10% of America’s workforce now regularly works from home write Nicholas Bloom, James Liang, John Roberts and Zhichun Jenny Ying. What effect does this have on productivity? Their research suggestes:

• Over a 9 month period there was a 12% increase in performance for those who opted to work from home.
• 8.5% of that was due to people working more minutes because they took fewer breaks and fewer sick days.
• 3.5% of that performance boost was due to more productive use of time, likely due to a quieter environment.
• Those who worked from home also reported higher job satisfaction, and their attrition rate fell by 50%.
• There were no negative consequences for those left over in the office.

To read the entire report, its methodology, some more conclusions, some limitations of the study, and what this might mean for businesses, click here.

Source: Stanford (.pdf)

Via: Chris Blattman