Does Working From Home Help or Hurt Productivity?

Is working from home a help or a hindrance? Here's what a conference of experts found.

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Last week, remote-work guru Nicholas Bloom convened a conference at Stanford University where academics presented, discussed and debated the latest research on the economic and societal impacts of working from home.

The event featured papers from experts around the world on topics including housing prices, crime rates and the outlook for cities. The academics also delved into remote work’s contradictory effects on women: While it allows more of them to remain in the workforce, there are gender imbalances in how women working from home are treated.

But it’s remote-based productivity that’s become the lightning rod of debate among economists, corporate chiefs and civic leaders as they struggle to hash out the new rules of work, more than three years after the pandemic sent millions of desk workers home. It’s now a hot area of research, with papers finding both positive and negative effects on performance. Read more here .

Readers: Are you more productive at home or at the office? Tell us by joining the conversation below in the comments section below.

Quick Hits

• Striking auto workers aren’t just demanding higher wages . They also want to get their once-sacred retirement pensions back.
• In our latest Five Minutes With interview, the CEO of Prezi says he wants to make remote meetings better than those done in person.
• Jobseekers’ frustration over getting “ghosted” by employers is spreading, and some economists are skeptical about the government’s job-openings data .

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Don’t Expect the Same Raise You Got Last Year

Companies are trimming their budgets for merit raises next year, a sign of belt-tightening that could surprise some employees who had enjoyed two straight years of increases. US employers surveyed by Aon Plc, which compiles compensation data on more than 5,500 employers, said merit raises will average about 3.7% across all industries next year, down from 3.9% this year, as companies rein in labor budgets and inflation eases from last year’s highs. A separate survey from workplace consultant Mercer found a similar trend, with merit-based salaries seen rising 3.5% next year, down from 3.9% in 2023.

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