The evidence is mounting that hybrid seems to be the most productive, with full WFH being less productive than full in office.
And this lines up with my experience, having been full wfh for around 10 years, and now in a hybrid setting.
I get that commuting sucks and wfh is way better for workers, but if we want to work out what’s best for both employees and business, we have to actually be reasonable, rather than just have some kind of mindless knee-jerk reaction that these companies are trying to be productive.
I think the future of work is hybrid, with lots of flexibility for workers to take the time they need for typical shit, like going to the doctor, without it counting as vacation.
Every study I read shows that WFH makes people happier and more productive.
There were a bunch of studies early on in the pandemic that wfh showed a small boost in productivity. But we have to agree that this was a weird time and also the novelty of wfh might have affected these measurements.
Newer studies have concluded a pretty substantial drop in productivity with wfh. I’ll dig them up and link them, if you think the evidence would actually convince you.
Hybrid sucks. It’s the worst of both worlds. Meetings with half In a room and half not are awful.
Hybrid stops the progress to efficiency, allowing for bad practices to creep back in. Poor documentation, bad workflows, side work nobody knows about, to name a few.
Work from home can be just as productive, if not more so, but the workload has to be managed to achieve it.
Maybe it can be just as productive, but the current evidence does not support this conclusion. Although I fail to see how wfh would even remotely be better for poor documentation and side work, it seems like it would be way more open to this than either.
Feel free to post this evidence that wfh is not more productive. Everything I have seen has unusual metrics or seems obvious that a conclusion was reached based on what the purchaser of the study wanted.
Wfh is better for documentation and stops side work nobody knows about because you bake it into your business.
Creating a document? Better have Metadata and a reason, and stored publicly. No one off excel sheets, or emailed word docs.
Wikis and collaborative tools are used in the open by everyone, as well as dashboarding and production metrics. Clear defined work processes and workflows are a must.
What happens in hybrid, is people start doing the sticky notes, using email, word of mouth work, and undocumented training/knowledge share.
By publicly. I mean internally, all workers should have access to, and edit rights to, all knowledge.
There is nothing about working from home or hybrid that limits nor enables your ability to implement all of the policies you’ve listed out.
It seems to me that your defeating your whole point by arguing that because wfh has some shortcomings you have to implement extra policies to make it work, which makes work better. But what would probably be just as good would be implementing those things with a hybrid schedule.
The point is that you can’t measure productivity if there is no effort to actually make it work. At that point hybrid is just as bad.
The article was interesting, and this stood out:
“In many of the studies we cite and in some of our own survey evidence, workers often get more done when remote simply because they save time from the daily commute and from other office distractions,” Barrero tells Fortune. “This can make them look more productive on a ‘per day’ basis, even if it means they’re actually less productive on a ‘per hour’ basis.”
So why does per hour win over per day? I would rather be productive each day and manage my own time over an hour by hour basis.
Which leads to another key point in productivity: asynchronous work. Hybrid and in office tends to go back to synchronous work, which in itself is not productive.
I started off this whole thing by saying that the evidence currently mounting that hybrid is most productive. I’ve provided that evidence.
You are cherry picking one quote from the article, misinterpreting it, and then using that to basically dismiss the whole thing. For instance, it does not say that all of the studies show this. Nor does it say that this was true for the majority of the people in the study, only that some people in some of the studies were more productive per day due to these factors. And the article goes into numerous other things as well showing how in office is more productive, which was just ignored.
That being said, the quote is true for me, to an extent. When I first started, there there were fewer distractions (like people coming in and shooting the shit with me) and so it made me more productive. . . at first. I feel like that waned over time because, honestly, primarily because I got lonely and secondarily I wasn’t bouncing ideas off of my fellow engineers as much. After 10 years of it, I chose a hybrid job simply because I was okay with being around people again, and it ultimately improved my mental health. And on top of that, I feel like my productivity has also increased drastically. Although, i fully understand that this is a personal thing. My office is very collaborative, and I’m shocked now being back in the office that anyone actually thinks full WFH is more productive. I 100% get why people prefer it tho.
Hybrid and in office tends to go back to synchronous work, which in itself is not productive.
If we are going off personal opinion at this point, I absolutely 100% disagree. Asynchronous work is better when no one is working on the same thing as someone else. But when you are all pulling in the same direction, it’s certainly better when there are two people pulling at the same time, rather than 1 person pulling, and then a few hours later another person pulling. I can see that if your work literally has nothing to do with anyone else ever, how asynchronous is always king, but when you are working on similar thing, or simply working around other people who have some knowledge in what you are working on, it’s better to be working with them, rather than just whenever.
“A sample of 26 studies out of 112 potential studies (from various databases, including Scopus, Google Scholar, and the Web of Science database from 2020 to 2022) were used after a comprehensive literature search and thorough assessment based on PRISMA-P guidelines. Findings reveal that the impact of the WFH model on employee productivity and performance depend on a host of factors, such as the nature of the work, employer and industry characteristics, and home settings, with a majority reporting a positive impact and few documenting no difference or a negative impact.”
As I already said, the evidence early in the pandemic, which your study is pulling from, showed a slight increase. Although yours claims a mixed bag. Your link doesn’t challenge my claim at all.
I’m pointing to the more current evidence showing the reverse is true and productivity is dropped.
I guess we will have to wait for more studies, the consensus now is that it’s beneficial. My personal experience is that I’m happier and working harder than ever.
I provided a study that showed a decrease in productivity. You provided one that said it was a mixed bag. All of these companies think they are better served having people back in the office…
And you’re still maintaining the consensus is that wfh is better. Confirmation bias is s hell of s drug.
Should have realized that when you accused me of pulling my opinion out of my ass, you were warning me what you were going to do.
Thank you for your comments. I feel the same. And I can especially understand that you would tie promotions to at least hybrid. If you’re responsible for other people, need to discuss, brainstorm and instruct, it’s just a necessity to show up in person every now and them.
And c’mon… Being obliged to work hybrid for a promotion… It’s not like that’s a draconian measure at all.
My office the managers have to be in every day, the team leads have to be in 4…the rest of us are 3. So while it’s not stated that you have to be in to be promoted, I imagine if you aren’t really in 3 days a week, promotion is off the table.
The evidence is mounting that hybrid seems to be the most productive, with full WFH being less productive than full in office.
And this lines up with my experience, having been full wfh for around 10 years, and now in a hybrid setting.
I get that commuting sucks and wfh is way better for workers, but if we want to work out what’s best for both employees and business, we have to actually be reasonable, rather than just have some kind of mindless knee-jerk reaction that these companies are trying to be productive.
I think the future of work is hybrid, with lots of flexibility for workers to take the time they need for typical shit, like going to the doctor, without it counting as vacation.
Every study I read shows that WFH makes people happier and more productive.
If hybrid was once every two weeks or something sure
Other than that, it’s absolutely unnecessary
There were a bunch of studies early on in the pandemic that wfh showed a small boost in productivity. But we have to agree that this was a weird time and also the novelty of wfh might have affected these measurements.
Newer studies have concluded a pretty substantial drop in productivity with wfh. I’ll dig them up and link them, if you think the evidence would actually convince you.
Please do if you can
Hybrid sucks. It’s the worst of both worlds. Meetings with half In a room and half not are awful.
Hybrid stops the progress to efficiency, allowing for bad practices to creep back in. Poor documentation, bad workflows, side work nobody knows about, to name a few.
Work from home can be just as productive, if not more so, but the workload has to be managed to achieve it.
Maybe it can be just as productive, but the current evidence does not support this conclusion. Although I fail to see how wfh would even remotely be better for poor documentation and side work, it seems like it would be way more open to this than either.
Feel free to post this evidence that wfh is not more productive. Everything I have seen has unusual metrics or seems obvious that a conclusion was reached based on what the purchaser of the study wanted.
Wfh is better for documentation and stops side work nobody knows about because you bake it into your business.
Creating a document? Better have Metadata and a reason, and stored publicly. No one off excel sheets, or emailed word docs.
Wikis and collaborative tools are used in the open by everyone, as well as dashboarding and production metrics. Clear defined work processes and workflows are a must.
What happens in hybrid, is people start doing the sticky notes, using email, word of mouth work, and undocumented training/knowledge share.
By publicly. I mean internally, all workers should have access to, and edit rights to, all knowledge.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240316183946/https:/fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productive-wfh-research/
There is nothing about working from home or hybrid that limits nor enables your ability to implement all of the policies you’ve listed out.
It seems to me that your defeating your whole point by arguing that because wfh has some shortcomings you have to implement extra policies to make it work, which makes work better. But what would probably be just as good would be implementing those things with a hybrid schedule.
The point is that you can’t measure productivity if there is no effort to actually make it work. At that point hybrid is just as bad.
The article was interesting, and this stood out:
“In many of the studies we cite and in some of our own survey evidence, workers often get more done when remote simply because they save time from the daily commute and from other office distractions,” Barrero tells Fortune. “This can make them look more productive on a ‘per day’ basis, even if it means they’re actually less productive on a ‘per hour’ basis.”
So why does per hour win over per day? I would rather be productive each day and manage my own time over an hour by hour basis.
Which leads to another key point in productivity: asynchronous work. Hybrid and in office tends to go back to synchronous work, which in itself is not productive.
deleted by creator
I started off this whole thing by saying that the evidence currently mounting that hybrid is most productive. I’ve provided that evidence.
You are cherry picking one quote from the article, misinterpreting it, and then using that to basically dismiss the whole thing. For instance, it does not say that all of the studies show this. Nor does it say that this was true for the majority of the people in the study, only that some people in some of the studies were more productive per day due to these factors. And the article goes into numerous other things as well showing how in office is more productive, which was just ignored.
That being said, the quote is true for me, to an extent. When I first started, there there were fewer distractions (like people coming in and shooting the shit with me) and so it made me more productive. . . at first. I feel like that waned over time because, honestly, primarily because I got lonely and secondarily I wasn’t bouncing ideas off of my fellow engineers as much. After 10 years of it, I chose a hybrid job simply because I was okay with being around people again, and it ultimately improved my mental health. And on top of that, I feel like my productivity has also increased drastically. Although, i fully understand that this is a personal thing. My office is very collaborative, and I’m shocked now being back in the office that anyone actually thinks full WFH is more productive. I 100% get why people prefer it tho.
If we are going off personal opinion at this point, I absolutely 100% disagree. Asynchronous work is better when no one is working on the same thing as someone else. But when you are all pulling in the same direction, it’s certainly better when there are two people pulling at the same time, rather than 1 person pulling, and then a few hours later another person pulling. I can see that if your work literally has nothing to do with anyone else ever, how asynchronous is always king, but when you are working on similar thing, or simply working around other people who have some knowledge in what you are working on, it’s better to be working with them, rather than just whenever.
Source? Your ass?
Linked it in another post. But based on your response, we can all rest assured that the facts don’t matter.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240316183946/https:/fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productive-wfh-research/
“A sample of 26 studies out of 112 potential studies (from various databases, including Scopus, Google Scholar, and the Web of Science database from 2020 to 2022) were used after a comprehensive literature search and thorough assessment based on PRISMA-P guidelines. Findings reveal that the impact of the WFH model on employee productivity and performance depend on a host of factors, such as the nature of the work, employer and industry characteristics, and home settings, with a majority reporting a positive impact and few documenting no difference or a negative impact.”
Source
As I already said, the evidence early in the pandemic, which your study is pulling from, showed a slight increase. Although yours claims a mixed bag. Your link doesn’t challenge my claim at all.
I’m pointing to the more current evidence showing the reverse is true and productivity is dropped.
I guess we will have to wait for more studies, the consensus now is that it’s beneficial. My personal experience is that I’m happier and working harder than ever.
I provided a study that showed a decrease in productivity. You provided one that said it was a mixed bag. All of these companies think they are better served having people back in the office…
And you’re still maintaining the consensus is that wfh is better. Confirmation bias is s hell of s drug.
Should have realized that when you accused me of pulling my opinion out of my ass, you were warning me what you were going to do.
My guy, the study literally says the majority reports a positive impact, and you say it’s a mixed bag, yet I’m the one with confirmation bias.
Majority has a different meaning than all.
Plus all those other points I made which show your “consensus” has come from your ass.
Thank you for your comments. I feel the same. And I can especially understand that you would tie promotions to at least hybrid. If you’re responsible for other people, need to discuss, brainstorm and instruct, it’s just a necessity to show up in person every now and them.
And c’mon… Being obliged to work hybrid for a promotion… It’s not like that’s a draconian measure at all.
My office the managers have to be in every day, the team leads have to be in 4…the rest of us are 3. So while it’s not stated that you have to be in to be promoted, I imagine if you aren’t really in 3 days a week, promotion is off the table.