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Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

bloomberg.com

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Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#31

Post by randomdata »

nikkwong wrote: post #25
randomdata wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work avoidance typically stems from fear of failure, not boredom. If workers are screwing around when there is work that needs to be done, that is indicative of an environment that doesn't provide the proper failsafes. That said, a lot of jobs simply don't have a constant stream of work that needs to be done, with the work available being dependent on when the customer chooses to engage. It is likely that for a lot o…

I feel like you are wearing some very strong rose colored glasses; I personally think it’s naive to believe that remote workers are always highly engaged. People optimize their work productivity around different personal goals.. and I have worked with many who seem to try to do as little work as possible to not get fired. Which often involves a lot of loathing and procrastination. It would be wonderful for employers…

> and they would kill to do anything else with their time

And yet they don't. That is not because they are bored, but because they fear the possible failure.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#32

Post by ryanSrich »

goalieca wrote: post #3
SoftTalker wrote: post #2

Most employees can screw around websurfing or shopping just as well at work as at home. They mostly do it because they are bored. Give them interesting, meaningful work and they will be productive.

Some do it to get a break. Doing 40 hours of straight “creative” work is impossible.

Managing 50+ remote workers taught me that results matter, not hours. It's all about the output. Work asynchronously, focus on the end goal, and as long as it's legal and ethical, the 'how' and 'when' are often irrelevant. Traditional managers struggle with this mindset, often due to their own managers outdated approaches.

The real game changer is axing all scheduled internal meetings. No standups, no weekly grooming, no syncs. Scrap these time-wasters and you'll be surprised at the productivity spike. If not, then you likely don't have the right people working for you.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#33

Post by viraptor »

hugh-avherald wrote: post #22
williamcotton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

To put it pithily: it uses proxies of both dependent and independent variables, which increases the noise of both, in a study to determine signal-to-noise ratio.

Which proxies do you think are bad / why? The moment you go more coarse than documenting every single worker's perfect timesheet and working out their direct individual output, you're introducing some kind of proxy. What you wrote applies to every economics statistical analysis so far.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#35

Post by wodenokoto »

SoftTalker wrote: post #2

Most employees can screw around websurfing or shopping just as well at work as at home. They mostly do it because they are bored. Give them interesting, meaningful work and they will be productive.

Isn't that why people are paid to work? Because it isn't interesting or meaningful?

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#36

Post by deelowe »

biscuit1v9 wrote: post #34

> And while many US companies have been pushing employees to return to the office I still don't see the reason why you should go to office if you do your work just right. There are more expenses if you go to office rather than being remote.

Depends, did you get a sweet tax deal for locating your HQ with the implicit understanding that putting the HQ there would drive tax revenue back to the city? Did you tell your friends and top investors of this decision and did they purchase real estate in the area with the implicit understanding that they'd be landlords for your new HQ?

Work from home is a cost savings companies so it would seem they'd be motivated to downsize office space, but this isn't what's happening. In a world where costs are always the highest priority, I'm not buying the culture/work ethic argument.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#37

Post by lumost »

biscuit1v9 wrote: post #34

> And while many US companies have been pushing employees to return to the office I still don't see the reason why you should go to office if you do your work just right. There are more expenses if you go to office rather than being remote.

I recently went RTO in a major metro, the post tax hit was between 10-15k USD, I was fortunate to already own a home near enough to my office. The majority of which comes from parking, and lunch.

Pre-pandemic you didn’t really notice these things, but it adds up fast.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#38

Post by technick »

aurareturn wrote: post #5
SoftTalker wrote: post #2

Most employees can screw around websurfing or shopping just as well at work as at home. They mostly do it because they are bored. Give them interesting, meaningful work and they will be productive.

>Give them interesting, meaningful work and they will be productive. How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? Every time this topic gets brought up, someone will say "Just give people interesting work, pay them well, don't micromanage them!" as if these jobs grow on trees. And even if these jobs do exist, they're usually reserved for workers who are extremely motivated and capable -…

The only thing I've ever had issues with doing it remote is writing compliance policy, operational guidelines, and organizational standards. My boss wanted them re-written once every year into a different format and it destroyed my soul. What we had worked fine and didn't need to be re-written in my opinion.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#39

Post by rebeccaskinner »

ryanSrich wrote: post #32
goalieca wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some do it to get a break. Doing 40 hours of straight “creative” work is impossible.

Managing 50+ remote workers taught me that results matter, not hours. It's all about the output. Work asynchronously, focus on the end goal, and as long as it's legal and ethical, the 'how' and 'when' are often irrelevant. Traditional managers struggle with this mindset, often due to their own managers outdated approaches. The real game changer is axing all scheduled internal meetings. No standups, no weekly grooming…

I started managing a team with the “no meetings, let people do good work” philosophy and I can just say that I’m glad I was given the space as a new manager to find my feet, because I didn’t find that it worked well when taken to an extreme.

Remote work offers very little structure. As someone who thrives on autonomy and chafes at process this always felt great to me, but a lot of people thrive with a bit of structure. These days I’m of the opinion that remote work needs to both adapt to not demand too much structure, but also needs to mindfully provide enough that people can work effectively. Most people on my team have around 5 to 6 hours of standing meetings each week, plus ad-hoc synchronous discussions when they seem valuable. That seems to be the right balance for my team but every team will be different in the exact numbers.

The important thing I think is to let the structure emerge naturally and serve a specific purpose rather than doing meetings to replicate in-office processes or to serve some theoretical process.

Re: Remote work doesn't seem to affect productivity, Fed study finds

#40

Post by echelon »

irrational wrote: post #27
williamcotton wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much meaningful and interesting work do you think exists in this world? If you're willing to take a salary cut, lots.

Depends on your definition of meaningful and interesting. I have no doubt that public school teaching, working in a nursing home, working as a social worker is meaningful, but I wouldn’t find any of those to be interesting.

Working on a startup pursuing your topic / field of interest might do the trick.

There are also lots of technical fields that vastly underpay due to the number of people that want to do it (eg. video games industry) and/or the lack of demand or immediate utility (eg. academia and research).

There's also art, film, stage, music, and all of the liberal arts.

Imagine what you want to do, then find a job that hits close to that. It might not pay well, but it might satisfy you.

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