Hybrid working, with the option to work from the office some of the time and from home the rest of the time, is good for EDI. It provides greater flexibility to individuals, to suit the unique demands of their lives and their personal styles of working. Data estimates that more than 70% of employees (more than 100 million individuals) that work from home globally are on a hybrid schedule. However, there is still a prevailing view in some organisations and held by some leaders that hybrid working is bad for productivity.
The research
In this 2024 article, researchers Nicholas Bloom, Ruobing Han and James Liang used a randomized control trial to examine the effect of hybrid working in which 1,612 employees working in software engineering, marketing, accounting and finance roles worked from home for two days per week. Employees were randomized into two groups. In the treatment group they were given the option to work from home on Wednesday and Friday and come into the office on the other three days. In the control group they were required to come into the office on all five days, for six months.
The results
The researchers found a number of important effects:
• There was reduced attrition for non-managerial employees, female employees and those with long commutes.
• At the same time, there was no evidence of an impact on employees’ performance reviews and no evidence of a difference in promotion rates over periods of up to two years.
• However, there were significant differences in pre-experiment beliefs about the effects of work from home on productivity between non-managers and managers. Before the experiment, managers tended to have more negative views, reporting that hybrid work from home would be likely to negatively affect productivity, whereas non-managers had more positive views.
Once the experiment ended, the executive committee in the research organisation examined the data and voted to extend the hybrid work from home policy to all employees in all divisions of the company with immediate effect. Their logic was that each quit cost the company approximately US$20,000 in recruitment and training, so a one-third reduction in attrition for the firm would generate millions of dollars in savings.
Implications for organisations
This research highlights how hybrid remote work not only leaves performance unchanged, but can be profitably adopted by organizations, given its effect on reducing attrition, which is estimated to cost about 50% of an individual’s annual salary for graduate employees. Hybrid working also offers large gains for society by providing a valuable perk to employees, reducing commuting and easing child-care.
The researchers note that full enrollment into hybrid schemes is important because of concerns from some groups that volunteering might be seen as a negative signal about career ambitions. For example, the low volunteer rate among female employees, despite their high implied value (from the large reductions in quit rates observed), is particularly notable in this regard. Female employees are often judged more harshly, for example, having to battle negative stereotypes around their levels of ambition. Therefore they may be less inclined to engage in activities which might feed into these negative stereotypes. Consequently it is critical that the organisation and leaders recognise and communicate that a desire to work from home does not relate to a lack of career ambition.
You can access the full article here.
