Insights

With the rapid advancement of technology and the impact of the global pandemic, a hybrid work schedule (where individuals spend a mix of days at home and at work each week) has gradually emerged as an innovative practice in modern work culture. However, there has been ongoing debate in academic and business circles about the impact of this hybrid working on employee performance, satisfaction, and quit rates. Some executives argue that it damages productivity, innovation and career development.

Recently, Professor Han Ruobing of the School of Management and Economics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, collaborated with Professor Nicholas Bloom from Stanford University and Liang Jianzhang, the co-founder and chairman of Ctrip Group. They published a research paper titled "Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance" in the top international academic journal, Nature. The study demonstrates that a flexible hybrid working schedule can enhance employee job satisfaction and retention rates without impacting their job performance and career advancement.

Author

Han Ruobing

Assistant Professor, School of Management and Economics, CUHK-Shenzhen

Research Area

Industrial Organization, Labor Economics, Quant Marketing, Chinese Economy 

Abstract

Working from home has become standard for employees with a university degree. The most common scheme, which has been adopted by around 100 million employees in Europe and North America, is a hybrid schedule, in which individuals spend a mix of days at home and at work each week. However, the effects of hybrid working on employees and firms have been debated, and some executives argue that it damages productivity, innovation and career development. Here we ran a six-month randomized control trial investigating the effects of hybrid working from home on 1,612 employees in a Chinese technology company in 2021–2022. We found that hybrid working improved job satisfaction and reduced quit rates by one-third. The reduction in quit rates was significant for non-managers, female employees and those with long commutes. Null equivalence tests showed that hybrid working did not affect performance grades over the next two years of reviews. We found no evidence for a difference in promotions over the next two years overall, or for any major employee subgroup. Finally, null equivalence tests showed that hybrid working had no effect on the lines of code written by computer-engineer employees. We also found that the 395 managers in the experiment revised their surveyed views about the effect of hybrid working on productivity, from a perceived negative effect (−2.6% on average) before the experiment to a perceived positive one (+1.0%) after the experiment. These results indicate that a hybrid schedule with two days a week working from home does not damage performance.