Its Working Where I Choose that matters, not Working from Home

TL-DR

----

Working from home is, at best, a marginal factor in determining productivity

Most of the research into changes in working practices show the Hawthorne effect - a short term productivity gain that? disappears after a few months.

What really matters is choice. Imposing a working pattern (unless its for clear safety or practical reasons) doesn't have any effect on productivity in the long run.

-----

I was inspired, if that's the right word, to write this as there were two contrasting articles that hit the news this week.

Firstly, this headline: Right to WFH boosts productivity, Labour says. To be fair (always read the actual text), that's not what Jonathan Reynolds said. But the Labour government are planning on introducing a default right for workers to work flexibly along with a range of other rights.

At almost exactly the same time there were headlines that Amazon demands workers return to the office five days a week.?

There then ensued a social media debate about whether the government knew better than business about how to be productive... all carried on without any reference to the mountains of evidence that is already out there!

Flexible working is one of the biggest trends of the twenty-first century. There are numerous studies and reports citing major improvements in productivity and savings of time from implementing flexible or mobile working policies. You can find some of the best, and most thoughtful, research on this topic here.

But, there is something significant missing from all these pieces of evidence. If flexible working drives genuine productivity improvements, then we should have seen a? noticeable increase in GDP per head long before now (in the UK, at least).

But in practice, that has not happened. Despite the fact that the number of people working from home has increased, UK productivity per head hasn't increased at all.

The science bit…

So, why hasn't that happened? It turns out that some weird things happen when you look at workforce productivity, and what looks like an improvement often isn't.

One of the earliest pieces of industrial psychology research concerned what is called the Hawthorne Effect, named after series of experiments conducted at Western Electric’s Hawthorne manufacturing plant in Cicero, Illinois in the 1920's. ?

Management at the plant began a series of experiments to see whether changes in working conditions would improve productivity. The lighting in an area occupied by one set of workers was increased so there was better illumination to help them see the telephone relays they were building. Perhaps not surprisingly, workers who had more light were able to assemble relays faster. Other changes were then made: Employees were given rest breaks. Their productivity increased. They were allowed to work shorter hours. Again, they were more efficient during those hours.

But then something weird happened. The lighting was cut back to normal…and productivity still went up.?

In fact, just about every change the company made had only one effect: increased worker productivity. After months of tinkering, the work conditions were returned to the original state, and workers built more relays than they did in the exact same circumstances at the start of the experiment.

What was happening? Why was it that no matter what the Hawthorne plant managers did, the workers just performed better??

Then, after they came back to the plant 6 months later, they found that the productivity improvements had disappeared. Performance returned to where it was in the first place.

The study gave rise to what’s known in sociology as the Hawthorne effect. People change their behaviour—often for the better—when their environment is changed. But its not a durable effect. Over time, they habituate to the new environment and productivity reverts back to where it was before.?

So, why does this happen, and what can you actually do to improve productivity?

What matters is Working Where I Choose

There is some pretty good research that looks at exactly this question, conducted by Stanford University here.

This was a randomised, controlled study of call centre employees at CTrip, looking at overall worker productivity during a 6 month trial of working from home. Its one of the few (possibly the only?) example of a truly rigorous study of the long term impacts of flexible working on productivity.

It provided compelling evidence that worker choice was the most important factor in productivity improvements. ?When the trial was completed, workers were given a choice about whether to continue working from home, or to transfer back to working from their home office. About 50% chose to return, suggesting that the benefits of the office are important for a significant number of workers.

However, productivity overall rose for BOTH groups (those that worked from home and those that worked from the office). ?

I'm in the "like an office" group. I need the interaction and sponatneous connection that only an office can provide. But I know that others in the teams I have led are the opposite, and are at their best when they feel in control of their schedule, interactions and environment. If you impose a rule on everyone - however well intentioned - you create winners and losers. Some people welcome the change and it boosts productivity. Others hate it and do less (or leave).

So, its not Working from Home that matters most - its Working Where I Choose that is the differentiator.

I predict that Amazon, and the other companies that have implemented a mandatory in-office policy, will report a short-term boost to productivity. But then, after about six months or so, they will find that they are right back where they started.