Are we truly more productive in the office?

There is a lot of dialogue, and even tension, surrounding the topic of remote work. Companies that had to push most of their operations into remote models due to the pandemic are having a tough time convincing those employees – who have experienced the many benefits of remote work – to come back into the office. Many leaders are mandating a certain number of days per week in-office. Some are mandating a full five days. But what are these decisions based on? Are we actually more productive in the office, or are we just stuck thinking in the past??

It seems that many leaders hold the belief that employees are more productive in the office, rather than at home. At first glance this feels true; at home you have the distraction of TV, your pets and children, the desire to get some household chores done in the middle of the day. But most of these are assumptions, based on the simple fact that your manager can’t see you when you’re at home, and therefore, you must be finding ways to not do your work.?

An article published by the Harvard Business Review titled, “The Truth About Open Offices,” describes a study on the perfect office layout to maximize productivity. Ethan Bernstein and Ben Waber detail that whether a person is working in-person or remotely, they decide if they want to interact with others. It may be easier to avoid your coworkers when working online – you simply avoid phone calls and messages. But even at your office desk, you can put on headphones, engross yourself in your work, and remain quiet for the duration of the day.??

If you’re looking for distractions, you’ll find them anywhere. That could be TV at home or a lengthy walk around the office. On the other hand, if you want to get work done, you will find a way to do that in each environment as well. While there is some truth to doing more work when your superior is looking directly at you, just as we may feel more motivated to run that extra kilometer in the gym rather than on a home treadmill, managers are not always staring at their employees. And those employees understand the consequences of not completing their work. If the work gets done, does it really matter where that is? And does it matter if it gets done and the employee also walked their dog??

A study conducted again by Ethan Bernstein, along with Jesse Shore and David Lazer, titled, “How intermittent breaks in interaction improve collective intelligence,” talks about collective intelligence, i.e. the ability of groups of people to solve problems. They looked at three situations: working in a group, working alone, and working alone with occasional meetings with the group. The third scenario yielded the best results. Working in a group missed out on diverse solutions, as some group members overpowered others, while working exclusively alone did not empower people to tackle bigger tasks, nor did it provide exposure for people to positive influences. Working independently with occasional meetings to garner external influence and inputs, produced strong solutions with diverse points of view.?

What does this mean for remote work? Mandating employees to return to the office five days a week is more about returning to a known structure, rather than truly finding the solution that generates the best work. Human beings – generally - need social interaction and movement throughout their day, as we all learned during the pandemic. But we are also mostly intelligent enough, and good enough at our jobs, that we need individual time as well. A combination of work models is ideal, and structures should be tweaked according to the organization and the kind of work that needs to be done. Some projects are more collaborative than others, and some roles are better fit to a single person working alone.?

We are all still feeling the effects of the pandemic and searching for the ideal ways to go about our work. Remote work is here to stay, so rather than trying to eliminate the concept from conversation, let’s look for ways to optimize productivity while taking the preferences of our employees to heart.?