hybrid work research paper

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• NEWS FEATURE
• 04 March 2024

What science says about hybrid working — and how to make it a success

• David Adam 0

David Adam is a writer in Hertford, near London.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

A woman works from an outside table in New York City in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted lasting changes to working habits. Credit: Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty

Certain aspects of scientific life do not lend themselves to working from home. Archaeologist Adrià Breu, who studies neolithic pottery at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, can’t dig for artefacts in his kitchen, and Claudia Sala’s experiments in molecular microbiology at the Toscana Life Sciences Foundation in Siena, Italy, oblige her to commute to her laboratory most days. But both these researchers also get to work from home — when they write up papers, for example, or analyse data.

Access options

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

24,99 € / 30 days

cancel any time

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

185,98 € per year

only 3,65 € per issue

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00643-2

Tijssen, R. J. W., Waltman, L. & van Eyck, N. J. Nature 473 , 154 (2011).

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Barrero, J. M., Bloom, N. & Davis, S. J. NBER Working Paper 28731 (2021).

Bloom, N., Han, R. & Liang, J. NBER Working Paper 30292 (2022).

Lin, Y., Frey, C. B. & Wu, L. Nature 623 , 987–991 (2023).

Cui, H., Wu, L. & Evans, J. A. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.04044 (2022).

Brucks, M. S. & Levav, J. Nature 605 , 108–112 (2022).

Article   Google Scholar  

Yang, L. et al. Nature Hum. Behav. 6 , 43–54 (2022).

Chen, C., Frey, C. B. & Presidente, G. Oxford Martin Working Paper 2022-4 (2022).

Download references

Reprints and permissions

Related Articles

• Research management

Female academics need more support — in China as elsewhere

Correspondence 16 APR 24

Citizenship privilege harms science

Comment 15 APR 24

Brazil’s postgraduate funding model is about rectifying past inequalities

Correspondence 09 APR 24

Researchers want a ‘nutrition label’ for academic-paper facts

Nature Index 17 APR 24

How we landed job interviews for professorships straight out of our PhD programmes

Career Column 08 APR 24

How two PhD students overcame the odds to snag tenure-track jobs

It’s time to talk about the hidden human cost of the green transition

Shrouded in secrecy: how science is harmed by the bullying and harassment rumour mill

Career Feature 16 APR 24

Use fines from EU social-media act to fund research on adolescent mental health

Postdoc in Computational Genomics – Machine Learning for Multi-Omics Profiling of Cancer Evolution

Computational Postdoc - Artificial Intelligence in Oncology and Regulatory Genomics and Cancer Evolution at the DKFZ - limited to 2 years

Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg (DE)

German Cancer Research Center in the Helmholtz Association (DKFZ)

Computational Postdoc

The German Cancer Research Center is the largest biomedical research institution in Germany.

PhD / PostDoc Medical bioinformatics (m/f/d)

The Institute of Medical Bioinformatics and Systems Medicine / University of Freiburg is looking for a PhD/PostDoc Medical bioinformatics (m/w/d)

Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg (DE)

University of Freiburg

Postdoctoral Research Associate position at University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Postdoctoral Research Associate position at University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center   The Kamiya Mehla lab at the newly established Departmen...

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

Computational Postdoctoral Fellow with a Strong Background in Bioinformatics

Houston, Texas (US)

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Choosing a Hybrid Work Model and New Challenges

• Conference paper
• First Online: 04 February 2022
• Cite this conference paper

• V. G. Konovalova 12 ,
• B. V. Petrenko 12 &
• R. V. Aghgashyan 13  

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 397))

1983 Accesses

2 Citations

The contribution examines the accumulated experience of remote work in order to identify development prospects for hybrid work models in various activity fields, opportunities and risks arising in this regard. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that although modern IT infrastructure, including in Russia, is often able to provide remote work, however, assessments of its advantages and problems, the impact on labor efficiency and employee motivation are ambiguous. The problems of switching to a hybrid model can be caused by both the risk of ensuring information security, and insufficient preparation of employees for self-organization, building a work and rest schedule and maintaining the effectiveness of communications and work, cramped conditions and distractions when working from home. As potential risks of hybrid work, the authors identified problems of socialization and increased emotional burnout, an increase in the gap between members of the hybrid team working in different formats (from the office/remotely), the threat of an increase in the gender gap. Recommendations on the organization of work and maintenance of virtual cooperation when implementing a hybrid model are proposed and justified.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Capgemini: The future of work: from remote to hybrid (2020). https://www.capgemini.com/research/the-future-of-work/ . Accessed 30 Mar 2021

Jet Information Systems: Organization of remote work in a large Russian business. Results of 2020 (2020). https://jet.su/remote/ . Accessed 10 Mar 2021

Delanoeije, J., Verbruggen, M., Germeys, L.: Boundary role transitions: a day-to-day approach to explain the effects of home-based telework on work-to-home conflict and home-to-work conflict. Hum. Relat. 72 (12), 1843–1868 (2019)

Article   Google Scholar  

Gartner: Gartner survey reveals 82% of company leaders plan to allow employees to work remotely some of the time (2020). https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-07-14-gartner-survey-reveals-82-percent-of-company-leaders-plan-to-allow-employees-to-work-remotely-some-of-the-time . Accessed 26 Mar 2021

Golden, T.D., Eddleston, K.A.: Is there a price telecommuters pay? Examining the relationship between telecommuting and objective career success. J. Vocat. Behav. 116 (1), 103348 (2019)

Google Scholar  

Grattan, L.: Four principles to ensure hybrid work is productive work (2020). https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/four-principles-to-ensure-hybrid-work-is-productive-work/ . Accessed 10 Aug 2021

Golden, T.D., Gajendran, R.S.: Unpacking the role of a telecommuter’s job in their performance: examining job complexity, problem solving, interdependence, and social support. J. Bus. Psychol. 34 (1), 55–69 (2019)

Mckinsey&Company: What’s next for remote work: an analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries (2020). https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/whats-next-for-remote-work-an-analysis-of-2000-tasks-800-jobs-and-nine-countries . Accessed 19 Mar 2021

Molla, R.: How remote work is quietly remaking our lives (2019). https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/9/20885699/remote-work-from-anywhere-change-coworking-office-real-estate . Accessed 19 Mar 2021

PwC: It’s time to reimagine where and how work will get done (2021). https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/covid-19/us-remote-work-survey.html . Accessed 26 Mar 2021

Raghuram, S., Hill, N.S., Gibbs, J.L., Maruping, L.M.: Virtual work: bridging research clusters. Acad. Manag. Ann. 13 (1), 308–341 (2019)

Ralph, P., et al.: Pandemic programming. Empir. Softw. Eng. 25 (6), 4927–4961 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-020-09875-y

Article   MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Schur, L.A., Ameri, M., Kruse, D.: Telework after COVID: a “silver lining” for workers with disabilities? J. Occup. Rehabil. 30 (4), 521–536 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-020-09936-5

Teevan, J., Hecht, B.: How research can enable more effective remote work. Microsoft Research (2020). https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/how-research-can-enable-more-effective-remote-work/ . Accessed 10 Mar 2021

Tikhonov, A.I.: Corporate training programs in Russian and foreign companies: impact on staff and time challenges. Int. J. High. Educ. 9 (3), 183–189 (2020). https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v9n3p183

VCIOM (Russian Public Opinion Research Center): Remote work in the Russian style: pros and cons. https://wciom.com/index.php?id=61&uid=1823 . Accessed 10 Aug 2021

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

State University of Management, Moscow, Russian Federation

V. G. Konovalova & B. V. Petrenko

National Polytechnic University of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia

R. V. Aghgashyan

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Department of Applied Management, Samara State University of Economics, Samara, Russia

Svetlana Igorevna Ashmarina

Valentina Vyacheslavovna Mantulenko

Institute of Technology and Business, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

Marek Vochozka

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Cite this paper.

Konovalova, V.G., Petrenko, B.V., Aghgashyan, R.V. (2022). Choosing a Hybrid Work Model and New Challenges. In: Ashmarina, S.I., Mantulenko, V.V., Vochozka, M. (eds) Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference “Smart Nations: Global Trends In The Digital Economy”. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 397. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94873-3_69

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94873-3_69

Published : 04 February 2022

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-94872-6

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-94873-3

eBook Packages : Intelligent Technologies and Robotics Intelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)

Share this paper

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Does Hybrid Work Actually Work? Insights from 30,000 Emails

Early COVID-19 lockdowns sparked a contentious debate that rages on in the workplace: Can businesses thrive if employees continue to work remotely?

Skeptical CEOs, such as the leaders of Goldman Sachs and Starbucks, say they need workers in the office full time to foster a collaborative environment. At the other extreme: Companies like 3M, SAP, and Twitter are letting many employees work from anywhere. Stuck in between: Employees quitting inflexible jobs as part of the “Great Resignation” and new hires feeling adrift without regular contact.

"It seems there is a sweet spot in the middle."

The ideal solution, according to a new working paper , might be a compromise: Hybrid schedules in which employees roughly split their workweeks between the home and office appear to work best. These schedules allow for the right mix of flexibility and engagement that not only makes employees happier, but more productive and creative, resulting in higher-quality work, the study shows.

“It seems there is a sweet spot in the middle,” says Prithwiraj Choudhury, the Lumry Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

In the first study of its kind, Choudhury analyzed more than 30,000 emails sent among colleagues experimenting with various work arrangements during the COVID pandemic in 2020. He teamed with Tarun Khanna, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at HBS, HBS doctoral student Kyle Schirmann, and Christos Makridis of Stanford University and Columbia Business School.

Emails reveal the quality of work

Choudhury and his colleagues conducted a field experiment involving 130 human resource administrators at BRAC, the world’s largest nongovernmental organization, which is based in Bangladesh. The experiment took place in summer 2020, at the end of the country’s nationwide COVID-19 lockdown.

The researchers studied employee emails and attachments before and during a nine-week period using machine learning and textual analysis. They supplemented their email analysis with qualitative surveys of the employees involved in the study and their respective managers.

Employees were randomly assigned, via a lottery, to certain days they would work in the office. Choudhury and his team then divided the participating HR workers into three groups based on how they split their time between the home and office. The mostly-at-home group went to the office up to eight days during the study period. Hybrid workers spent nine to 14 days at the office, and the mostly in-office cohort worked more than 15 days in the office.

Employees completed surveys that assessed their sense of satisfaction with their various work arrangements. Meanwhile, their supervisors rated the productivity of workers on a seven-point scale from “unsatisfactory” to “excellent” in categories such as ability, cooperation, job knowledge, creativity, productivity, and quality of work.

Hybrid is the right balance

In all three categories—number of emails sent, work-from-home satisfaction, and quality of work product—the hybrid group members outranked their peers.

“The new working paper may be the first to generate data on the impact of hybrid work schedules on enterprise communication patterns and work quality.”

Hybrid work resulted in 0.8 more emails sent per day, and office work led to a 0.5 increase, compared to the group that mostly worked at home. Also, hybrid work is associated with a 58 percent increase in the number of unique email recipients compared to those mostly working from home, a metric that indicates that workers in the hybrid category had broader intraorganizational email networks.

This is significant, given concerns that remote work might lead to siloed email networks, a pattern that might affect collaboration and innovation. Workers in the hybrid category also produced more novel emails and email attachments, with novelty measured using text and machine learning methods.

For employees, the paper says, “hybrid work might represent the best of both worlds.” Worker surveys conducted at the end of the experiment revealed that hybrid employees reported greater satisfaction with working from home, better work-life balance, and lower isolation compared to the other two groups.

“If you are in the intermediate group, you get the greatest benefit of flexibility without having the costs of isolation from your coworkers,” says Choudhury.

The findings may also be good news for employers: The work didn’t suffer from flexible schedules; in fact, just the opposite. The results showed that hybrid workers produced more novel work than the other two groups, with managers subjectively rating their work as higher quality than the others.

Choudhury notes that the new working paper may be the first to generate data on the impact of hybrid work schedules on enterprise communication patterns and work quality, but cautions that more work needs to be done to flesh out the findings.

More evidence that ‘work-from-anywhere’ works

Choudhury, who studies the future of work , had conducted numerous studies of remote work long before the pandemic forced companies into a giant field experiment against their will.

"It doesn’t mean you have to be in the office every week. The guiding principle is that the team decides what the co-location schedule will be."

The results of the BRAC experiment follow Choudhury’s separate study of the US Patent and Trademark Office. That research found that patent examiners who were able to “work from anywhere” examined 4.4 percent more patent applications, without a significant increase in rework or deterioration of quality. The study findings suggest that the examiners might have strived to produce quality work the first time while staying in close contact with managers.

Choudhury has also studied remote and hybrid work policies at several organizations, including Tata Consultancy Services, Tulsa Remote, GitLab, Zapier, and MobSquad.

His research points to a highly productive, happier work world where flexibility could become the rule rather than the exception. He cites Indian technology giant TCS, which recently announced that employees need to be in the office only 25 percent of the time—and the days may differ from group to group.

“It doesn’t mean you have to be in the office every week,” he says. “The guiding principle is that the team decides what the co-location schedule will be.”

You Might Also Like:

• Let’s Move Forward from COVID—Without Forgetting What We’ve Learned
• Reunited and It Feels (Not) So Good: Tips for Managing a Rocky Return
• Managers, Here’s How to Bond with New Hires Remotely

Related reading from the Working Knowledge Archives

Marissa Mayer Should Bridge Distance Gap with Remote Workers

Feedback or ideas to share? Email the Working Knowledge team at [email protected] .

Image: TONL, LLC

• 09 Apr 2024

Why Work Rituals Bring Teams Together and Create More Meaning

• 02 Apr 2024
• What Do You Think?

What's Enough to Make Us Happy?

• 24 Jan 2024

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

• 25 Feb 2019
• Research & Ideas

How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

• 25 Jan 2022

More Proof That Money Can Buy Happiness (or a Life with Less Stress)

• Employee Relationship Management
• Human Resources
• Work-Life Balance

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Hybrid is the future of work

Key takeaways.

• Hybrid working arrangements balance the benefits of being in the office with the benefits of working from home.
• Before implementing hybrid policies, executives and managers need to think through the implications of how and when employees work remotely.
• Issues of equity and equal treatment need to be carefully considered in a hybrid work arrangement.

As businesses and everyday life slowly return to pre-pandemic activity, one point is becoming clear: The home office isn’t about to shut down. In my  research  and discussions with hundreds of managers across different industries, I’m finding that about 70 percent of firms — from tiny companies to massive multinationals  like Apple, Google, Citi and HSBC  — plan to implement some form of hybrid working arrangements so their employees can divide their time between collaborating with colleagues on site and working from home.

Hybrid arrangements balance the benefits of being in the office in person — greater ability to collaborate, innovate and build culture — with the benefits of quiet and the lack of commuting that come from working from home. Firms often suggest employees work two days a week at home, focusing on individual tasks or small meetings, and three days a week in the office, for larger meetings, training and social events.

That chimes with the recent evidence from my research with  Paul Mizen and Shivani Taneja  that small meetings can be as efficient by video call as in person. In-person meetings are typically easier for communicating by visual cues and gestures. But video calls save the travel time required to meet in person. And since video calls for two to four people mean everyone occupies a large box on a Zoom screen, it is easy to be seen.

In contrast, almost half of respondents to our research survey reported large meetings of 10 or more people were worse by video call. People are allocated to smaller boxes in these situations so it is hard to see the faces and gestures of participants. And attendees normally have to mute, leading to stilted conversations.

A matter of choice?

But another question is controversial: How much choice should workers have in the days they work from home?

On the one hand, many managers are passionate that their employees should determine their own schedule. In my research with Jose Barrero and Steve Davis we surveyed more than 35,000 Americans since May 2020 and our  research data  show that post-pandemic 32 percent of employees say they never want to return to working in the office.

Figure 1: Small meetings can work by video conference; large meetings are best in person.

Question:  "How do meetings compare by video call (Zoom, Teams, etc.) versus in person in terms of how efficient the meetings turn out to be?”

These are often employees with young kids who live in the suburbs and for whom the commute to work is painful. At the other extreme, 21 percent tell us they never want to spend another day working from home. These are often young, single employees or empty nesters in city-center apartments.

Figure 2: Employees are hugely varied in how many days per week they want to WFH.

Response to:  "In 2022+ (after COVID) how often would you like to have paid work-days at home?"

Given such radically different views, it seems natural to let them choose. One manager told me, “I treat my team like adults. They get to decide when and where they work, as long as they get their jobs done.”

But I have three concerns — concerns, which after talking to hundreds of firms over the last year, have led me to change my  advice  from supporting to being against employees’ choosing their own WFH days.

A management nightmare?

One concern is managing a hybrid team, where some people are at home and others are at the office. Many workers are expressing anxiety about this generating an office in-group and a home out-group. For example, employees at home can see glances or whispering in the office conference room but can’t tell exactly what is going on. Even when firms try to avoid this by requiring office employees to take video calls from their desks, home employees have told me that they can still feel excluded. They know after the meeting ends the folks in the office may chat in the corridor or go grab a coffee together.

The second concern is what every firm has been fearing: [1]  That given a choice, most employees will take Monday and Friday off. Indeed, only 36 percent of employees would choose to come in on Friday compared with 82 percent on Wednesday. This highlights the severe problems firms could face over effective use of office space if they let employees pick their days to work from home. Providing enough desks for every employee coming in on Wednesday would leave half of these desks empty on Monday and Friday.

Figure 3: Efficient use of office space will require central coordination.

Question:  "If you got to work from home for two days per week which two days would you choose?"

The third concern is the risk to diversity in the workplace. It turns out that who wants to work from home after the pandemic is not random. In our  research  we find, for example, that among college graduates with young children, women want to work from home full time almost 50 percent more than men.

Figure 4: College-educated women and men with younger children differ in the number of days they want to WFH post-pandemic.

Note: College educated employees with children under 12.

This is worrying given the evidence that working from home while your colleagues are in the office can be highly damaging to your career.

In a  2015 study  I conducted with a large multinational company based in China, my colleagues and I randomized 250 volunteers into a group that worked remotely for four days a week and another group that remained in the office full time. We found that WFH employees had a 50 percent lower rate of promotion after 21 months compared with their office colleagues. This huge WFH promotion penalty chimes with comments I’ve heard over the years from managers that home-based employees often get passed over on promotions.

Adding this up, you can see how allowing employees to choose their WFH schedules could exacerbate the lack of workplace diversity. Single young men could all choose to come into the office five days a week and rocket up the firm, while employees who live far from the office or have young children and choose to WFH most days are held back. This would be both a diversity loss and a legal time bomb for companies.

I changed my mind

Based on this evidence I changed my mind and started advising  firms  that managers should decide which days their team should WFH. For example, if the manager decides WFH days are going to be Wednesday and Friday, everyone should work from home on those days and everyone should come to the office on the other days. Importantly, this should apply to the CEO downwards. If the top managers start coming in on extra days, then the managers one level below start coming in on extra days to curry favor with their bosses, and then managers two levels down start coming in on extra days to curry favor with their bosses, and so on until the system will collapse.

The pandemic has started a revolution in how we work, and our  research  shows working from home can make firms more productive and employees happier. But like all revolutions, this is difficult to navigate. Firms need leadership from the top to ensure their work force remains diverse and truly inclusive.

1  “Empty offices on Monday and Friday spell trouble,”  Financial Times , May 15, 2021, Pilita Clark.

Barrero, Jose, Nicholas Bloom and Steve Davis. "Why working from home will stick," National Bureau of Economic Research working paper 28731, April 2021.

Bloom, Nicholas, Paul Mizen and Shivani Taneja. "Returning to the office will be hard," CEPR VOXEU, June 2021.

Bloom, Nicholas, James Liang, John Roberts and Zhichun Jenny Ying. "Does working from home work? Evidence from a Chinese experiment,"  Quarterly Journal of Economics , 2015.

Related Topics

• Policy Brief

More Publications

Who benefits from the child tax credit, rbc lions(tm) s&p 500 buffered protection securities (usd) series 4 analysis option pricing analysis, issuing company riskhedging analysis, and recommended investment strategy, the role of cognitive skills in economic development.

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

12 Questions About Hybrid Work, Answered

• Tsedal Neeley

As we move into the next phase of the pandemic, companies are grappling with whether and how to bring their employees back into the office after working from home extensively. According to multiple surveys, most people want a mix of in-person and remote work, and some have said they would leave their jobs if not given that option. So, how do you design hybrid work plans successfully? It isn’t just about schedules and office space — leaders need to consider inclusion, performance measurement, trust, cybersecurity, and more. In this edited Q&A, remote work expert Tsedal Neeley answers corporate leaders’ most pressing questions about the shift to hybrid work.

Advice on inclusivity, onboarding, performance measurement, and more.

Extensive data across surveys indicate that most people want hybrid work arrangements — that is, a mix of in-person and remote work — as we continue to move through the pandemic. For example, Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend Index , a study of over 30,000 people in 31 countries, found that 73% of respondents desire remote work options. FlexJobs surveyed more than 2,100 people who worked remotely during the pandemic and found that 58% would leave their jobs if they weren’t able to continue working from home at least some of the time.

• Tsedal Neeley is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration and senior associate dean of faculty and research at Harvard Business School. She is the coauthor of the book The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI and the author of the book Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere . tsedal

Partner Center

How Hybrid Working From Home Works Out

Hybrid working from home (hybrid), whereby employees work a mix of days at home and at work each week, has become common for graduate employees. This paper evaluates a randomized control trial of hybrid on 1612 graduate engineers, marketing and finance employees of a large technology firm. There are four key results. First, hybrid was highly valued by employees on average, reducing attrition by 33% and improving job-satisfaction measures. Second, hybrid reduced working hours on home days and increased them on office days and the weekend, altering the structure of the working week. Third, hybrid increased messaging and video calls, even when all employees were in the office, reflecting a move towards more electronic communication. Finally, there were large differences in the valuations of hybrid between managers and non-managers. Non-managers were more likely to volunteer into the hybrid experiment, to work from home on eligible days, to predict positive impacts on productivity, and to reduce their attrition under hybrid. In contrast, managers were less likely to volunteer, less likely to work from home on eligible days, predicted a negative average impact of hybrid on productivity, and saw increased attrition rates under hybrid.

We thank our formal discussant Ed Glaeser and audiences at Berkeley, Stanford, USC, UCLA, SAIF-FISF, AMES 2022, ESAM 2022, AEA, CESI, NBER, Scancor, AEI, and Luohan for comments. We thank the Smith Richardson Foundation and Toulouse Network for Information Technology for co-funding. Finally, we thank Jennifer Cao, Tracy Zhang, Sherry Ye, Fangyuan Chen, Xing Zhang, Ying He, Junyi Li, Byron Ye from Trip.com and Mert Akan and Shelby Buckman from Stanford for data, advice, and logistical support, and Lindiandian Yi for research assistantship. Conflict of interest, AEA, and IRB statement: No funding was received from Trip.com. James Liang is the co-founder, former CEO, and current Chairman of Trip.com. No other co-author has any financial relationship with Trip.com. Neither the results nor the paper was pre-screened by anyone. The experiment was registered with the American Economic Association after the experiment had begun (when Bloom and Han were invited to analyze the data) but before any data was analyzed. The experiment was IRB-exempt as the experiment was initiated by Trip.com before Bloom and Han joined the project, and only anonymous data was shared with the Stanford team. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

Download Citation Data

• July 21, 2022

Working Groups

Conferences, mentioned in the news, more from nber.

In addition to working papers , the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals — the NBER Reporter , the NBER Digest , the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability , the Bulletin on Health , and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship  — as well as online conference reports , video lectures , and interviews .

Stay updated and informed

Get the latest reaserch delivered straight to your inbox

How to design your hybrid work policy: A research-backed playbook

Rebecca Hinds May 31, 2023

SHARE THIS RESEARCH

Get the insights

What is hybrid work, anyway?

Employees can’t stop talking about it, leaders are always referencing it, and it’s blazing across media headlines seemingly every day—but do we even know what “hybrid work” means?

The short answer for many companies is, not really. And that’s understandable. After all, hybrid work quickly surged in popularity, and leaders scrambled to incorporate it as best they could. 

But as our new era of distributed work continues to evolve, companies are struggling to navigate the uncharted waters of hybrid work and find their footing—and, as a result, are clinging to policies that might no longer serve them.

A data-backed solution

So what’s the solution? When hybrid work first started, there wasn’t much existing data on what it was or how to best implement it. Now, there are years of information to pull from. Our team at The Work Innovation Lab in partnership with Jen Rhymer, Assistant Professor at University College London, analyzed and aggregated that data, alongside nine months of original research, to help company leadership develop and improve their hybrid work policies. 

In this playbook, you’ll learn how to define hybrid work, analyze your current policy, and ultimately, create and put into place the best hybrid work policy for your organization’s needs. 

Dig in for key takeaways like:

• How to evaluate your current hybrid work policy, including understanding how it was designed and communicated (and why that matters)
• The four pillars of a strong hybrid workplace policy (the aspects you need to define)
• Data-backed ways to structure your policy with the latest research