When Commuting Time Lessened, Did Productivity Increase?

The productivity impact of work-from-home rules--especially the reduction in commuting time--will be hard to assess, but one new study suggests little change for independent contractors, but an increased work day for managers.

Reviewing time-use diaries of 1,300 U.S.-based knowledge workers, collected in the summers of 2019 and 2020, professors Andrew Kun, Raffaella Sadun, Orit Shaer, and Thomaz Teodorovicz found a reduction in commuting time to work of about 41 minutes, on average, because of extensive work-from-home rules. 

Intuitively, you might guess that has led to an increase of productivity. The study is far more nuanced. 

“Independent employees (i.e., those without managerial responsibilities) reallocated much of it to personal activities, whereas managers just worked longer hours and spent more time in meetings,” the researchers note. 

Independent contractors simply used the extra free time for non-work activities. Managers had to spend more time in meetings. 

“For managers, the increase in work hours more than offset the loss in commuting time: Their work day increased on average by 56 minutes, and the time they spent replying to emails increased by 13 minutes,” the researchers say.

That might imply that productivity did not increase, since there was “no increase in total time spent working,” but the work day lengthened a bit, the researchers note.  “The work-day span increased by 56 minutes for managers but did not change for independent employees.” 

It is not possible to directly assess “productivity” results based strictly on the input measure of “time spent,” but if measurable “output” did not change, then productivity measured as “results divided by work time” might well have dropped, for managers, as they had to spend more hours working to produce the same output. 

“These changes were even larger for managers employed by large firms, who spent 22 minutes more per day in meetings, and 16 more minutes responding to emails,” (compared to the average manager) they report. 

Without quantitative output measures, all we can do is look at inputs, when trying to assess the impact of lessened commuting time. If output remained constant, which is what proponents of WFH productivity believe, then longer work hours for managers translates into lower productivity (more hours to create the same output).

As always, it is nearly impossible to quantify the output of an office or knowledge worker, which is what we would need to have to assess productivity changes. That is not going to stop suppliers of remote work products from claiming productivity is higher, the same or at least not impaired by remote work.