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.
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.