How Much Work from Home is Permanent? What is Productivity Impact?

Virtually everyone seems to believe that work patterns will be more varied, once the Covid-19 pandemic has passed. What is somewhat unclear is how much the patterns will change, on a permanent basis. Complicating matters, it is not clear how remote work affects productivity. 

Some 15 percent of executives surveyed by McKinsey believe at least one-tenth of their employees could work remotely two or more days a week going forward, almost double the eight percent of respondents who expressed that intention before COVID-19. 

That includes 20 percent of executives surveyed in the United Kingdom and Germany. But only only four percent of respondents in China thought that would be the case. Only seven percent of respondents believed at least one-tenth of their employees could work three or more days a week remotely, McKinsey reports. 

Also, potential for remote work is highly concentrated in a handful of sectors, such as information and technology, finance, insurance and management, McKinsey notes. Some 34 percent of respondents from the information and technology sector said they expect to have at least 10 percent of their employees working remotely for at least two days a week after COVID-19, compared with 22 percent of executives from that sector surveyed before the pandemic, for example. 

There is some debate about whether remote work is less productive or not. Nor is it easy to figure out what and how to measure. Output is the logical metric, but output is a fuzzy concept for most information workers. That leaves us with input measures, which may or may not be relevant to output. 

Still, the long-term trend towards more flexible work patterns is likely to get a tangible and mostly sustainable boost from pandemic work-from-home experiences. That said, there are substantial differences between casual work from home, telecommuting and routine work from home, either full-time or part-time. 

Subjective employee impressions about their own productivity when working from home have to be taken cautiously. People might believe they are “more productive” when working from home, but that does not mean they actually are, even if we can agree on how to measure office worker or knowledge worker productivity. 

So far, results seem inconclusive. Aternity reports that "workers are getting less productive the longer the remote work shift continues." 

GitLab reports that many workers feel more productive working from home. "Employees find themselves to be overall more productive (52 per cent) and efficient (48 per cent)," GitLab says.