Authors Nicholas Bloom, Jose Maria Barrero, Steven Davis, Brent Meyer, and Emil Mihaylov ask you to consider the following: "Imagine a worker who bills $1,000 a day pre-pandemic (a measure of output) and works nine hours plus one hour of commuting. They are producing $100 for every hour they spend working or commuting. Now imagine they work from home: Commuting time is zero and they still work nine hours. If they bill $950 a day, that's an increase in productivity from their perspective: Now they're producing $106 for every hour they put toward the job." But on the flip side: "But from the manager's perspective, things look different. Because they don't count time spent commuting, pre-pandemic they think of the worker as producing $111 per hour ($1000/9 hours). Now, with work-from-home, that worker's productivity has fallen to $106 per hour. If the employee's salary has stayed the same, the firm is getting less output for their money." What do you think? Read more at Harvard Business Review: Research: Where Managers and Employees Disagree About Remote Work
Published January 10, 2023.
