PLEAAASSEE PLEASE COME BACK TO THE OFFICE PLS
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/
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.
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.
Thank you for the summary! This is the investigation I was looking for.
Disallowing remote with when it’s possible is anti-worker.
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.
If the source of the article is suspect, where is the research by tech firms with a vested interest in cloud and communication platforms publishing counter studies?
Also, with both studies cited, the best argument is that workers are happy to work more than 8 hours a day. Does that mean you should expect workers to be on call for longer than an 8 hour day because they are working remote?
I think they're right here
Pick one. Otherwise you aren't better than alt-right people on Facebook that say to "do your own research".
Right, but you're no better than alt-right people on Facebook ignoring the research that's literally one click away because you're afraid it will disagree with you
I've provided sources from reputable sources of journalism, you haven't.
FYI, none of your posts in this thread have any links
And because jfc you're lazy: Here is a study by the Harvard Business Review showing increased productivity.
It took three clicks from Google so I can see why you'd have trouble getting to it.
I've been posting the Economist link in several comments. I left it as presented to show where the link came from in case people argued with the source.
This source just states that there is a disagreement over whether work from home is more or less productive and provides survey information to show the difference in opinion.
That isn't making the argument that remote work is productive, just that workers view it as more productive and the study isn't conclusive. The closest this study gets to saying if productivity increases is "In theory, both sides could be right[.]"
Science. Is not about winning. Fuckface.
You and people like you are literally inhibiting the progress of the human race for personal gain. Congratulations.
So there is no scientific evidence that remote work leads to more productivity?
Ignores salient points made, what-about-isms to reassert bad point, doubles down on the science is a competition thing while illustrating complete lack of knowledge of scientific process
At least you are consistent.
I've responded to them, not ignored them.
I've said that, if you want to argue the studies presented, present other studies. The only one presented I had comments on and quoted the text.
Science is about presenting data in a way that can be reviewed and verified. I've asked for studies that back up the assertions made while providing references to my assertions. Where is the data to back up the claim that remote work is more productive?
Probably swimming in their Scrooge McDuck piles of cash since WFH became more widespread?
It's the landlords losing money and the owner/C-suites not being able to see their minions in one place that are pumping out these articles.
So I go back to my original question, is there a study that says remote work is more productive? Where is the science to back it up? The science should be out there if it is true.
And are you honestly telling me that major companies wouldn't love to sell all their real estate and go full virtual? Why not cut that business expense to save money? Major companies have cut everything else, why not cut this too? Why wouldn't an activist investor start pushing to release this capital as a dividend?
Hell, you can start depressing wages, since you can source your staff from lower QoL places and use those places as your bench mark for pay.
https://www.business.com/articles/are-employees-more-productive-working-from-home/
https://www.monitask.com/en/blog/are-remote-employees-more-productive#:~:text=A%20recent%20study%20by%20the,%244%2C500%20annually%20on%20commuting%20costs.
https://www.apollotechnical.com/working-from-home-productivity-statistics/
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/15259-working-from-home-more-productive.html
and just for fun, here's fortune straddling the fence:
https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productive-wfh-research/
https://fortune.com/2022/10/20/remote-hybrid-workers-are-more-productive-slack-future-forum/
I need to read these, but you are the first one to post several articles defending your thesis.
Thank you.
First off, thank you for providing. This was the most thorough list of sources given by anyone.
The buisness.com article is based on a survey of remote workers. The survey states that remote workers feel more productive at home and that they work longer hours. This correlates with anecdotal evidence presented here, but it isn't a measure of actual productivity.
The Monitask.com article refers to two studies that make the claim that remote work is more productive, but one study is blocked by a paywall and the other study isn't even linked. There is one article about a call center in China, which the Economist article I've posted notes that later data shows that the work was not as efficient as previously stated.
The ApolloTechnical.com has a lot of good articles, but there are some self reporting surveys. The article does note that not all research indicates increases in productivity, including one study in 2012 and reported in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization that found that creative tasks see increases in productivity at home while dull tasks see decreases in productivity; I like this study the most as it seems to do more academic rigor of creating an experiment to study against.
The businessnewsdaily.com article is another survey of remote workers, so no objective study on productivity.
There is some good science in the articles you posted, but there are also a lot of self reported surveys. Given what you presented, I can see someone believing that remote working is always more productive.
That said, there seems to be additional studies being performed that are making the claim more disputed. However, the articles you provide also give other very good reasons why remote work should still be allowed.
Just saw that I have responses to things! New Sync user, don't mind me.
Looks like you got your sources, but wanted to address major companies and real estate. Commercial real estate has way longer leases than residential. And their landlords don't have any incentive to let them break lease early. Who else is going to come rent that space?
Of course these companies want to "make use" of those wasted dollars. Even major companies aren't immune to sunk cost fallacy.
Corporate leases are longer than residential ones, but they only go for 3 to 5 years generally. We are seeing a shrinking of leases because of this, which is causing office occupancy rates to plummet. We're seeing companies shift to a hybrid model, but few companies seem to want to go full remote.
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.
Same for me. I found having my workspace be outside my home is better for both my productivity and mood. But I will fight for whatever method of work people find works for them individually.
The trick for me is having a dedicated home office. I wake up, shower, dress in work clothes, and "go to the office".
Only things in there are my work desk, and some excercise equipment.
The company is currently hybrid, with a couple days required in office every week. From everything I've heard, productivity is up, and there is no talk from management that we're changing things.
Try adding some plants too. Having the occasional distraction of watering or picking dead leaves available is useful, without being excessively distracting.
Also, I guess people like oxygen and decorations, it whatever.
That’s me too. Sure it’s useful once a week to sit down with my team but the rest of our work is solo or on an ad hoc debugging call where sharing screens actually makes things easier.
Even worse my office doesn’t even have enough desks for everyone, and even fewer of them are properly setup with a monitor from this decade. Each of I ur 3 mandatory office days is a complete crapshoot on whether you’ll actually get a proper workstation or will you be stuck at a table with your laptop all day.
They’re write offs where fuck all gets done. Some of my colleagues who are in meetings all day seem to be okay with the office but if you actually need to do work there’s little point in being there.
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 exact opposite. At home there are way too many distractions and temptations than in an office environment.
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!
There are tons of other studies that show massive increases in productivity. These bullshit studies are probably sponsored by commercial real estate landlords. They're losing $850B per year since 2020.
Awesome! Eat the rich!
Yup. Offices business is massive. Let them rot!
Totally bullshit. When I'm in the office I'm constantly approached by coworkers wanting to chit chat. Sometimes even when I'm in a Teams meeting with headphones on.
I probably do the same if not more work at home as I did in the office, but only "work" about 2/3 of the time.
I don't have a boss lecture me on blockchain for an hour because they were near my desk, I don't need to listen to Carla's story about her flat tyre, I don't need to get constantly distracted when I'm deep in an analysis hole because someone on maternity leave has walked in with their new baby.
The time spent caught up in boring distractions is used to put on some washing, set the roomba going, or put a pot roast in the oven freeing up more time to just chill out later on and I still get everything done.
Never mind the 2 hours a day of commuting time I get back.
I was in the office 3 days this week. Got almost nothing done. Probably got more done half of today than the last 2 days
Meetings and distractions while in person
Same. We go into the office whenever the big bosses go in.. so once every couple months. We get almost no work done on those days.
It's both decreasing productivity AND saving the economy!!!
https://fortune.com/2023/08/01/remote-work-preventing-economy-from-recession/
Such an incredible paradox 🤯
Reminds me of the headlines trend a few years ago when Millenials were killing everything.
That's a pay site
https://archive.is/4fxkV
“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 we can keep the value of our office buildings high
If only there was an objective way to measure the productivity of a commercial enterprise.... like with money... oh wait, they have been making MORE money? With LESS productive workers? Curious
That's obviously all due to the hard work and visionary leadership of upper management
I am exactly as unproductive at home as I am at the office. I'm just more comfortable.
Something I've just realised going into the office is how much more unproductive I make everyone else.
If I'm not working at home, everyone else is free to keep working. But if I'm not working in the office I'm going to drag everyone in my team down to my level.
I am at the opposite end. When I'm at the office, I put on noise cancelling headphones and don't talk to anyone unless it's necessary. It's not that I don't like them, it's that I just want to get my shit done and not have to deal with their shit.
I'm okay with decreased productivity. I don't own stock in the company.
You also most likely don't get paid more for being more productive.
As some high level manager in Barclays said - analysts are like light bulbs. You remove one, and insert another one.
It all depends on the team's and company's values. If you are just a number to them (reddit moment lmao) - act like a number. 😅
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
Let's be honest, Forbes has been a trashhole for a while.
There's like 50 articles i know of that say otherwise.
There are peer reviewed studies saying otherwise
Sure, some people work better when surrounded by colleagues. Those people usually know that and will seek out on-site work, because it probably also makes them happier.
People who are more efficient at home probably also feel better at home and will seek out remote work.
If you want a much smaller hiring pool, more office upkeep costs and more transport emissions, sure make everyone come into the office... it's so dumb to do this.
IMO if your sector lends itself to remote work and it's not working for your company, you're doing something else wrong.
A lot of my colleagues want for everyone to be in office. Their justification is "well, when everyone is in office, I can just walk to a person and ask them for help". Which is why it's a bit annoying to work there as a knowledgeable person, everyone always asking you to help them, constantly.
Guess where are all the knowledgeable people going.
As a more extroverted person and a people-pleaser, people wanting my help is the dream. Also great for negotiating wages.
But yeah I can see how it can be annoying too!
It's nice sometimes, when you don't have anything better to do. Sharing the knowledge is a genuine pleasure.
It's infuriating if you need to focus on something.
Bingo, some of us actually do like to get out of the house and physically go to work. It seems like everybody except corporate shills think that the whole world wants to work from home, but it would honestly drive me crazy.
But as you said, people like me are going to seek out jobs where that's the expectation at the outset. It's shitty to pull a bait and switch and force everybody to come in when they are used to working from home.
Broski, my commute is typically 45 min by car each way. On the days I'm in the office I work 10+ days to avoid the traffic.
Ok, but just because you prefer working from home and have a long commute doesn't mean everybody else does.
Yeah but they are also the ones who are gonna get promoted
Lmaooooooo Forbes runs a story on a report that's still in draft (the references section header reads very incomplete), just to spread propaganda that "working from home doesn't work!!!!!!!!"
I like going into the office sometimes and the one I'm in is real nice, but I know some are awful, and commutes can be way longer than mine! (one-way 40 minutes by bus).
The same study says hybrid work (1-4 of 5 days remote work) provided on average a small positive change in productivity.
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'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.
Is this real? Thats awsome, just because league needs more recognition. And more people addicted :D
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"
Yeah, but The Economist has reported the same and it is considered to be a decent source of journalism.
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/06/28/the-working-from-home-delusion-fades
I find it funny that Lenin, love him or hate him, had the definitive take on The Economist 100 years ago.
It's funny how these kinds of articles always read exactly the same. I honestly want to know what offices they are using for these supposed metrics because it seems like people are doing everything they can to just endure and waste time while in actual offices.
They looked at the stats of two companies. That's the extent of their "research".
It's a garbage article from the type of people that are responsible for 85% of what is wrong with the planet.
Clearly they’re analyzing offices with fat commercial real estate bills going unpaid month after month. Think anyone at Forbes magazine is invested in that stuff?
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?
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
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.
You think thats going to stop the movement...? No one gives a fuck about your company.
B-but they care so much about you!
I thought we were family!
Seriously.
Someone pull out the productivity growth vs wage growth chart, let's point out why no worker should give the tiniest shit.
"workers want to come back to the office. It's very good. We're serious. They've told us. You can definitely trust us" ~capitalist assholes writing these "articles"
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.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/01/michael-bloomberg-federal-employees-offices-washington/
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.
Mid-managers are being given extra allowances for 'team outings'. Then there's 'free breakfast' and other 'free' things. Finally, managers are also being evaluated for the number of people in their team that they can get to come to the office - the more people in their team they can get to come to office, the more pat on the back they get.
It's no longer a debate of whether you are productive at home or in office. They just want you back in office. Simple as that. The why? I don't know.
/Friend works in corporate real estate. "Employees in IT companies just don't want to go back and it's a HUGE headache for companies.." is what he told me (roughly).
The why is likely to justify office rent and also to more easily control workers. The place I work at was allowing me to 50/50 my work even before the pandemic (and they haven't been forcing employees to come back after), and now with the war (I live and work in Ukraine) they had halved the office space rented in Kyiv but installed spare generators and stuff so that people can come work in case of power outages, as well as organized a shelter in the same building in case of air raids or other emergencies. Not once had I heard about there being not enough space in the new office, and people who prefer it still come there on the regular
Employees at IT companies probably have a whole gaming room they spend most of their time in already and just swap out machines when they're done with work.
Source: I'm an employee at an IT company.
They know you spend time in the gaming room or ping pong table or gossip with a coffee in your hand at the cafeteria for hours. They still want you back in office. It's no longer an argument. All that 'hybrid' work was just an illusion of choice. Companies are still stuck. Like someone above me said, it's about control.
good thing it reduces productivity! we produce too much shit anyway.
My work actually added a productivity tracking tool during the forced remote work during the pandemic and actually found there's no reduction in productivity. My CEO decided to remodel our office to an event space to ensure there's no way for us to go back to mandatory work from office.
This is the way.
Cries in real estate value
Nothing like trying to tell your workers
Look I work from home, I think everyone who can (and wants to) work from home should work from home most of the time. But people are definitely less productive working from home, and I think the people who say that most people are more productive are delusional.
There are more important things than just raw productivity numbers, western workers have been working far too hard and far too long for the last half century, and I think we should return to a more humane approach to working.
Also froma purely selfish capitalist perspective I don't neccesarily think the productivity boost of being in person is worth all the costs of a bigger office, cleaning staff etc.
But how do you define "productive"?
I work from home and I get the same amount of work done. However if you define it as, "Doing X amount of work in Y amount of time," then yeah I'm less productive because nowadays instead of getting that work done in an 8-hour shift I take about 10–12 hours to do it.
Same work, same day, so my productivity hasn't changed. I just take longer to do it by taking breaks, going out to long lunches with friends, and my stress level is almost non-existent!
I find that to be a very equitable trade-off: Almost no job-related stress for a slightly longer working day.
I think people leave out the fact that their commute should also be considered time working. If you've got an hour commute and an eight hour shift, you really have a ten hour shift.
So you are taking ten hours to do eight hours of work, because part of it means dragging your brain through meatspace to be there. Since you don't have to do that, you can take longer doing the actual job.
There's also to take into consideration the fact that people experience dips of productivity throughout the day. Like, I'd never be able to start something that requires most of my brain power after 3.
For others it's early morning.
So, when I was in the office I would just kill time, go on coffee breaks or just do fucking nothing until it was time to go home, and I know for a fact that it was like that for most of my colleagues.
No one works 8 hours straight out of an 8 hours work day. Working from home just removes the torture of sticking around looking busy.
I actually complete from home the same amount of tasks I used to at the office, really, because my productivity (and that of others) wasn't constant there either.
Had a summer job as a customer service agent for a big company, and pretty much did work 8 hours non stop, the phones were ringing constantly. I had two 5 minute breaks that I could take whenever and one 20 minute break that I had to take at a set time. The break time wasn't payed, so you ended up having to be there for 8.5 hours. It was very stressful, but it kinda helped that every customer had a new problem, so it wasn't very repetitive.
Now I some days take longer and other days shorter, to accomplish from home what I could've gotten done working from the office.
"For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the 8 hours supposedly left after 8 hour of work and 8 hours of sleep" -- Doug Larson.
An 8-hour shift quickly turns into 10-12 clock-hours when you factor in all the extraneous crap that goes along with it. I mean, just lunch and a commute easily adds 60-90 unpaid minutes per day. Add the time spent getting ready for work and settling down after work, and you're easily up to 10 hours a day.
Studies that I've seen have seen both an increase in time to perform work and a decrease in quality of work.
You are noting that you take more time, but you work that additional time. Not everyone does that.
Increased employee happiness/retention and reduced office rent may be good reasons why to pick full remote over the increased productivity of the office, but the idea that people are more productive at home isn't proving itself to be true.
Except pretty much every study done on this has said the exact opposite. I am much more productive when I'm home. My team is much more productive when working from home and hard data backs it up. I literally cannot think of one thing about the office that I miss or made me more productive.
I miss distracting coworkers with conversations instead of working! /s
What about the ice cold AC in the winter?
My last office job involved my desk being 7 feet from the entry door to the building. We had codes to get in so anyone not employed there had to knock and it was on me to get up and figure out who they are and decide if I could let them in. Half the time this also involved me tracking down someone else in the building to see if they were expecting said individual OR I had to have the back and forth discussion with said individual that no we don’t want your services and point to the No Soliciting sticker right on front of them on the door. This definitely took away from my productivity.
You are laughing. But with these hot summers I actually miss some of that artic wind. But more importantly I have a heavy hayfever and being in the closed office durning the summer was a relief. It all went considerably worse when I started working from home.
My ability to close a door and sit, focus, and develop in silence makes me not only more productive, but also happier. I’ve done some of the best work of my career over these past 3+ years. I used to wear headphones 50+ hours a week, now it’s only when i go for a walk every morning.
Being happier directly leads to better productivity. I'm not going to try hard to do what I don't like or what doesn't help me to do what I like
There's really nothing like sitting in a darkened room with music blasting, code pouring out of your fingers while you have an out of body experience from caffeine overdose and lack of sleep. I've spent my entire career chasing that high.
What studies?
The few people I know who are against remote working are the type of persons that don't have any non-family social life outside workplace and are freeking out, because their coffee break chit-chats disappeared.
They still base their view on the idea that people are spineless and sooner or later start slacking off.
The ones I see who are against WFH the hardest have pretty awful family lives and don't want to admit it to themselves. They need the break from the shitty family they can't face or deal with more than is absolutely necessary.
Or men that do have a happy life at home, but don't want to be home w/o the wife because children are women's work (I worked with a guy pre COVID that didn't take WFH days because he might have to watch kids on his own)
Yep. Either that or they’re just older and used to the way things were. Go to the office if you want but leave me out of it.
All the studies show literally the opposite. Maybe you're less productive, but that makes you the outlier.
As a work from homer who gets twice as much done in half the time, I'm eyeballing your own delusion xD
And this isn't a self assessment, it comes from my boss, who is fighting tooth and nail to keep us from having to go back into the office with numbers and spreadsheets proving it.
These decisions are top down and have very little to do with what's actually happening on the front line.
Long term burnout also kills productivity.
And having to hire someone new and train them because the freedom they enjoyed is no longer available.
Just fire them and hire fresh people!
\s
Edit: As u/Semi-Hemi-Demigod pointed out, one of the authors of this paper has his own connections to pro-business/anti-worker groups, which may have biased the conclusions of this review.
I'm definitely no specialist on this topic, but to me it seems questionable to generalize the conclusions of that review to all remote workers. From section 3.a, where they analyze the productivity of fully remote workers:
Extending the results of one call-center to all other companies would be very shortsighted, and the fact that this shift to remote work happened quickly during the COVID pandemic is very likely to affect the results. Still, it could be evidence that for this type of industry specifically fully-remote work may have a negative effect. Nonetheless, the authors of the paper offer a more nuanced analysis, finding that remote work actually increased the productivity of workers who were already in the company:
What their results suggest instead is that people who are overall less productive are more likely to seek remote work:
Going back to the main review, the next study they cite didn't actually find a decrease in productivity, only finding that workers spent more hours working to do the same job:
Indeed, working more hours doesn't mean productivity will increase, but to frame this as a drop in productivity because workers can simply do their jobs at a more calm pace seems rather disingenuous to me.
Similar to the first study they found that the workers who prefer to work from home are less productive when doing so, which partially explained the lower productivity:
Still, because this study focused specifically on one data-entry company and only included 234 workers in their final sample, we should be careful with generalizing their findings.
Ultimately even if we take the conclusions of the review at face value, the authors themselves point out that mixing remote and in-person work doesn't seem to lower productivity, and remote work can still be an attractive option for companies because it reduces on-site costs:
There are a lot of other studies on remote working with conflicting results, with some finding an increase in worker productivity while others suggest the opposite, and as the section dedicated to COVID-19 on the Wiki states the effects of remote work can vary depending on the earnings and position of the worker.
As some of the previous studies point out the drop in productivity is in part due to less productive workers self-selecting into remote positions, and due to remote training at the start of the job being less adequate. Hence what seems like the most reasonable solution to me is in-person training for the first few weeks, then a mix of in-person and remote work for employees who want it - and even if there is some drop in productivity, I ultimately agree with you that the improved life-work balance and worker satisfaction that remote work gives to some people is worth the cost.
Your analysis is a lot better than mine. Thanks!
My team was more productive at home, no open space telephoning, discussing, interruptions etc etc etc. no hours on a car or public transport, etc etc and it seems it's the norm (or about the same productivity).
What are you smoking :-D
Because showering, eating, driving are productive vs get up and get started?
That needs to be backed up by data and not just what people think. And reliable data needs scientific study, with proper time and people for the answer to be minimally reliable. Working from home is different from the office, we can establish that - all the rest are just thoughts or delusions from both sides.
Having said that, I agree 100% with the conclusion. We don’t need more productivity to make more money for profit only. We need investment for our personal lives too.
How so? I personally think it's a somewhat personal matter, but people who are less productive are home seem to be people who can't focus in general. I am far more productive working from home, mostly because I don't get distracted by others. I have colleagues who spend hours bantering only to then stay in the company until later to compensate for the banter - I'd rather get my work done so I can end my day on time and go home do the fun stuff. But I do have colleagues who say they get distracted easily when working at home and they'd rather work at the office.
Overall though, my company used to be very against working from home, but after the period of mandatory work from home, management admitted overall productivity had increased. They still insist people should come to the office every now and then to maintain the "friendly" environment the company is supposed to have, though, which is fair I guess.
Our productivity went up across the board according to my managers. We are letting our office go & finding a smaller space for our equipment.
A lot of people seem to just be reacting to this without reading and understand. Granted, Forbs does not go sufficiently in depth to the findings to make this easy.
From what I've read on this, the underlying study here has valuable information that we can all use, understand, and digest.
Does your role require a lot of colaberation? You may need to ensure you have something better than email and phones to replace your ability to talk to someone who would have otherwise sat next to you.
Do you have a lot of junior employees? You will likely need to spend more effort on ensuring they get the quality training they need.
Like.... Sure. A CEO could easily read the title of this article and decide to just bring everyone back to the office without thinking critically. But that doesn't mean we should do the opposite we should be arming ourselves with this information so we can know how to counter our boss's arguments to ensure we can get what we want.
I’m sure it does for people who aren’t motivated.
But those same people don’t work in office either, they just walk around and bullshit all day.
I am way more productive at home than I am in office. Partly purposefully out of spite, and partly because my home work space is better in every way than my office environment. Quieter, more comfortable, better equipment, better internet, even better resilience because of my UPSes.
Fuck Forbes!
I skimmed through it real quick, but I didn’t see anything where they defined how they measured productivity. Did I miss that part?
They asked middle managers what they thought about it.
\s
No need for the \s. That is literally how they did this "study". I'd be interested to see who it was that paid for this bullshit, wouldn't be surprised to see the money trail leading back to commercial real estate.
The article boasts the headline front and center % productivity loss, as though this was some years long extensive study. The section of the report discussing these results is less than two paragraphs long. I've seen high school students put together a more detailed a well researched study.
What bothers me the most is that people will readily reference this article and spread this bullshit everywhere, with basically no one having read the study or put any critical thinking into this at all.
Ouch you are right, people will see headlines and slowly stop being so sure...
And yeah, to find the criminal, follow the money.
I dig through the paper and the study literally looked at two sectors and job types. So let's just extrapolate that too all workers right 🙄
"Remote working appears to lower average productivity by around 10% to 20%. Emmanuel and Harrington (2023) use data from a Fortune 500 firm which had both in-person and remote call centers pre-pandemic. The firm shifted all workers to fully remote in April 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the always remote call-centers as the control group they find an 8% reduction in call volumes among employees who shifted from fully in-person to fully remote work. Gibbs, Mengel and Siemroth (2022) examine IT professionals in a large Indian technology company who shifted to fully remote work at the onset of the pandemic. Measured performance among these workers remained constant while remote but they worked longer hours, implying a drop in employee productivity of 8% to 19%. Atkin, Schoar, and Shinde (2023) run a randomized control trial of data-entry workers in India, randomizing between working fully in the office and fully at home. They find home-workers are 18% less productive."
Yea that’s still not indicating how they measure productivity. It actually does highlight an increase in efficiency though; if there’s an 8% decrease in call volumes, that is a correlation to end users not needing to call in multiple times.
That's a lie. I can never relax at work so I can never jump in at 100percent
12ft.io link to the article
If commercial property developers could hurry up and go bust we could be done with this sooner.
Productivity skyrocketed when we implemented work from home. Employee retention also improved. Keeping it was a no brainer.
I find this really hard to believe. I like going in to work, but I don't work in a standard office (engineer on industrial site). If I were to be working in an office all day though, no way would I prefer that to home.
I feel like the only people who read Forbes and take it at face value have never worked a day in their lives.
Funny that I've seen tons of research saying the opposite. Enough to say, at a minimum, that the verdict is still very much out on the link between productivity and remote work. But I only see the negative ones being published now, whereas during COVID I only saw the positive ones.
Literally the post below this on on my lemmy feed
Do these folks factor in people who have to waste 1 hour in commuting to and from the office? Or do they pay for that as well?
Hot take: they might be right that going back to the office makes folks more productive, but the quiet quitting phenomenon could be counteracting that effect
It's a net loss in productivity of the company, then. Unless having less people to pay to offsets that the other way, which I sincerely doubt
In my personal experience. No it does not reduce productivity.
Haha no it doesn't :) :)
The whole "working from home reduces productivity" is non-sense simply because companies can simply put poor performers on a performance improvement plan and if they don't improve then fire them. But they're not doing that in droves, so therefore, it's just not true.
It seems like you're discussing various studies and opinions on remote work productivity, highlighting both positive and critical perspectives. If you're looking for tools or strategies that can support increased productivity in a remote or hybrid work environment, one effective solution is time tracking and management software.
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