The three-day office hybrid work schedule is “triple win,” according to a study published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature.
In the study, Nick Bloom of Stanford University’s Economic Policy Institute, a highly regarded expert on work patterns who has been studying remote productivity long before the pandemic, provides a Concrete evidence was provided: Benefits of hybrid working.
Bloom has previously said hybrid working benefits both employees and employers, and went on to recommend employers offer more flexible working arrangements as more companies bring workers back to the office.
The study by Bloom and co-authors Ruobing Han and James Liang is the largest to date on the benefits of hybrid working among university-trained professionals and the largest to cover hybrid working using a randomized controlled trial structure, argue “gold standard” in experimental design. The study involved 1,612 employees at Trip.com, a Chinese multinational technology company, and was conducted over six months to analyze job retention, satisfaction, productivity and development. , because this is the main research object. Bloom estimates that about 100 million employees around the world currently work on some form of hybrid schedule, many of them in knowledge worker roles.
Data shows that a three-day in-office hybrid work approach increases retention and satisfaction, and leads to equal success among creative and team-oriented employees in functions such as marketing, finance, and engineering that often offer hybrid structures.
The non-manager turnover rate for hybrid employees was 2.4%, which was one-third lower than the 7.2% rate for the control group. Women, non-managerial workers and long-distance (more than 90 minutes) commuters are particularly willing to stay in the workforce rather than abandon hybrid arrangements, supporting the basic premise of eliminating long commutes, reducing family stress and improving work. However, research has found that women are less likely to voluntarily work in mixed jobs and fear workplace judgment.
On measures of employee satisfaction, hybrid employees had significantly higher anonymous self-report scores on work-life balance and life satisfaction and were more likely to recommend the workplace to others. They also scored lower on “reasons for quitting”.
Trip.com did not have a hybrid policy when it began a six-month experiment in 2021 that included 395 managers and 1,217 non-managers with undergraduate degrees in engineering, marketing, accounting and finance at the company’s Shanghai office. About one-third (32%) of study participants also held a graduate degree, primarily in computer science, accounting, or finance. Most participants were in their 30s, half had children, and the majority (65%) were male.
Emerging from the pandemic, executives are concerned about a decline in employee productivity, development, and creativity/innovation and are ordering a full return to the office in some cases. Companies including Boeing, UPS, Nike and JPMorgan Chase have implemented stricter return-to-work rules. The reasons for these decisions could range from senior executives’ belief in the high safety value of traditional office culture to plummeting stock prices. Nike’s chief executive recently blamed the company’s lack of innovation on working from home. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has for years argued against an overemphasis on remote work, especially in management roles, although he acknowledged that some functions can be performed effectively on a remote basis.
Many C-suite executives believe job functions in finance, marketing, and engineering do not perform well from home because they rely on conflicting data from studies of fully remote offices. A University of Pittsburgh study found that struggling companies may use the remote work argument as a scapegoat and promote in-person collaboration as the key to a productive workplace. This study demonstrates that hybrid programs at least do not affect performance.
In this study, there were no significant differences between blended and face-to-face employee performance appraisals. When managers measured employees on nine dimensions of performance, execution and results, hybrid employees had the same success rate. Even when it comes to soft skills, including innovation, hybrid workers are equally successful. There was no significant difference in the number of lines of code submitted per day, a key performance metric, between hybrid computer engineers and on-site computer engineers.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has firmly embraced remote work during the epidemic and recently returned calls to employees three days a week.
By the end of the experiment, managers positively viewed hybrid work as a potential asset to the company rather than a harm to productivity.
“This study provides strong evidence as to why 80% of U.S. companies now offer some form of remote work, and why the remaining 20% may not offer some form,” Bloom said in a statement. “If managed correctly, having employees work from home two or three days a week can still get the level of mentorship, culture building, and innovation you want. From an economic policymaking perspective, hybrid work is one of the few One of the situations where hybrid work can be achieved.
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