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> I haven't seen many good arguments that WFH produces superior work outcomes. Why should you want _arguments_ about a question for which there has been actual
by abeppu 4y ago
> I haven't seen many good arguments that WFH produces superior work outcomes.
Why should you want _arguments_ about a question for which there has been actual research? "Superior work outcomes" is a fuzzy thing to measure, but when units of work are clearly countable and it's agreed what constitutes "done", there are multiple studies that have found that WFH employees were more productive (i.e. did more in the same period of time), and since the pandemic there have been multiple findings that WFH employees were putting in more work hours (i.e. previously dead commute time became productive). Admittedly, the kinds of work that support this kind of clear measurement are generally not product design and development, but more like handling inbound customer calls, and for employees with some experience. The gold standard I'm thinking of here is Bloom et al from I think 2013 which did an actual random controlled trial. In that call center case, literally handling more calls per hour was attributed mostly to having a quieter environment, but workers did also work longer.
I think the main challenges aren't around "superior work outcomes" at the individual level, but stuff like training junior team members through interactions with their more senior colleagues. This is harder to measure, often isn't someone's "main" responsibility, and so individuals who appear to be succeeding at their own work can be less impactful on these secondary and indirect benefits.
All of which is to say, I think the personal fulfillment vs company benefit framing can be a misleading one. _which_ company benefits are most important? Does everyone in the company agree on that prioritization? Have you tried actually _measuring_ those, rather than just seeking "arguments"?
- sodapopcan 4y agoYep. I also wanted to respond to this. My team had actual data that showed our productivity increased when we went fully remote. We also cut a full hour out of our work day (went from 8 to 7 hours per day). Also: > WFO produces better outcomes for the company. What's backing that up?
- abeppu 4y agoI am curious how you measured your productivity. I do think that a weakness in the published data is that methodologically it's tough to measure productivity if work isn't done in clear, countable units, so only some kinds of work gets studied. And clearly teams struggle with picking the right metrics for themselves, carving tasks into the right sizes, etc.
- sodapopcan 4y agoJust Jira burndowns. We tracked ALL our work as tickets. Obviously story points aren't rock solid indicators, but we were basing it off a couple of years of data. For months before the pandemic there was a pretty solid line, then after months of working from home that line visibly raised. The org, who didn't look at our Jira data, also commented that stuff was coming out quicker. Of course there could have been other factors too, but that's what we saw.
- kotlin2 4y agoA call center is not really a collaborative job at all, so it's unsurprising that there would be some gain from WFH. I don't think you can generalize what works in a call center to what works for knowledge workers, though.