How productive can anyone really be, sprawled on their couch at home, in their pajamas, working on their laptop while so many distractions lurk in the background?
As it turns out, pretty darn productive!
Contrary to the opinions of some high-profile CEOs (cough, cough…Yahoo), a study done by Stanford University Economics professor Nick Bloom has proven that telecommuters are actually not only significantly more productive than their in-office counterparts – they’re also much happier, and much less likely to quit.
Of course, we here at Sococo already knew that, but we love it when research backs up our firsthand experience!
The Experiment.
Bloom, who is also Co-Director of the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, partnered with Ctrip, a Chinese travel website, for his experiment. Ctrip management gave their employees the chance to volunteer to work from home for nine months. At the end of those nine months, Bloom gathered data on the telecommuters’ job performance vs. that of the employees who had continued to work in the office, and had them all fill out surveys detailing their job satisfaction levels, as well.
The results spoke for themselves.
The team members who had worked from home were able to do an astonishing 13.5% more work than those who had stayed in the office – amounting to almost an extra day of work each week!
In addition to the higher productivity, telecommuters also quit their jobs at only half the rate of the in-office workers – and reported feeling a much higher level of job satisfaction in the surveys they completed, as well.
How did Bloom explain the results?
While it’s common to imagine telecommuters getting distracted by TV or domestic chores, or even just goofing off because no one is there to keep an eye on them, it turns out that offices are actually extremely distracting places, themselves – and not quite as disciplined an environment as we like to think of them as being.
Bloom attributes one-third of his results to the fact that an empty home is simply much quieter than an office. No team members stopping by for chats or announcing that there’s cake in the break room means fewer interruptions and distractions throughout the workday. Your home is actually less distracting than your office, even with all those piles of laundry waiting to be done, and that Xbox sitting right there.
The other two-thirds Bloom credits to the fact that employees worked more hours when they worked from home. With the lines blurred between home and work, they started earlier, took shorter breaks, and worked steadily through until the end of the day. They didn’t feel the need to leave to run errands at lunchtime, and of course, they had no commute to deal with – and maybe best of all, the number of sick days taken dropped dramatically. All of those elements added up to mean significantly more work getting done, and employees feeling happier while doing it.
Aside from the increased productivity, lowered attrition rate, and boost in employee morale, Ctrip realized another very real benefit during the nine-month experiment, as well – a savings of about $1900 per employee on furniture and office space.
Remote work can create win-win situations.
Bloom proved that flexible work arrangements are concretely beneficial to everyone involved – to companies and their employees – both financially and in terms of intangibles such as job satisfaction. But he also recognized that management can be reluctant to make such a dramatic change to an organization’s workplace set-up.
That’s why Sococo is such an indispensible tool. Our virtual office space gives management the oversight and access they need to manage remote employees just as easily as employees in a physical office. We’re proud to be contributing to the workplace revolution, making it possible for both businesses and their employees to take advantage of all that telecommuting has to offer, while still enjoying the benefits of a physical office environment, as well. Download your free trial of Sococo today!
