Stanford professor on hybrid working and why companies should let employees choose

Saturday Morning

Our lives changed significantly five years ago, when the Covid pandemic swept the world and Aotearoa - like many countries - locked down.

We discovered which workers really were essential, and how fast it was possible to adapt to working from home.

Fast forward five years, and companies are bringing in blanket edicts for workers to return to the office - including the PM Christopher Luxon saying he did "...not want to see working from home undermining that ambition that we have".

So is flexible working good for productivity, society and who is keen to work from home?

Nicholas Bloom, the William Eberle Professor of economics at Stanford University and one of the foremost researchers on work-from-home policies, told Saturday Morning when it comes to working arrangements, choice and flexibility is best.

He said folks in their early 20s don't really want to work from home.

"They say look, I want to go in to the office to get experience, to get mentored, it's more sociable.

"It's when you see folks getting to late 20s, particularly 30s and 40s, they've got little kids, you know, they've got lives outside of work, they're getting busier - these kind of people, we see in the data, are pretty keen on working from home."

He said "empty nesters", or people aged over 50, tend to want to head back into the office.

Bloom said working fully remote is pretty rare in countries around the world including New Zealand.

"In New Zealand you'd see about 60 percent of people have to go in every day... there's about 30 percent of folks that are hybrid... and there's now only about 10 percent of people that are fully remote.

"If you look at who is fully remote, some of them are like coders, you know, people with tech jobs, but mostly it's a lot of people in call centres, data entry, HR, payroll, so most working from home now is folks that are coming in say three days a week and working from home a couple days a week."

Bloom said data showed working hybrid had no affect on productivity and was saving companies thousands on staff turnover costs.

He added people in rural areas, people with kids and individuals with a disability benefited from hybrid working.

"The other thing that's entertaining... so apparently burglary is down in a lot of areas working from home because no criminal wants to break into somebody's house to find, you know, some person sitting in their living room working away on their laptop.

"Criminals have actually shifted their activities to city centres cause there's less folks around - [working from home] has pretty much effected everything," he said.

When it comes to mental health, Bloom said fully remote work can come with issues, but letting employees choose was best for the company and their staff.

"What you see in the data is if you let people choose, that's best for their mental health.

"Generally the data suggests choice and flexibility is best," he said.

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