Is Work from Home Really "More" Productive, or "Less?" How Can We Even Tell?

Though many employees express a desire to continue working from home permanently, even after there is no Covid-19 reason to do so, it also seems clear that work from home fatigue is setting in. That might also be accompanied by the end of the initial period where firms claimed that productivity had not been affected.

A survey of 365 U.S. workers by The Manifest found that 30 percent of respondents think they are more productive working from home. Fully 45 percent believe they are more productive working in an office, and 24 percent say they’re equally productive working from home and in an office. Keep in mind those are examples of what people think about their productivity. It is not an actual measure of whether they are, or are not, more productive in home or office settings. 

source: Agility PR 

Some have argued that even if productivity can be sustained for a brief period, it might well not sustain itself over the long term. A survey of the heads of nearly 50 U.S. businesses employing 443,895 people in industries that include technology, legal services, advertising and the finance, insurance and real estate sector found that 40 percent of them have started to see decreases in productivity as staff work remotely. 

To be sure, Vocon is in the office design firm, with a vested interest in continued office work. But it should always have been clear that emergency, short term workarounds during the mandatory work from home period would eventually begin to test whether productivity actually could be sustained. 

Most of us can sustain productivity for short periods of time. What never is so clear is whether we can do so if a long-term disruption happens. 

J.P. Morgan also seems concerned that WFH productivity is slipping, while others note growing evidence of mental health issues caused by enforced WFH. 

At least, that might be true for the 25 percent of workers who can work from home.  

Also, there is a growing sense among professionals that WFH is hurting their career progression. Others might point out that WFH has positives and negatives, not including burn out or work-life balance, even if WFH once was viewed as a perk.   

“Effective leadership is all about presence and persuasion,” says Bob Fisch, Specialty apparel retailing pioneer. “The best mentoring happens close-up, with a senior executive encouraging a younger associate, and with the associate embracing the unique opportunity to offer the leader her own perspective.”

“It is that irreplaceable intimate element of mutual mentoring that is lost outside the office,” Fisch says. 

The percentage of those indicating they would like to continue to work remotely at least occasionally declined from more than 80 percent in July to 67 percent in August in the United States, according to the IBM Institute for Business Value. The percentage of respondents who say they would like this to be their primary way of working dropped from 65 percent in July 2020 to just 50 percent in August 2020.  

Information worker productivity is notoriously hard to measure, as output itself is intangible. So key performance indicators might not even be possible. Quantifiable measures such as “emails sent and received” might not measure anything of true importance. 

In fact, even outcome measurements might be more valid than output measures. A policy paper might be the output of a person or team. But its value comes if there is a policy outcome. It might therefore seem obvious that tracking qualitative inputs (subjects interviewed, hours spent interviewing, number of interviews and so forth might be nearly irrelevant. 

Output is what people do; outcome is what they achieve. In other words, for knowledge workers, input measures are generally unhelpful. But even output metrics might not be germane. Only outcomes might really matter.