One Study Finds Employees Nearly 20% Less Productive When Working From Home; Even Zoom Wants Workers Back in Office

WASHINGTON–As credit unions continue to wrestle with appropriate work-from-home/on-site work policies, a new study suggests those working from home are almost 20% less productive than those who come to the office.

That comes at the same time video-conferencing giant Zoom also wants its own employees to return to the office for at least a few days per week.

The new research results are included in a working paper that's being circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles, who observed data-entry workers in Chennai, India, across two groups — those working from the office and those working from home — over test periods of eight weeks.  

The Key Finding

The key finding? Those in the work-from-home group were 18% less productive than those working from the office. 

According to the researchers, to gather subjects for the study they posted advertisements for entry-level data jobs in local newspapers, and ultimately observed a total of 235 workers.

“These workers were then divided into two groups that were randomized across skill level and preference for working from home or the office — among other traits — and given identical tasks, resources, and goals,” Business Insider reported. “The report noted that both groups were also asked to work for approximately 35 hours a week. However, those working from home were given the flexibility to choose when they worked, while those coming into the office were restricted to a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule.”

For those working from home, Business Insider reported the researchers also took low-resolution pictures of the workers every 15 minutes through a camera built into a laptop they provided, to ensure they weren't outsourcing their work. 

The Main Measure

“The main measure used to gauge productivity in the study was ‘net typing speed,’ which the report defined as the number of correct entries typed per minute, according to Business Insider.  The study also measured the "accuracy" of the workers by comparing the ratio of correct data entries to total data entries, along with idle times. 

“Why data-entry workers? The report noted they're ubiquitous across India, the job doesn't require high-level skills, it can be easily performed in both remote and office settings, and collecting detailed measures of productivity and output for data-entry workers is a relatively straightforward process,” Business Insider explained.

A Caveat

There is a caveat, and that is that cultural norms in Chennai, India, are different from the U.S., U.K., or other places, David Atkin, one of the authors of the study, told Fortune. And that is that in developing countries like India, homes are more likely to be "smaller, more cramped and hot, and have noise pollution," all of which are likely to affect productivity at home. 

“Still, one of the reasons remote workers could be less productive than their office counterpoints is because of challenges in communication that arise from virtual work,” Business Insider added, citing an earlier study of more than 60,000 staff members at Microsoft who transitioned from office work to remote work between December 2019 and June 2020 that found the employees became "more siloed, less dynamic" and weren't able to form as many new connections compared to the pre-pandemic days.

Zoom Doesn’t Want Its Staff to Zoom

Meanwhile, in an ironic announcement, Zoom, whose name became synonymous with remote work, is also asking its workers return to the office at least part time.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company is asking employees who live within a 50-mile radius of its offices to work onsite two days a week, a company spokesperson confirmed in an email to the Associated Press. The statement said the company has decided that "a structured hybrid approach – meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams – is most effective for Zoom.”

The new policy, which will be rolled out in August and September and was first reported by the New York Times, which reported that Zoom CEO Eric Yuan fielded questions from employees unhappy with the new policy during a Zoom meeting.