive summary…
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kqbngD8pemqxAkZmWCOQ32Yk6PXK9eVA/view
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.
Listened to a podcast about this earlier in the week. The research test case was call center workers. Seems like bullshit to generalize like this for all work types. Also, let’s remember how high productivity was during the pandemic when everyone was working from home.
For me personally, my productivity is boosted. Without a commute I end up working an additional 2 hours a day. I have more time to focus and spend less time at lunch. In the office, my coworkers and the environment is distracting. I spend an hour at lunch with my coworkers.
Additionally, all meetings are now remote. Even in the office, people call in from their desks. There is no reason to be in the office.
The reason to be in the office is that the office real estate value is going to plummet if they can’t get people working in them again as demand will drop.
Yeah, I agree that this is the real reason why everyone is being forced back to the office and why Forbes is pushing this crap. A year ago the studies all showed that remote work was great for productivity or that there was no impact. Now that a few rich people looked at their commercial property investments and didn’t like what they saw, it’s a different story. The fact is though that a lot of that commercial real estate is a waste of space built around a car-centric existence. Workers prefer remote. We should convert all that real estate into housing. We have a housing shortage. Seems like a good idea.
100% agree. I wonder if they’d recoup their investment doing that or if housing is worth less than commercial real estate and that’s why they don’t want to do that?
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.
When I come to office (one day per week), I come to have a great time with colleagues. No one forces me, I can work fully remote, it’s just nice to have colleagues around. We go for a vape, for a lunch, for a walk. Good times. Ohh, and also few meetings that day, since I live ~150km away from office lol.
I openly say in office that I can’t work from office. Basically socializing and that’s it. Productivity almost zero.
While on the other hand, working from home is where I shine. I can fully focus on my scripting/coding/automation stuff.
