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Work From Home vs. Work From Office: Which Is Actually Better?

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How i merge multiple monitors into one using amd eyefinity, why i'm skipping the galaxy z fold 6 for the pixel 9 pro fold.

Lately, a lot of companies have started asking their workforce to return to the office after enjoying work from home (WFH) ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

But which is actually better for you as an employee? Let's compare working from home and working from an office and discuss the pros and cons of each.

The Pros of Work From Home

1. More Flexibility and Freedom

Being able to work in your comfy pajamas at your own pace away from scrutinous managers is a benefit that's hard to quantify. In fact, more than half of our readers prefer work from home .

Working from home is especially useful for parents with young kids since it allows them to attend to their needs without necessarily having to take leaves, contributing to a better work-life balance and increased job satisfaction.

2. No More Commute to Work

In the US, the average one-way commute to work is a little under 30 minutes according to Zippia . That's roughly an hour of round-trip commute a day or 260 hours a year assuming you work five days a week.

The average hourly wage as of July 2023 is $33.74 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . So that's $8,772 you're losing each year in lost wages. Note that we haven't even accounted for costs like fuel, car maintenance, and depreciation yet!

3. It's Better for the Environment

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency , transportation accounted for 28% of all greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, making it the biggest contributor to climate change.

That means working from home is not just better for you, but also for the environment since you're reducing your carbon footprint by not driving your car to work, for example.

4. It Can Lower Your Expenses

Aside from not having to commute, you can also save money working from home by not having to spend on childcare, buying lunch at work, and updating your wardrobe every year.

Also, since rent is much higher in commercial areas than in residential areas, you can move to a cheaper place that's further away from your workplace without having to switch jobs.

The Cons of Work From Home

1. It's Easier to Procrastinate at Home

Although it's less stressful, working at home makes it easier to procrastinate since the working hours are not clearly defined, and you don't have a direct manager supervising you. For people who lack self-control and a good work ethic, working from home can invite laziness.

2. It Can Be More Distracting

In an office, everyone has a mutual understanding that work is the main objective. But at home, there are a number of things that can distract you like important errands, housework, loud neighbors, visitors, your kids, or even just doomscrolling social media .

3. It Can Get Lonely and Isolating

Water cooler chats at work may seem trivial, but they do admittedly fulfill your social needs. Working from home has the tendency to feel isolating after a while. After all, Zoom meetings are not a substitute for rich, in-person conversations.

4. It Can Subject You to Bias During Appraisals

If you're working from home, but your colleagues aren't, you might be perceived as less committed or loyal to the company. This in turn can subject you to bias during appraisals as those who worked in the office may be able to negotiate a higher pay raise .

The Pros of Work From Office

1. Faster Communication With Your Team

A verbal discussion with a colleague sitting next to you about a presentation due next week, for example, is way faster than texting them on Slack and waiting for their reply.

Working in an office with your team also fosters creativity, problem-solving, and rapport-building since you can brainstorm together and bounce ideas off each other.

2. It Teaches You Hard and Soft Skills

If you're new to the industry, it's better to work in an office than to work at home. Why? Because learning new skills and getting hands-on experience are more important priorities to you for now, and those things are harder to come when working from home.

3. It Makes Planning Your Day Easier

Planning your day becomes easier when you have a fixed schedule. Sure, it's not very convenient, but once you're done with your working hours in the office, how you use the rest of your day is totally up to you. But when working from home, employees are often expected to be available well past their normal schedule.

4. It's Better for Career Growth

Working on-site can also prove to be better for your career growth since it grants you deeper industry exposure, builds your network, and helps advance to higher positions. When working from home, those opportunities are easier to miss.

The Cons of Work From Office

1. Lack of Privacy

Micromanaging superiors and overly friendly colleagues can encroach on your personal space at work and make you unable to concentrate. Such is not the case at home, although remote workers do have to deal with employee surveillance software .

2. Encourages a Sedentary Lifestyle

One lesser-discussed con of working from an office is the extreme lack of mobility. Sure, you might have the comfiest chair in the world, but we don't need to remind you how unhealthy it can be to sit in one place for eight hours in a row almost every day.

3. More Stressful and Demanding

There's no sugarcoating it—some offices are terrible places to work. Unless you're someone who has high stress tolerance or works in a company with a rather laid-back culture, working from an office is usually much more stressful and can be anxiety-inducing, especially in certain industries and high-profile jobs.

4. You Can't Work at Your Own Pace

Some people are naturally more productive in the evening or at night, but if your workplace is like most others, you're expected to come to work every morning at the exact same time. This can be ineffective because you're not allowed—let alone encouraged—to work when you're at your peak energy level.

More People Prefer Working From Home

Study after study concludes the same thing: more people prefer working from home than on-site. It's becoming increasingly more common for job seekers today to look for remote work opportunities and prioritize flexibility alongside pay.

Of course, WFH isn't ideal for all industries, and not everyone prefers it. And if you're new to the industry, it definitely helps to get some hands-on experience and industry exposure first before you go hunting for remote work.

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Are We Really More Productive Working from Home?

Data from the pandemic can guide organizations struggling to reimagine the new office..

• By Rebecca Stropoli
• August 18, 2021
• CBR - Economics
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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t your typical office worker. He was No. 3 on the 2020 Forbes list of the richest Americans, with a net worth of $125 billion, give or take. But there’s at least one thing Zuckerberg has in common with many other workers: he seems to like working from home. In an internal memo, which made its way to the Wall Street Journal , as Facebook announced plans to offer increased flexibility to employees, Zuckerberg explained that he would work remotely for at least half the year.

“Working remotely has given me more space for long-term thinking and helped me spend more time with my family, which has made me happier and more productive at work,” Zuckerberg wrote. He has also said that he expects about half of Facebook’s employees to be fully remote within the next decade.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to rage in many countries, and variants are complicating the picture, but in some parts of the world, including the United States, people are desperate for life to return to normal—everywhere but the office. After more than a year at home, some employees are keen to return to their workplaces and colleagues. Many others are less eager to do so, even quitting their jobs to avoid going back. Somewhere between their bedrooms and kitchens, they have established new models of work-life balance they are loath to give up.

This has left some companies trying to recreate their work policies, determining how best to handle a workforce that in many cases is demanding more flexibility. Some, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify, are leaning into remote work. Others, such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, are reverting to the tried-and-true office environment, calling everyone back in. Goldman’s CEO David Solomon, in February, called working from home an “aberration that we’re going to correct as quickly as possible.” And JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said of exclusively remote work: “It doesn’t work for those who want to hustle. It doesn’t work for spontaneous idea generation. It doesn’t work for culture.”

This pivotal feature of pandemic life has accelerated a long-running debate: What do employers and employees lose and gain through remote work? In which setting—the office or the home—are employees more productive? Some research indicates that working from home can boost productivity and that companies offering more flexibility will be best positioned for success. But this giant, forced experiment has only just begun.

An accelerated debate

A persistent sticking point in this debate has been productivity. Back in 2001, a group of researchers from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon, led by Robert E. Kraut , wrote that “collaboration at a distance remains substantially harder to accomplish than collaboration when members of a work group are collocated.” Two decades later, this statement remains part of today’s discussion.

However, well before Zoom, which came on the scene in 2011, or even Skype, which launched in 2003, the researchers acknowledged some of the potential benefits of remote work, allowing that “dependence on physical proximity imposes substantial costs as well, and may undercut successful collaboration.” For one, they noted, email, answering machines, and computer bulletin boards could help eliminate the inconvenience of organizing in-person meetings with multiple people at the same time.

Two decades later, remote-work technology is far more developed. Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that, even in pre-pandemic 2019, more than 26 million Americans—approximately 16 percent of the total US workforce—worked remotely on an average day. The Pew Research Center put that pre-pandemic number at 20 percent, and in December 2020 reported that 71 percent of workers whose responsibilities allowed them to work from home were doing so all or most of the time.

The sentiment toward and effectiveness of remote work depend on the industry involved. It makes sense that executives working in and promoting social media are comfortable connecting with others online, while those in industries in which deals are typically closed with handshakes in a conference room, or over drinks at dinner, don’t necessarily feel the same. But data indicate that preferences and productivity are shaped by factors beyond a person’s line of work.

The productivity paradigm

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Stanford’s Nicholas Bloom  was bullish on work-from-home trends. His 2015 study, for one—with James Liang , John Roberts , and Zhichun Jenny Ying , all then at Stanford—finds a 13 percent increase in productivity among remotely working call-center employees at a Chinese travel agency.

But in the early days of the pandemic, Bloom was less optimistic about remote work. “We are home working alongside our kids, in unsuitable spaces, with no choice and no in-office days,” Bloom told a Stanford publication in March 2020. “This will create a productivity disaster for firms.”

To test that thesis, Jose Maria Barrero  of the Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology, Bloom, and Chicago Booth’s Steven J. Davis  launched a monthly survey of US workers in May 2020, tracking more than 30,000 workers aged 20–64 who earned at least $20,000 per year in 2019.

Companies that offer more flexibility in work arrangements may have the best chance of attracting top talent at the best price.

The survey measured the incidence of working from home as the pandemic continued, focusing on how a more permanent shift to remote work might affect not only productivity but also overall employee well-being. It also examined factors including how work from home would affect spending and revenues in major urban centers. In addition to the survey, the researchers drew on informal conversations with dozens of US business executives. They are publishing the results of the survey and related research at wfhresearch.com .

In an analysis of the data collected through March 2021, they find that nearly six out of 10 workers reported being more productive working from home than they expected to be, compared with 14 percent who said they got less done. On average, respondents’ productivity at home was 7 percent higher than they expected. Forty percent of workers reported they were more productive at home during the pandemic than they had been when in the office, and only 15 percent said the opposite was true. The researchers argue that the work-from-home trend is here to stay, and they calculate that these working arrangements will increase overall worker productivity in the US by 5 percent as compared with the pre-pandemic economy.

“Working from home under the pandemic has been far more productive than I or pretty much anyone else predicted,” Bloom says.

No commute, and fewer hours worked

Some workers arguing in favor of flexibility might say they’re more efficient at home away from chatty colleagues and the other distractions of an office, and that may be true. But above all, the increased productivity comes from saving transit time, an effect overlooked by standard productivity calculations. “Three-quarters or more of the productivity gains that we find are coming from a reduction in commuting time,” Davis says. Eliminate commuting as a factor, and the researchers project only a 1 percent productivity boost in the postpandemic work-from-home environment, as compared with before.

It makes sense that standard statistics miss the impact of commutes, Davis explains. Ordinarily, commuting time generally doesn’t shift significantly in the aggregate. But much like rare power outages in Manhattan have made it possible for New Yorkers to suddenly see the nighttime stars, the dramatic work-from-home shift that occurred during the pandemic made it possible to recognize the impact traveling to and from an office had on productivity.

Before the pandemic, US workers were commuting an average of 54 minutes daily, according to Barrero, Bloom, and Davis. In the aggregate, the researchers say, the pandemic-induced shift to remote work meant 62.5 million fewer commuting hours per workday.

People who worked from home spent an average of 35 percent of saved commuting time on their jobs, the researchers find. They devoted the rest to other activities, including household chores, childcare, leisure activities such as watching movies and TV, outdoor exercise, and even second jobs.

Infographic: People want working from home to stick after the pandemic subsides

With widespread lockdowns abruptly forcing businesses to halt nonessential, in-person activity, the COVID-19 pandemic drove a mass social experiment in working from home, according to Jose Maria Barrero  of the Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology, Stanford’s Nicholas Bloom , and Chicago Booth’s Steven J. Davis . The researchers launched a survey of US workers, starting in May 2020 and continuing in waves for more than a year since, to capture a range of information including workers’ attitudes about their new remote arrangements.

Read more >>

Aside from commuting less, remote workers may also be sleeping more efficiently, another phenomenon that could feed into productivity. On days they worked remotely, people rose about 30 minutes later than on-site workers did, according to pre-pandemic research by Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia  of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and SUNY Empire’s Victoria Vernon . Both groups worked the same number of hours and slept about the same amount each night, so it’s most likely that “working from home permits a more comfortable personal sleep schedule,” says Vernon. “Teleworkers who spend less time commuting may be happier and less tired, and therefore more productive,” write the researchers, who analyzed BLS data from 2017 to 2018.

While remote employees gained back commuting time during the pandemic, they also worked fewer hours, note Barrero, Bloom, and Davis. Hours on the job averaged about 32 per week, compared with 36 pre-pandemic, although the work time stretched past traditional office hours. “Respondents may devote a few more minutes in the morning to chores and childcare, while still devoting about a third of their old commuting time slot to their primary job. At the end of the day, they might end somewhat early and turn on the TV. They might interrupt TV time to respond to a late afternoon or early evening work request,” the researchers explain.

This interpretation, they write, is consistent with media reports that employees worked longer hours from home during the pandemic but with the added flexibility to interrupt the working day. Yet, according to the survey, this does not have a negative overall effect on productivity, contradicting one outdated stereotype of a remote worker eating bonbons, watching TV, and getting no work done.

Remote-work technology goes mainstream

The widespread implementation of remote-working technology, a defining feature of the pandemic, is another important factor for productivity. This technology will boost work-from-home productivity by 46 percent by the end of the pandemic, relative to the pre-pandemic situation, according to a model developed by Rutgers’s Morris A. Davis , University of North Carolina’s Andra C. Ghent , and University of Wisconsin’s Jesse M. Gregory . “While many home-office technologies have been around for a while, the technologies become much more useful after widespread adoption,” the researchers note.

There are significant costs to leaving the office, Rutgers’s Davis says, pointing to the loss of face-to-face interaction, among other things. “Working at home is always less productive than working at the office. Always,” he said on a June episode of the Freakonomics podcast.

One reason, he says , has to do with the function of cities as business centers. “Cities exist because, we think, the crowding of employment makes everyone more productive,” he explains. “This idea also applies to firms: a firm puts all workers on the same floor of a building, or all in the same suite rather than spread throughout a building, for reasons of efficiency. It is easier to communicate and share ideas with office mates, which leads to more productive outcomes.” While some employees are more productive at home, that’s not the case overall, according to the model, which after calibration “implies that the average high-skill worker is less productive at home than at the office, even postpandemic,” he says.

How remote work could change city centers

What will happen to urban business districts and the cities in which they are located in the age of increasing remote work?

About three-quarters of Fortune 500 CEOs expect to need less office space in the future, according to a May 2021 poll. In Manhattan, the overall office vacancy rate was at a multidecade high of 16 percent in the first quarter of 2021, according to real-estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.

And yet Davis, Ghent, and Gregory’s model projects that after the pandemic winds down, highly skilled, college-educated workers will spend 30 percent of their time working from home, as opposed to 10 percent in prior times. While physical proximity may be superior, working from home is far more productive than it used to be. Had the pandemic hit in 1990, it would not have produced this rise in relative productivity, per the researchers’ model, because the technology available at the time was not sufficient to support remote work.

A June article in the MIT Technology Review by Stanford’s Erik Brynjolfsson and MIT postdoctoral scholar Georgios Petropoulos corroborates this view. Citing the 5.4 percent increase in US labor productivity in the first quarter of 2021, as reported by the BLS, the researchers attribute at least some of this to the rise of work-from-home technologies. The pandemic, they write, has “compressed a decade’s worth of digital innovation in areas like remote work into less than a year.” The biggest productivity impact of the pandemic will be realized in the longer run, as the work-from-home trend continues, they argue.

Lost ideas, longer hours?

Not all the research supports the idea that remote work increases productivity and decreases the number of hours workers spend on the job. Chicago Booth’s Michael Gibbs  and University of Essex’s Friederike Mengel  and Christoph Siemroth  find contradictory evidence from a study of 10,000 high-skilled workers at a large Asian IT-services company.

The researchers used personnel and analytics data from before and during the coronavirus work-from-home period. The company provided a rich data set for these 10,000 employees, who moved to 100 percent work from home in March 2020 and began returning to the office in late October.

Total hours worked during that time increased by approximately 30 percent, including an 18 percent rise in working beyond normal business hours, the researchers find. At the same time, however, average output—as measured by the company through setting work goals and tracking progress toward them—declined slightly. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings also increased, while uninterrupted work hours shrank. Additionally, employees spent less time networking and had fewer one-on-one meetings with their supervisors, find the researchers, adding that the increase in hours worked and the decline in productivity were more significant for employees with children at home. Weighing output against hours worked, the researchers conclude that productivity decreased by about 20 percent. They estimate that, even after accounting for the loss of commuting time, employees worked about a third of an hour per day more than they did at the office. “Of course, that time was spent in productive work instead of sitting in traffic, which is beneficial,” they acknowledge.

Regardless of what research establishes in the long run about productivity, many workers are already demanding flexibility in their schedules.

Overall, though, do workers with more flexibility work fewer hours (as Barrero, Bloom, and Davis find) or more (as at the Asian IT-services company)? It could take more data to answer this question. “I suspect that a high fraction of employees of all types, across the globe, value the flexibility, lack of a commute, and other aspects of work from home. This might bias survey respondents toward giving more positive answers to questions about their productivity,” says Gibbs.

The findings of his research do not entirely contradict those of Barrero, Bloom, and Davis, however. For one, Gibbs, Mengel, and Siemroth acknowledge that their study doesn’t necessarily reflect the remote-work model as it might look in postpandemic times, when employees are relieved of the weight of a massive global crisis. “While the average effect of working from home on productivity is negative in our study, this does not rule out that a ‘targeted working from home’ regime might be desirable,” they write.

Additionally, the research data are derived from a single company and may not be representative of the wider economy, although Gibbs notes that the IT company is one that should be able to optimize remote work. Most employees worked on company laptops, “and IT-related industries and occupations are usually at the top of lists of those areas most likely to be able to do WFH effectively.” Thus, he says, the findings may represent a cautionary note that remote work has costs and complexities worth addressing.

As he, Mengel, and Siemroth write, some predictions of work-from-home success may be overly optimistic, “perhaps because professionals engage in many tasks that require collaboration, communication, and innovation, which are more difficult to achieve with virtual, scheduled interactions.”

Attracting top talent

The focus on IT employees’ productivity, however, excludes issues such as worker morale and retention, Booth’s Davis notes. More generally, “the producer has to attract workers . . . and if workers really want to commute less, and they can save time on their end, and employers can figure out some way to accommodate that, they’re going to have more success with workers at a given wage cost.”

Companies that offer more flexibility in work arrangements may have the best chance of attracting top talent at the best price. The data from Barrero, Bloom, and Davis reveal that some workers are willing to take a sizable pay cut in exchange for the opportunity to work remotely two or three days a week. This may give threats from CEOs such as Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman—who said at the company’s US Financials, Payments & CRE conference in June, “If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York”—a bit less bite. Meanwhile, Duke PhD student John W. Barry , Cornell’s Murillo Campello , Duke’s John R. Graham , and Chicago Booth’s Yueran Ma  find that companies offering flexibility are the ones most poised to grow.

Working policies may be shaped by employees’ preferences. Some workers still prefer working from the office; others prefer to stay working remotely; many would opt for a hybrid model, with some days in the office and some at home (as Amazon and other companies have introduced). As countries emerge from the pandemic and employers recalibrate, companies could bring back some employees and allow others to work from home. This should ultimately boost productivity, Booth’s Davis says.

Or they could allow some to work from far-flung locales. Harvard’s Prithwiraj Choudhury  has long focused his research on working not just from home but “from anywhere.” This goes beyond the idea of employees working from their living room in the same city in which their company is located—instead, if they want to live across the country, or even in another country, they can do so without any concern about being near headquarters.

Does remote work promote equity?

At many companies, the future will involve remote work and more flexibility than before. That could be good for reducing the earnings gap between men and women—but only to a point.

“In my mind, there’s no question that it has to be a plus, on net,” says Harvard’s Claudia Goldin. Before the pandemic, many women deemphasized their careers when they started families, she says.

Research Choudhury conducted with Harvard PhD student Cirrus Foroughi  and Northeastern University’s Barbara Larson  analyzes a 2012 transition from a work-from-home to a work-from-anywhere model among patent examiners with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The researchers exploited a natural experiment and estimate that there was a 4.4 percent increase in work output when the examiners transitioned from a work-from-home regime to the work-from-anywhere regime.

“Work from anywhere offers workers geographic flexibility and can help workers relocate to their preferred locations,” Choudhury says. “Workers could gain additional utility by relocating to a cheaper location, moving closer to family, or mitigating frictions around immigration or dual careers.”

He notes as well the potential advantages for companies that allow workers to be located anywhere across the globe. “In addition to benefits to workers and organizations, WFA might also help reverse talent flows from smaller towns to larger cities and from emerging markets,” he says. “This might lead to a more equitable distribution of talent across geographies.”

More data to come

It is still early to draw strong conclusions about the impact of remote work on productivity. People who were sent home to work because of the COVID-19 pandemic may have been more motivated than before to prove they were essential, says Booth’s Ayelet Fishbach, a social psychologist. Additionally, there were fewer distractions from the outside because of the broad shutdowns. “The world helped them stay motivated,” she says, adding that looking at such an atypical year may not tell us as much about the future as performing the same experiment in a typical year would.

Before the pandemic, workers who already knew they performed better in a remote-working lifestyle self-selected into it, if allowed. During the pandemic, shutdowns forced remote work on millions. An experiment that allowed for random selection would likely be more telling. “The work-from-home experience seems to be more positive than what people believed, but we still don’t have great data,” Fishbach says.

Adding to the less optimistic view of a work-from-home future, Booth’s Austan D. Goolsbee says that some long-term trends may challenge remote work. Since the 1980s, as the largest companies have gained market power, corporate profits have risen dramatically while the share of profits going to workers has dropped to record lows. “This divergence between productivity and pay may very well come to pass regarding time,” he told graduating Booth students at their convocation ceremony. Companies may try to claw back time from those who are remote, he says, by expecting employees to work for longer hours or during their off hours.

And author and behavioral scientist Jon Levy argues in the Boston Globe that having some people in the office and others at home runs counter to smooth organizational processes. To this, Bloom offers a potential solution: instead of letting employees pick their own remote workdays, employers should ensure all workers take remote days together and come into the office on the same days. This, he says, could help alleviate the challenges of managing a hybrid team and level the playing field, whereas a looser model could potentially hurt employees who might be more likely to choose working from home (such as mothers with young children) while elevating those who might find it easier to come into the office every day (such as single men).

Gibbs concurs, noting that companies using a hybrid model will have to find ways to make sure employees who should interact will be on campus simultaneously. “Managers may specify that the entire team meets in person every Monday morning, for example,” he says. “R&D groups may need to make sure that researchers are on campus at the same time, to spur unplanned interactions that sometimes lead to new ideas and innovations.”

Sentiments vary by location, industry, and culture. Japanese workers are reportedly still mostly opting to go to the office, even as the government promotes remote work. Among European executives, a whopping 88 percent reportedly disagree with the idea that remote work is as or more productive than working at the office.

Regardless of what research establishes in the long run about productivity, many workers are already demanding flexibility in their schedules. While only about 28 percent of US office workers were back onsite by June 2021, employees who had become used to more flexibility were demanding it remain. A May survey of 1,000 workers by Morning Consult on behalf of Bloomberg News finds that about half of millennial and Gen Z workers, and two-fifths of all workers, would consider quitting if their employers weren’t flexible about work-from-home policies. And additional research from Barrero, Bloom, and Davis finds that four in 10 Americans who currently work from home at least one day a week would look for another job if their employers told them to come back to the office full time. Additionally, most employees would look favorably upon a new job that offered the same pay as their current job along with the option to work from home two to three days a week.

The shift to remote work affects a significant slice of the US workforce. A study by Chicago Booth’s Jonathan Dingel  and Brent Neiman  finds that while the majority of all jobs in the US require appearing in person, more than a third can potentially be performed entirely remotely. Of these jobs, the majority—including many in engineering, computing, law, and finance—pay more than those that cannot be done at home, such as food service, construction, and building-maintenance jobs.

Barrero, Bloom, and Davis project that, postpandemic, Americans overall will work approximately 20 percent of full workdays from home, four times the pre-pandemic level. This would make remote work less an aberration than a new norm. As the pandemic has demonstrated, many workers can be both productive and get dinner started between meetings.

Works Cited

• Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis,  “Why Working from Home Will Stick,”  Working paper, April 2021.
• ———,  “60 Million Fewer Commuting Hours per Day: How Americans Use Time Saved by Working from Home,” Working paper, September 2020.
• ———,  “Let Me Work From Home Or I Will Find Another Job,”  Working paper, July 2021.
• John W. Barry, Murillo Campello, John R. Graham, and Yueran Ma,  “Corporate Flexibility in a Time of Crisis,”  Working paper, February 2021.
• Nicholas Bloom, James Liang, John Roberts, and Zhichun Jenny Ying,  “Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment,”   Quarterly Journal of Economics , October 2015.
• Prithwiraj Choudhury, Cirrus Foroughi, and Barbara Larson,  “Work-from-Anywhere: The Productivity Effects of Geographic Flexibility,”   Strategic Management Journal , forthcoming.
• Morris A. Davis, Andra C. Ghent, and Jesse M. Gregory,  “The Work-at-Home Technology Boon and Its Consequences,”  Working paper, April 2021. 
• Jonathan Dingel and Brent Neiman,  “How Many Jobs Can Be Done at Home?”  White paper, June 2020.
• Allison Dunatchik, Kathleen Gerson, Jennifer Glass, Jerry A. Jacobs, and Haley Stritzel,  “Gender, Parenting, and the Rise of Remote Work during the Pandemic: Implications for Domestic Inequality in the United States,”   Gender & Society , March 2021.
• Michael Gibbs, Friederike Mengel, and Christoph Siemroth,  “Work from Home & Productivity: Evidence from Personnel & Analytics Data on IT Professionals,”  Working paper, May 2021.
• Robert E. Kraut, Susan R. Fussell, Susan E. Brennan, and Jane Siegel, “Understanding Effects of Proximity on Collaboration: Implications for Technologies to Support Remote Collaborative Work,” in  Distributed Work , eds. Pamela J. Hinds and Sara Kiesler, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002.
• Sabrina Wulff Pabilonia and Victoria Vernon,  “Telework and Time Use in the United States,”  Working paper, May 2020.

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• Learn how to set healthy boundaries at work remotely
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• Stop taking breaks the wrong way
• Let your team know when you’re off the clock
• Silence and never answer work messages during your off-time (unless it’s an emergency)
• Take time off from work without feeling guilty 

So Which is Better, Work From Home or Work from the Office?

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Remote Working vs. the Office — Which is Better?

Over the past few years, remote working has transformed millions of people's lives — giving them more time for family, more control over their schedules, and a better work-life balance. But now, a growing number of companies — including tech giants like Google and Meta — are making their employees return to the office, citing concerns about productivity, innovation, creativity, and employee engagement. But how does working in the office measure up when compared to working remotely? On this episode, we explore the future of remote work, and hear about the latest research on which settings and models are best. When does it pay off to bring workers back, and when is working remotely more fruitful? We hear stories about how digital nomads are reshaping what work looks like — and the places they live; how working from home affects productivity; and how workplace psychologists say office design could lure employees back to the workplace.

Work From Home vs Work From Office: Which is Better?

Cats vs Dogs, Cricket vs Football, Working out vs Netflix; everyone has their own preferences and reasons behind those preferences vary from person to person. The preference comparison that has taken the corporate world by storm, especially in 2022, is work from home vs work from office- which working environment brings out the maximum potential of the worker and the organization

This debate or group discussion has been around ever since the world started shifting towards digital technology as its primary mode of consuming, with proponents of both sides providing conflicting yet sensible arguments for their stance. Those who prefer work-from-home (WFH) setups argue that it gives their routines some much-needed flexibility, while supporters of the work-from-office school of thought propound that the entire point of an office environment is to create an atmosphere that encourages effort and promotes teamwork.

However, this discussion is no longer one that is open to deliberations at present. Thanks to the pandemic that gripped the world, work from home vs work from office seem like a redundant discussion as the former has become the norm for most companies. The question that is now being posed, is this- which method is going to be adopted moving forward

Work From Home vs Work From Office: Which One to Choose

This article attempts to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of both and give you a balanced perspective on what the future of work culture is going to look like.

Work From Home vs Work From Office: Face Off Between The Two

Picture this: youve woken up at around 9am and have been employed in your current position for a couple of months now. Your work hours begin at 9:30, but the commute is going to take at least an hour. The next image that pops up in your mind is that of a disgruntled employer who is reevaluating his decision to hire you, isnt it

Working From Office: Advantages & Disadvantages

Despite the many merits of working from home, the fact remains that the office space is sacred. Well, let us continue to look at work from home vs work from office gd and know more.

Advantages of Working From An Office

Rather than simply providing an isolated space where employees contribute towards the growth of an organization, the importance of offices lie in the kind of output they generate:

1. Communication

Face-to-face communication is the clearest and most productive form of communication in a corporate setting. Its not only beneficial when planning for business, it also strengthens relationships and rapport with other employees. The kind of relationship-building that happens when you sit next to someone or bump into each other at the coffee machine cannot be found anywhere else. The chain of command, the daily tasks that you need to fulfill- they all fall into a seamless communication structure which identifies and corrects shortcomings almost as soon as they are detected and ensures that only the best output is generated.

2. Management

Every company has a definite structure which is indisputable, no matter the circumstances under which one works. Every employee is answerable to a higher authority and it is through meticulous coordination and feedback that the ideal output is created by an organization. This cycle is only possible when the manager is on the floor with the workers, keeping an eye on what is going on, spotting errors as soon as they are made, giving precise directions to a struggling employee and regulating the overall workflow. The moment things go digital, management becomes a hassle, and work is more often than not either subpar or delayed.

3. Office Space Needs

Working from home can cause a lack of business inventory or storage, leading to space constraints. Renting out office spaces can be beneficial for small businesses in order to grow their business. Especially, coworking spaces because, they offer varied office spaces at affordable prices. The small businesses can focus on scaling their business in manifolds, considering the easy availability of office inventory. The productivity also increases when you are in an office setup that heavily inspires innovation and creativity.

Disadvantages of Working From Office

While there are certain obvious reasons to keep going to your offices, there are obvious disadvantages as well.

1. Rigid Organizational Rules

In an office setup, you get to decide very little. Your work hours are fixed, your commute is fixed, and your scope of work is more or less predictable as well. Working from an office is all about following a strict office timetable. No matter your personal problems or that are circumstances working against you, come rain or sun, you must be at your desk every day before your superiors notice a delay.

The ever-mounting pressure only serves to weaken your mental and physical health, making you more susceptible to a burnout.

2. Work Environment

One of the key aspects of the work from home vs work from office debate is the kind of work environment the organization fosters. It is no surprise that to survive in a corporate setting, one needs to have skin as thick as hide. Your work environment has the power to make or break your productivity-streak and motivation.

Employees dont have much of a choice in or control over their work environment within an office setting. Whether it is an annoying co-worker or other logistical issues, you just have to go along with it. At home, one has the option to optimise their workspace as per their requirements and preferences.

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Working From Home: Advantages & Disadvantages

Let us discuss the Pros and Cons of Work From Home.

Advantages of Working From Home

There are many such scenarios where a work from home setup is beneficial for both the employer and the employee:

1. Reduced/No Commute

One of the major positives of working from home is the elimination of commute. On an average, people in India spend at least 2 hours in a day, traveling to and from work. This not only wastes time they could otherwise be spending productively, it also hampers work-life balance greatly.

If a person works a regular 9-to-5 (or 6) job and is spending 7% of their day in traffic, its natural for them to feel like they dont have a life outside of work. However, when your work can be done from the comfort of your couch, it doesnt seem as cumbersome as before.

2. Better Work-Life Balance

It is extremely important to realize that work is not the be-all-and-end-all of things. There is a life that you have outside work, but sitting in an office for almost half of your day makes that seem like a lie. Moreover, a rigid schedule packed with work can cause employees to burn out rather quickly.

Most employers who provide their employees with the option to work from home also give them the flexibility to choose their working hours, which means that workers can start and end their day as they choose, as long as their work is complete and leads to strong outcomes. This control over your work schedule is invaluable when it comes to attending to the needs of your personal life.

3. Saves Money and Reduces Carbon Footprint

Working from home cuts costs for both sides- the employee is not required to spend money on traveling, food and other miscellaneous costs they occur throughout a working day; meanwhile, corporations save big on energy spendings and other related expenses which would have been unavoidable in an up-and-running office setup.

While these steps are a boon for your wallet, they are also a blessing for the planet- reduced commute implies fewer vehicles on roads, which inadvertently contributes towards making our environment cleaner; a sore need of the hour.

Disadvantages of Working From Home

So there are some serious merits to working from home. However, it is not without its challenges:

1. Teamwork and Organizational Growth

By its very nature, working from home is a hindrance to teamwork. To make things easier for employees, work schedules are usually fragmented according to their job descriptions and as long as their daily quotas are met, things can flow smoothly. However, a single obstacle can set the entire team off-track.

Coordinating with multiple people over the phone or via video calls, while possible, is an inefficient way of tackling issues because it does not allow face-to-face interactions. It takes a lot of time to get ideas across for approval over a Zoom call where 10 other people are competing for screen time. Thus, Working from Home can dampen teamwork and lead to disarray.

2. Productivity Trap

Popular polls will tell you that a majority of people feel like they are much more productive when working from home. However, but this feeling is only translated into actions when you have a set routine- which is integral for maintaining a steady stream of output. While the trappings of home are comforting, that very aspect can turn out to be counter-productive.

Procrastination can blossom unbridled at home, or worse, you might find yourself overexerting yourself. Working by yourself can also cripple your creativity. Thus, working from home doesnt always guarantee results.

3. Lack Of Office Equipment

Nearly 33% of the people who work from home also dont have the necessary access to office equipment such as high-speed internet, fax/copier machine or a high-end laptop which also adds to their distress while working from home as they have a hard time replicating their work environment at home.

Work From Home vs Work From Office: Which is Better

The work from home vs work from office debate is one that perplexes even those who benefit from either school of thought, because the merits of the other are too lucrative to overlook. However, we believe the answer might lie in striking a balance between the two. The following paragraph would work the best for work from home vs work from office group discussion.

Dividing the working week into days where employees work from home and days where they have to report to the office can not only maintain the positives of a work-from-home environment, it can eliminate the stifling of creativity and flow of work in an organization. On days that employees visit the office, brainstorming and meetings can run asunder and these ideas can be translated into the finished output at home. This gives both employers and employees the opportunity to have a desirable work-life balance, and provides the ideal system of work optimizer for the future.

FAQs on Work From Home Vs Work From Office

The frequently asked questions on work from home or work from office are given below:

Is working from home more productive than working in an office It is very difficult to estimate employees productivity when they are working in different environments. However, many research studies have shown that people who work home are more productive than the people who work from Office. Hence, most of the people choose work from home to increase their productivty which comes with benefits such as enhanced flexibility, stress-free etc.,

Is work from home better than work from office Both work from home and work from office has its own advantages and disadvantages. If you wish to cut-down the commute time and increase productivity, then work from home is better. However, if you focus on better collabaration then working from office is better. Hence work from home vs work from office has its own set of pros and cons.

Why is working in office better Working from office is better, if you want to collabrate with your collegaues. Working from office allows their employees to collect or access the data as qucikly as they can.

What are the pros and cons of working in an office The pros of working in an office include the ability to collaborate with colleagues in person, access to resources and technology, and a shared sense of camaraderie. The cons include needing to commute, being distracted by office chatter, and having less flexibility in scheduling.

How do I do a group discussion on work from home vs work from office A great way to facilitate a group discussion on work from home versus work from office is to start by having participants list out the pros and cons of each option. Have them discuss the benefits and drawbacks with each other, then use a collaborative brainstorming session to come up with ideas on how to make the most of either option. You could also refer to relevant research and studies on the topic to provide more context for the discussion.

• Top 9 Disadvantages Of Working From Home That Everyone Should Know
• Top 11 Tips To Improve Work From Home Productivity

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Why Working From Home Is Better Essay

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Introduction

Benefits of working remotely, works cited.

Working from home, a worker is at a greater advantage with several benefits than those who work in the office. Employees working remotely have less stress because they do not have to commute daily to work. Besides, working from home guarantees better work-life balance since workers are more flexible in deciding when to open and close their work. In addition, workers operating remotely save more finance and spend less. Overall, employees working from home are likely to be more productive and experience higher growth than those performing their duties directly from the office.

During the COVID-19 period, individuals were forced to work from home following the global lockdown undertaken by most governments as a measure to mitigate the spread of the deadly virus. Despite the restriction, the approach proved essential since many staff found it easier and more convenient to work remotely as opposed to the workplace. Besides, workers recorded a higher productivity rate compared to the periods when they worked in the offices (Ozkan et al. 3). During the short period and the subsequent adoption by most organizations, it demonstrated that numerous hidden advantages characterize working from home and that most people benefited greatly from the measure (Parker et al. 12). While there could be some disadvantages of remote working, recent experience showed that people benefited and enjoyed working from their homes and would still prefer working remotely even after the end of the pandemic.

Saves Money

Additionally, employees working from home save more money and spend less than their colleagues going to the offices. When performing duties at home, a worker is spared unnecessary expenses such as transportation costs. Whether one uses public or private means, the daily movement cost to the workplace is always exorbitant. These costs translate to money (Purwanto et al. 6238). Remote working, therefore, comes with the relief of not incurring the daily transport cost and the related costs of traveling (Wolfer and Sondra). The money meant for transport costs can be channeled to other development projects for personal growth or saved for other things.

Besides the transport cost, individuals going to the workplace incur other expenses, such as refreshments during lunchtime, since not all organizations provide meals for their staff. For enterprises that do not offer food, workers are forced to purchase the meals on their own leading to more expenditure. Even for the businesses which provide mealtimes for their employees, the foodstuffs are never sufficient and often supplemented by other items bought with money from personal accounts (Ojala and Satu 78). Professional wardrobes are additional costs that characterize the workplace since many office jobs require cabinets. Therefore, remote working facilitates money saving by avoiding such expenses.

Improved mental health

Workers working remotely have proven to enjoy better mental health compared to their counterparts working in offices. This is attributed to the peace and relaxation they have at home because they are alone with no manager to bother and quarrel with them. In addition, employees working from home enjoy better mental health because they can have enough sleep, a thing denied by staff in offices (Wolfer). Remote work allows a worker to close work at a convenience and have enough rest.

Facilitates Flexibility and Work Balance

Additionally, employees working from home enjoy more flexibility than those in offices because they can have a personal schedule to balance both official and domestic work. Workers have various errands which they must perform, and at the same time, they are obligated to perform official duties designated by their employees. At the workplace, the staff is confined to one area and a typical work schedule, which makes it challenging to balance both responsibilities. However, remote working provides suppleness as one can set their timetables, which allows them to balance both duties (Ipsen et al. 2). Since an individual is able to organize private plans, they can end their day as they choose and resort to other domestic duties. Similarly, a colleague working remotely can multitask and achieve success domestically and at their respective organizations (Oskarsson et al. 39). For example, staff can suspend their official duties for a while and do laundry work or kitchen work and resume later, a privilege that cannot be obtained while going to the formal workplace.

Working from home is also flexible in the context of providing enough family time. Often, employees who visit the workplace in the morning and return in the evening need more time to spend with family members, leading to a family gap (Oskarsson et al. 40). Family bonds are strengthened by physical presence; be it a parent-kid bond or couple bond, the partners must at least spend some time together (Purwanto et al. 6239). This, however, is different with many families whose members do not work remotely because they spend most of their time in their workplaces and the remaining time sleeping due to exhaustion. After spending time in the workplace and traveling back home, it is evident that one gets tired and takes a nap (Galanti et al. 2). The ripple effect is then felt in the family, which will be the continued absence of the member. A father, for instance, will be considered absent by his kids and even his wife. Such mysteries are therefore prevented by working from home, which provides the needed flexibility and time for family members. Individuals working remotely have enough time with their family members and are always available whenever needed.

Provides Comfort

Furthermore, working from home grants employees some sort of comfort following limited supervision. While performing duties remotely, a worker is comfortable because they are free to do anything at any time and can choose any position for their workstation. Whether under a tree shade, in the bedroom, or wherever, an employee working from home is of their own volition to choose and can relocate the workstation whenever necessary (Wolfer & Sondra 2). Moreover, employees working from home enjoy the comfort of serenity and peace that the home environment provides. At the offices, a worker is likely to engage in brawls with colleagues or managers, something which is avoidable while working remotely. And since they work in comfort, employees are more productive while working from home. Besides, the comfort also gives workers at home a greater chance of personal growth and numerous opportunities.

Less Commuter Stress

Lastly, daily commuting is full of stressors, such as traffic jams and rude travelers. While this is not an everyday occurrence, on bad days, the workers will likely experience long traffic jams or face rude travelers who do not care about their feelings. Such experiences are dull and affect one’s productivity (Oskarsson et al. 40). Remote working, therefore, saves employees from facing such experiences and ensures they remain in high spirits for their respective duties. At home, a colleague will not meet a rude traveler or be held in a long traffic jam which will lower their productivity.

While it is not perfect due to minor challenges like lack of concentration due to possible distractions from family members, especially kids, which might lower one’s efficiency and effectiveness, such challenges can be easily avoided by setting up a home office far from the children’s reach. Another minor challenge that might be attributed to working from home is the lack of creativity and innovation since staff does not share ideas. However, that can be sorted by telephone consultation and engagement among colleagues (Ozkan et al. 2). After all, employees normally have communication outside of the workplace; thus, such information can be used for the same. Some may also argue that working remotely is difficult to supervise, but that is not a problem, provided a worker understands what is required of them. Some employees work well under minimum supervision, as they should. Despite these challenges, working from home remains the better option for many individuals owing to the comfort and tranquility it provides.

Despite the end of the Corona pandemic, workers in America and other countries would still prefer to work from home than work in the offices because it offers flexibility for easier work-life balance. In addition, working from home provides comfort and tranquility facilitated by the home environment. Furthermore, individuals working from home are spared of the commuter stressors like traffic jams that accompany staff going to the workplace daily. Lastly, working from home is economical as it helps employees to save money by avoiding unnecessary expenses like transport costs.

Galanti, Teresa, et al. Work from Home during the COVID-19 Outbreak: The Impact on Employees’ Remote Work Productivity, Engagement, and Stress .” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 63, no. 7, 2021, p. e426, Web.

Ipsen, Christine, et al. “ Six Key Advantages and Disadvantages of Working from Home in Europe during COVID-19 .” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 18, no. 4, 2021, p. 1826, Web.

Ojala, Satu. “ Supplemental Work at Home among Finnish Wage Earners: Involuntary Overtime or Taking advantage of Flexibility? ” Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies , vol. 1, no. 2, 2011, pp. 77-97, Web.

Oskarsson, Emma, et al. “Work-Life Balance among Newly Employed Officers – A Qualitative Study.” Health Psychology Report , vol. 9, no. 1, 2021, pp. 39-48.

Ozkan, Necmettin, Oya Erdil, and Mehmet Şahin Gök. “ Agile Teams Working from Home During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Literature Review on New Advantages and Challenges .” International Conference on Lean and Agile Software Development . Springer, Cham, 2022, Web.

Parker, Kim, et al. “How the Coronavirus Outbreak Has – and Hasn’t – Changed the Way Americans Work.” Pew Research Center , 2020, pp. 1-31.

Purwanto, Agus, et al. “ Impact of Work from Home (WFH) on Indonesian Teachers’ Performance during the Covid-19 Pandemic: An Exploratory Study .” International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology, vol. 29, no. 5, 2020, pp. 6235-6244, Web.

Wolfer, Sondra. “ 9 Best Benefits of Working from Home (and 5 Potential Drawbacks) .” The Muse, Web.

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• Today's Kant and Modern State of Three Cultures
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IvyPanda. (2023, December 9). Why Working From Home Is Better. https://ivypanda.com/essays/why-working-from-home-is-better/

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IvyPanda . 2023. "Why Working From Home Is Better." December 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/why-working-from-home-is-better/.

1. IvyPanda . "Why Working From Home Is Better." December 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/why-working-from-home-is-better/.

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Working from Home vs. Working from the Office

August 26, 2021

Working from home vs. office statistics

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Not all that long ago, many office-bound workers dreamt of what it would be like to work from home, fantasizing about eliminating the daily commute, the flexibility of a work-from-home schedule, not to mention the thrill of taking a call in your pajama pants. Just imagine!

And then 2020 hit, and with it came the COVID-19 pandemic. Seemingly overnight, about 71% of workers switched to a work-from-home lifestyle. Before the Coronavirus outbreak, only about 20% of people worked from home, so this marked a significant increase in telecommuting. 1

Now, COVID-19 restrictions are easing around the country, and small business owners are wrestling with how — and whether — to return to the office.

In this post, we’ll take a look at the work from home vs. work from office dilemma, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of each approach for employees.

COVID changed many things about daily life, including the way millions of people in the U.S. worked.Here are a few working from home vs. office statistics to know if you’re considering a change in your work location:

Before 2020

• 62% of workers rarely or never worked from home before the COVID-19 outbreak. 2
• Only one in five workers say they worked from home all or most of the time before COVID, while 18% reported working from home some of the time.
• By April of 2020, A Gallup poll found that 70% of US workers were already working remotely. By September of the same year, the number had fallen to 58%. By January of 2021, 56% of workers reported working at home “always” or “some of the time.” 3
• Demographics with higher levels of education and income were the most likely to report working from home all of the time during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• About 60% of workers with bachelor’s degrees or higher levels of education could perform their jobs from home, compared to 51% of workers with less education.
• 18% of adults who are still teleworking don’t have a workplace outside the home. About 50% of this group is self-employed.

Of the workers who switched to a work-from-home model during the pandemic, about 54% say they’d like to continue working from home all or most of the time, even after their workplaces reopen.

When it comes to the work-from-home lifestyle, people tend to be fairly polarized on the topic: some love it, and some can’t wait to get back into a brick-and-mortar office.

Still, working from home does present some serious benefits for both companies and employees.

Most notably, working from home allows people to eliminate time and money spent on daily commutes. As a result, many workers report being better-rested and able to devote more time to their daily work.

Additionally, working from home tends to increase productivity and focus. In fact, people working from home spend 12% less time attending meetings and 9% more time communicating directly with external partners, customers, and other stakeholders important to their company’s success. 4

Finally, there’s the issue of flexibility. People working from home generally have much more flexible schedules than people working in offices. This means that they can achieve a better work-life balance, spend more time with children and family members, and make space for other important things during the day.

For companies, allowing people to work from home provides many benefits. These include increased employee loyalty and retention, lower overhead costs (less need for office space, etc.), and access to a much larger talent pool since hiring doesn’t need to be local.

In addition to improving time management, focus, and work-life balance for employees, working from home is also less expensive than being in a traditional office. Here are a few of the overhead costs working from home can help save both companies and employees:

• Renting or leasing an office or coworking space
• Gas, tolls, fees, and other expenses associated with commuting
• Daily meals out
• Professional wardrobes

While these things seem simple, they can add up. One study found that companies that allowed employees to work from home even 50% of the time would save an average of $11,000 per employee each year. The same study also found that each work-from-home employee would save between $2,000 and $7,000 annually. 5

That’s not to suggest that working from home does not have some downsides for small business owners. Some people find it difficult to adjust to a remote workforce, while others dislike working with project management software or find it difficult to track workflow in a remote workforce environment. Still others simply miss the camaraderie and collaboration of an in-office setting. Water cooler chat, anyone?

Even before COVID-19 inspired a widespread obsession with customized Zoom backgrounds, work-from-home productivity was a hot topic for companies throughout the country.

Could workers stay on task if they weren’t in the office? Was it possible that working from home could actually make them more productive?

The resounding answer seems to be, yes. Here are a few stats to back it up:

• Nearly one in four virtual work-from-home workers are willing to work longer hours than they would in an office.
• 80% of work-from-home employees experience less work-related stress, allowing them to focus more on the tasks at hand.
• 77% of virtual workers report being more productive — even when sick. 6
• Working from home leads to a 13% increase in performance. 7
• Remote work results in 50% lower attrition.
• Employees who have the option of working from home at least one time each month are 24% more likely to feel happy in their roles.

While the work from home vs. work from office model is a new concept to many US companies, allowing employees to telecommute may be one of the most effective ways to encourage productivity and focus at each level of an organization.

Even as U.S. workplaces open their doors once more, many employees are reluctant to give up the perks of a work-from-home arrangement.

If you’re a small business owner finding that your team is struggling to adapt to reopening, now is a great time to communicate with your team and find a remote or hybrid arrangement that works for everyone involved.

If you’re a freelancer , working from home is probably the norm, and it will only become more commonplace in the future. With that in mind, make sure you’re protecting your vocation with the right business insurance and, yes, go right ahead and keep on responding to those emails while sporting your favorite sweatpants.

• Pew Research Center. How the Coronavirus Outbreak Has—and Hasn’t—Changed the Way Americans Work.  
• Pew Research Center. How the Coronavirus Outbreak Has – and Hasn’t – Changed the Way Americans Work.  
• Gallup. Majority of U.S. Workers Continue to Punch In Virtually.  
• HBR. Research: Knowledge Workers Are More Productive from Home.  
• Global Workplace Analytics. Latest Work-At-Home/Telecommuting/Mobile Work/Remote Work Statistics.  
• SHRM. Study: Teleworkers More Productive—Even When Sick.  
• Email Analytics. 15 Working From Home Productivity Statistics.  

Terri Hitchcock, JD Chief Insurance Officer, Thimble

Terri has 38 years of industry experience and knows a thing or two about insurance, so she reviewed and approved everything on this page.

Our editorial content is intended for informational purposes only and is not written by a licensed insurance agent. Terms and conditions for rate and coverage may vary by class of business and state.

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What Mix of WFH and Office Time Is Right for You?

• Robert C. Pozen
• Alexandra Samuel

How to figure it out for yourself — and convince your boss.

Many professionals will choose a hybrid approach to work after the pandemic, sometimes working from home, sometimes from the office. But how to decide where to spend each day isn’t always as obvious as it seems. The authors describe a data-driven process for understanding where you’re most productive on which kinds of tasks — and how to convince your boss that your resulting plan is best for their interests as well.

Over the past year, many of us have found things to love about working from home like  flexibility , the ability to focus , and no commute. Now that offices are starting re-open, you might start to remember that there is a lot to love about the office, too: social interaction, the joys of collaboration, and of course, that endless pot of coffee.

• A former president of Fidelity Investments, Robert C. Pozen is a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the co-author of  Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive at Work…Wherever You Are   (with Alexandra Samuel).
• Alexandra Samuel is a tech speaker and data journalist who creates data-driven reports and workshops for companies around the world. She is the co-author of  Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive at Work…Wherever You Are   (with Robert C. Pozen) and the author of HBR’s  Work Smarter With Social Media . Follow her on LinkedIn .

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Working from home (Corrected Essay)

Some say that it would be better if the majority of employees worked from home instead of traveling to a workplace every day. Do you think the advantages of working from home outweigh the disadvantages?

Office has no longer been the only work place since many people are considering working from home. Some may argue the majority of employees should change their work place from office to home. In my opinion, the benefits of working from home can surely surpass the drawbacks due to the following reasons:

Office has no longer been the only work place since many people are considering working from home. Some may argue the majority of employees should change their work place from office to home. In my opinion, the benefits of working from home can surely surpass offset the drawbacks due to the following reasons: various reasons.

The first sentence is not accurate. It implies that people did not work from home in the past; however, throughout history, many people did work from home, for example, the classical novelists and artists.

“ Can surely ” is an informal expression and does not contribute anything to the preciseness of your writing.

The correct verb to follow the word “benefit” is not “ to surpass ”, but rather “ to offset ”, “ to outweigh ”, or “ to exceed ”.

Do not end your sentence with a colon ( “:” ), unless you want to provide a list of items immediately after that.

Working from home is a lot more comfortable for lots of people. Employees can save a great deal of time and money since they do not have to travel so often, which means people will have more time for work and for themselves, too. Less travelling will also help reduce traffice traffic jam congestion and pollutants to our environment environmental pollution . Besides, working at home does not mean staying inside all day long, people can choose to work in their garden or backyard, wherever makes them feel convenient to work. Moreover, employees are under less stresses stress since they get to decide when to work and when to take rest with a flexible working schedule . These things will help giving out better perfomance to tasks.

Words like “comfortable”, or “convenient” are too generic to use in an IELTS writing context. Generally, it’s better to use other words.

Lengthy phrases like “a great deal of time and money” (7 words) are considered as informal and ambiguous. Try to use shorter expressions, for example “time-saving and cost-efficient” (3 words only).

In a formal context, “ traffic congestion ” is more preferrable than “ traffic jam ”. When being alone, the word “ jam ” can be understood as a type of food. It’s always better to use a word that only has one meaning, regardless of the context.

The third sentence in this body paragraph is an example of poor cohesion. “ Traffic jam ” is not parallel to “ pollutants to our environment ”. “ Traffic jam ” is a condition (abstract), not a physical material (touchable by human) like “ pollutants ”. Therefore, you need to use another condition that is parallel to “ traffic jam ” (“ environmental pollution ”)

The fourth sentence (“ Besides, working at… ”) should be placed in the second body paragraph. The author is tailoring his ideas by providing the advantages of working from home in the first body paragraph, then listing the disadvantages in the second body paragraph while attacking those disadvantages notion at the same time. This kind of idea (“ to play the devil’s advocate ”) is good, but the execution isn’t. Insufficient coherence like this will hamper your score in Coherence & Cohesion criterion.

“Stress” as in “psychological stress” is an uncountable noun.

Try to improve the conciseness of your essay by rewritting a sentence clause (S+V) into a noun phrase. For example, “ since they get to decide when to work and when to take rest ” can be shorten into “ with a flexible working schedule ”.

The last sentence is redundant and ungrammatical.

To be fair, There are still some disadvantages that home-working could bring of teleworking . For instance, working from personal space will reduce direct face-to-face interactions among colleagues. But However, the problem is solved thanks to the Internet. As for now, people from around the globe can easily contact and work with others from distances. Another drawback is that some people may get distracted from work by external factors. This situation requires employees to be highly awared awarded of what they should and should not do for their paid jobs.

The accurate way to describe the act of working from home is not “ home-working ”, but rather “ teleworking ” or “ telecommuting ”. The author has miss his chance to improve the Lexical Resource score.

Generally, in a writing context, do not start your sentence with a short subordinate conjuction (“ and ”, “ or ”, “ but ”, “ for ”).

The third sentence in this paragraph is very unclear, especially when the followed sentence does not provide a good explanation. The author has to elaborate more on the Internet’s merits (social softwares such as “ instant messaging ”, “ collaborative software ”, etc)

The author has failed to provide a counter-argument for the notion of “ people may get distracted from work by external factors ”. Not to mentions he does not elaborate what is the “ external factors ”. Again, weak cohesion.

Do not simply stating “ this ” as a sentence subject. This type of grammatical mistake is called “unclear antecedent”, or “unclear aphoric noun”, and should be avoid by extending the subject with a word like “ condition ”, “ situation ”, “ issue ”, etc.

In conclusion, working from home should be encouraged because the advantages overcome the disadvantages.

The conclusion is coherent with the introduction and the two body paragraphs. Though, it is a little bit too short.

(Words: 261)

Overall: 6.0

Task Response: 6

✓ addresses all parts of the task although some parts may be more fully covered than others (the author has written more than 250 words and addressed the topic question)

✓ presents a relevant position although the conclusions may become unclear or repetitive

✓ presents relevant main ideas but some may be inadequately developed/unclear

Coherence and Cohesion: 6

✓ arranges information and ideas coherently and there is a clear overall progression (the ideas in each paragraphs are coherent with eachother)

✓ uses cohesive devices effectively, but cohesion within and/or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical

✓ may not always use referencing clearly or appropriately (the author usually fails at providing good supporting evidence for his argument)

✓ uses paragraphing, but not always logically (the fourth sentence in Body Paragraph 1 should be placed in Body 2 instead)

Lexical Resource: 5

✓ uses a limited range of vocabulary, but this is minimally adequate for the task (all the vocab used in this essay are very generic) ✓ may make noticeable errors in spelling and/or word formation that may cause some difficulty for the reader

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: 6

✓ uses a mix of simple and complex sentence forms

✓ makes some errors in grammar and punctuation but they rarely reduce communication

----------------------------------------------------------

This essay is corrected by Anh Tran - Let's Write Something Group .

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Model Answer

Office has no longer been the only work place since many people are considering working from home. Some may argue the majority of employees should change their work place from office to home. In my opinion, the benefits of working from home can surely surpass the drawbacks due to the following reasons:

Working from home is a lot more comfortable for lots of people. Employees can save a great deal of time and money since they do not have to travel so often, which means people will have more time for work and for themselves, too. Less travelling will also help reduce traffice jam and pollutants to our environment. Besides, working at home does not mean staying inside all day long, people can choose to work in their garden or backyard, wherever makes them feel convenient to work. Moreover, employees are under less stresses since they get to decide when to work and when to take rest. These things will help giving out better perfomance to tasks.

There are still some disadvantages that home-working could bring. For instance, working from personal space will reduce direct interactions among colleagues. But the problem is solved thanks to the Internet. As for now, people from around the globe can easily contact and work with others from distances. Another drawback is that some people may get distracted from work by external factors. This requires employees to be highly awared of what they should and should not do for their paid jobs.

In conclusion, working from home should be encouraged because the advantages overcome the disadvantages.

(Written by Chloe Đặng)

Corrected essay

Office has no longer been the only work place since many people are considering working from home. Some may argue the majority of employees should change their work place from office to home. In my opinion, the benefits of working from home can surely   surpass   offset the drawbacks due to the following reasons:  various reasons.

• The first sentence is not accurate. It implies that people did not work from home in the past; however, throughout history, many people did work from home, for example, the classical novelists and artists.
• “ Can surely ” is an informal expression and does not contribute anything to the preciseness of your writing.
• The correct verb to follow the word “benefit” is not “ to surpass ”, but rather “to offset”, “to outweigh”, or “to exceed” .
• Do not end your sentence with a colon ( “:” ), unless you want to provide a list of items immediately after that.

Working from home is a lot more comfortable for lots of people. Employees can save a great deal of time and money since they do not have to travel so often, which means people will have more time for work and for themselves, too. Less travelling will also help reduce traffice traffic jam   congestion and pollutants to our environment   environmental pollution. Besides, working at home does not mean staying inside all day long, people can choose to work in their garden or backyard, wherever makes them feel convenient to work. Moreover, employees are under less stresses   stress   since they get to decide when to work and when to take rest   with a flexible working schedule . These things will help giving out better perfomance to tasks.

• Words like “comfortable”, or “convenient” are too generic to use in an IELTS writing context. Generally, it’s better to use other words.
• Lengthy phrases like “a great deal of time and money” (7 words) are considered as informal and ambiguous. Try to use shorter expressions, for example “time-saving and cost-efficient” (3 words only).
• In a formal context, “ traffic congestion ” is more preferrable than “ traffic jam ”. When being alone, the word “ jam ” can be understood as a type of food. It’s always better to use a word that only has one meaning, regardless of the context.
• The third sentence in this body paragraph is an example of poor cohesion. “ Traffic jam ” is not parallel to “ pollutants to our environment ”. “ Traffic jam ” is a condition (abstract), not a physical material (touchable by human) like “ pollutants ”. Therefore, you need to use another condition that is parallel to “ traffic jam ” (“ environmental pollution ”)
• The fourth sentence (“ Besides, working at… ”) should be placed in the second body paragraph. The author is tailoring his ideas by providing the advantages of working from home in the first body paragraph, then listing the disadvantages in the second body paragraph while attacking those disadvantages notion at the same time. This kind of idea (“ to play the devil’s advocate ”) is good, but the execution isn’t. Insufficient coherence like this will hamper your score in Coherence & Cohesion criterion.
• “Stress” as in “psychological stress” is an uncountable noun.
• Try to improve the conciseness of your essay by rewritting a sentence clause (S+V) into a noun phrase. For example, “ since they get to decide when to work and when to take rest ” can be shorten into “ with a flexible working schedule ”.
• The last sentence is redundant and ungrammatical.

To be fair, There are still some disadvantages that home-working could bring   of teleworking . For instance, working from personal space will reduce direct  face-to-face interactions among colleagues. But  However, the problem is solved thanks to the Internet. As for now, people from around the globe can easily contact and work with others from distances. Another drawback is that some people may get distracted from work by external factors. This situation requires employees to be highly awared   awarded of what they should and should not do for their paid jobs.

• The accurate way to describe the act of working from home is not “ home-working ”, but rather “ teleworking ” or “ telecommuting ”. The author has miss his chance to improve the Lexical Resource score.
• Generally, in a writing context, do not start your sentence with a short subordinate conjuction (“and”, “or”, “but”, “for” ).
• The third sentence in this paragraph is very unclear, especially when the followed sentence does not provide a good explanation. The author has to elaborate more on the Internet’s merits (social softwares such as “instant messaging”, “collaborative software” , etc)
• The author has failed to provide a counter-argument for the notion of “ people may get distracted from work by external factors ”. Not to mentions he does not elaborate what is the “ external factors ”. Again, weak cohesion.
• Do not simply stating “ this ” as a sentence subject. This type of grammatical mistake is called “unclear antecedent”, or “unclear aphoric noun”, and should be avoid by extending the subject with a word like “condition”, “situation”, “issue” , etc.
• The conclusion is coherent with the introduction and the two body paragraphs. Though, it is a little bit too short.

(Words: 261)

Overall: 6.0

• Task Response: 6

✓ addresses all parts of the task although some parts may be more fully covered than others (the author has written more than 250 words and addressed the topic question)

✓ presents a relevant position although the conclusions may become unclear or repetitive

✓ presents relevant main ideas but some may be inadequately developed/unclear

• Coherence and Cohesion: 6

✓ arranges information and ideas coherently and there is a clear overall progression (the ideas in each paragraphs are coherent with eachother)

✓ uses cohesive devices effectively, but cohesion within and/or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical

✓ may not always use referencing clearly or appropriately (the author usually fails at providing good supporting evidence for his argument)

✓ uses paragraphing, but not always logically (the fourth sentence in Body Paragraph 1 should be placed in Body 2 instead)

• Lexical Resource: 5

✓ uses a limited range of vocabulary, but this is minimally adequate for the task (all the vocab used in this essay are very generic) ✓ may make noticeable errors in spelling and/or word formation that may cause some difficulty for the reader

• Grammatical Range and Accuracy: 6

✓ uses a mix of simple and complex sentence forms

✓ makes some errors in grammar and punctuation but they rarely reduce communication

———————————————————-

This essay is corrected by  Anh Tran

• corrected essay
• writing-correction

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Book Review — Comparison Report; Working From Home vs. Working From Office

Comparison Report; Working from Home Vs. Working from Office

• Categories: Book Review

About this sample

Words: 659 |

Published: Jan 31, 2024

Words: 659 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Overview of working from home, overview of working from the office, comparison: productivity and efficiency, comparison: work-life balance, comparison: communication and collaboration, comparison: health and well-being.

• Bloom, N., Liang, J., Roberts, J., & Ying, Z. J. (2015). Does working from home work? Evidence from a Chinese experiment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(1), 165-218.
• FlexJobs. (2018). The state of remote work. Retrieved from https://www.flexjobs.com/2018-State-of-Remote-Work/
• Mann, S., & Holdsworth, L. (2003). The psychological impact of teleworking: Stress, emotions and health. New Technology, Work and Employment, 18(3), 196-211.
• Stanford News. (2020). New study shows working from home boosts productivity. Retrieved from https://news.stanford.edu/2020/02/24/working-home-productivity/

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compare and contrast working from home and working at office

Will work from home become a new norm post-pandemic? These days, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a need for social distancing with it, and a historic worldwide work-from-home experiment as a result. Having time to evaluate their opinion of home working, employees are split on whether they’d rather work at home or in an office. One of the reasons is that there are many differences between a home-based job and an office-based job, the most notable of which are the commute, the work schedule, and the way employees communicate with others. One of the major differences between a home-based job and an office-based job is the commute. Working from home means there is no commuting back and forth from work, there is no hurry in the morning to get ready and out the door by a certain time because the distance we have to travel is roughly the length of our living space. Instead of wasting time in traffic congestion, being unproductive, and on high alert during the whole commute journey, people can spend the extra time saved here for work tasks, for personal care and family. Meanwhile, for office workers, a morning routine can be a hassle due to the dreaded daily commute. According to Numbeo, the average daily commute for workers in Vietnam is 29.85 minutes, and in total, it takes us more than an hour there and back. Employees have to show up at 8:00 AM after suffering from heavy traffic under Vietnam’s hot and humid weather, only to then get stuck in a traffic jam for 30-60 minutes when coming back home. Moreover, these two also differ in regard to the work schedule: home working offers flexible working hours, whereas office job offers a set schedule. A work from home policy allows employees to adjust the days and hours of work according to their preferences. It provides us with the absolute flexibility of choosing to work in our peak productivity hours and to take a break when energy levels are low. On the negative side, it may lead to difficulty in keeping work and home life separate. In contrast, office work demands alignment. The 9-to-5 work schedule has been the norm for many workplaces, despite the fact that some people might not be effective at all then. On the bright side, there’s a definitive start and stop time. Another significant distinction is our ways of communication/how we communicate with each other. While face-to-face interaction and email are the most commonly and frequently used modes of workplace communication, tech tools and virtual conference platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, etc. are essential for a distributed team to maintain communication. The advancement in digital technology within the last decade have greatly expanded our ability to telecommute and keep in touch with others without having to be physically present in the office. However, no matter how fast people respond to messages on Whatsapp or Slack, it is always more convenient to get things done when the person we need is in front of us. Even video calls, for one, aren't like being face-to-face in an actual office. In real-life conversation, we use not only words, but also a gazillion micro expressions as well as other non-verbal cues, and a lot of this is lost online. In conclusion, working from home and working in an office is different in many ways namely commuting, working hours, and modes of communication. Depending on each individual’s needs and personality, one might prefer one working style to another and decide which might work best for them.

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• compare and contrast working from home and working at office 93
• Many people believe that it is important to always tell the truth. In your opinion, is it ever acceptable to tell a lie?Explain your answer giving reasons and specific examples. 73
• compare and contrast working from home and working at office 91
• With the pressures on today's young people to succeed academically, some people believe that non-academic subjects at school (eg: physical education and cookery) should be removed from the syllabus so that children can concentrate wholly on academic 78

Essay evaluations by e-grader

Grammar and spelling errors: Line 1, column 466, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1] Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive ...ased job, the most notable of which are the commute, the work schedule, and the way employe... ^^^^^^^^^^^ Line 2, column 82, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1] Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive ...me-based job and an office-based job is the commute. Working from home means there is no co... ^^^^^^^^^^^ Line 2, column 131, Rule ID: COMMUTE_BACK_AND_FORTH[1] Message: Use simply 'commuting'. Suggestion: commuting ...te. Working from home means there is no commuting back and forth from work, there is no hurry in the mor... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Line 4, column 756, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING Message: Possible spelling mistake found Suggestion: aren't ...front of us. Even video calls, for one, arent like being face-to-face in an actual of... ^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used: also, but, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, well, whereas, while, in conclusion, in contrast, such as, as a result, as well as, in regard to

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech: To be verbs : 23.0 13.1623246493 175% => OK Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 7.85571142285 115% => OK Conjunction : 27.0 10.4138276553 259% => Less conjunction wanted Relative clauses : 7.0 7.30460921844 96% => OK Pronoun: 25.0 24.0651302605 104% => OK Preposition: 85.0 41.998997996 202% => Less preposition wanted. Nominalization: 13.0 8.3376753507 156% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words: No of characters: 2928.0 1615.20841683 181% => OK No of words: 593.0 315.596192385 188% => Less content wanted. Chars per words: 4.93760539629 5.12529762239 96% => OK Fourth root words length: 4.93473315629 4.20363070211 117% => OK Word Length SD: 2.80606271889 2.80592935109 100% => OK Unique words: 320.0 176.041082164 182% => OK Unique words percentage: 0.539629005059 0.561755894193 96% => OK syllable_count: 922.5 506.74238477 182% => OK avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.60771543086 100% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by: Pronoun: 7.0 5.43587174349 129% => OK Article: 8.0 2.52805611222 316% => Less articles wanted as sentence beginning. Subordination: 1.0 2.10420841683 48% => OK Conjunction: 7.0 0.809619238477 865% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning. Preposition: 8.0 4.76152304609 168% => OK

Performance on sentences: How many sentences: 26.0 16.0721442886 162% => OK Sentence length: 22.0 20.2975951904 108% => OK Sentence length SD: 52.3571174863 49.4020404114 106% => OK Chars per sentence: 112.615384615 106.682146367 106% => OK Words per sentence: 22.8076923077 20.7667163134 110% => OK Discourse Markers: 5.57692307692 7.06120827912 79% => OK Paragraphs: 5.0 4.38176352705 114% => OK Language errors: 4.0 5.01903807615 80% => OK Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.67935871743 92% => OK Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 3.9879759519 176% => OK Sentences with neutral sentiment: 11.0 3.4128256513 322% => Less facts, knowledge or examples wanted. What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion: Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.436164333741 0.244688304435 178% => OK Sentence topic coherence: 0.131977511348 0.084324248473 157% => OK Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.134185594745 0.0667982634062 201% => The coherence between sentences is low. Paragraph topic coherence: 0.29122074026 0.151304729494 192% => OK Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.169629360927 0.056905535591 298% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.

Essay readability: automated_readability_index: 13.2 13.0946893788 101% => OK flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 50.2224549098 98% => OK smog_index: 8.8 7.44779559118 118% => OK flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 11.3001002004 105% => OK coleman_liau_index: 11.67 12.4159519038 94% => OK dale_chall_readability_score: 8.8 8.58950901804 102% => OK difficult_words: 153.0 78.4519038076 195% => OK linsear_write_formula: 11.5 9.78957915832 117% => OK gunning_fog: 10.8 10.1190380762 107% => OK text_standard: 12.0 10.7795591182 111% => OK What are above readability scores?

--------------------- Rates: 61.797752809 out of 100 Scores by essay e-grader: 5.5 Out of 9 --------------------- Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Does working from home work? That depends on the home

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Finance, School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

Contributed equally to this work with: Piet Eichholtz, Nils Kok

Roles Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

• Martijn Stroom, 
• Piet Eichholtz, 

• Published: August 7, 2024
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Working from home (WFH) has risen in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic. There is an ongoing debate about the productivity implications of WFH, but the physical climate of the home office has received only limited attention. This paper investigates the effect of home office satisfaction and environment-improving behavior on productivity and burnout tendency for WFH employees. We surveyed over 1,000 Dutch WFH individuals about their home office and perceived WFH performance. We fit logistic regressions and structural equation models to investigate the effect of home office satisfaction and characteristics on self-reported productivity, burnout tendency, and willingness to continue WFH. Our results reveal that individual differences in WFH productivity are explained by heterogeneity in the physical home office environment. Higher satisfaction with home office factors is significantly associated with increased productivity and decreased burnout tendency. We continue by showing that more ventilation during working hours is associated with increased productivity, willingness to continue WFH, and burnout resilience. This effect is fully mediated by satisfaction with the home office. We find that higher home office satisfaction is associated with WFH success and air-quality-improving behavior is associated with higher satisfaction. Our results underline a holistic perspective such that investing in a healthy and objectively measured physical climate is a key aspect of the bright future of working from home. The move from the work office to the home office needs to be accompanied by careful design and investment in the quality of the office and its climate.

Citation: Stroom M, Eichholtz P, Kok N (2024) Does working from home work? That depends on the home. PLoS ONE 19(8): e0306475. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475

Editor: Daphne Nicolitsas, University of Crete, GREECE

Received: March 5, 2023; Accepted: June 18, 2024; Published: August 7, 2024

Copyright: © 2024 Stroom et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All files are available from the OSF database (see https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/H6J3F ).

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic, in combination with recent technological advancements, has quickly elevated the status of working from home (WFH) from “occasionally” to “the new normal” [ 1 ]. Earlier uncertainty about the quantity and quality of work produced at home had hampered large-scale corporate acceptance [ 2 , 3 ]. However, these doubts were simply overturned by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced most knowledge-based employees to work online. Negative stigmas that were previously associated with WFH diminished drastically, at least temporarily [ 1 ]. In addition, prior technological complications were quickly overcome following a pandemic-driven surge in technological innovations, such as the advent of Teams and Zoom calls. This involuntary litmus test pushed WFH out of its infancy. However, what has gained limited attention is the physical climate of the home office in which work takes place. This study investigates the relationship between the home office environment, including available hardware (e.g. computer, chair, etc.) but also environmental conditions (e.g. air quality, temperature, etc.) and self-reported measures of work satisfaction, productivity and burnout tendency.

Work from home: Productivity and performance

The rising popularity of WFH has been well-reported: a recent report by buffer.com [ 4 ] among 2,300 employees showed that over 97% would like to continue to work from home, at least partially. Employees are, on average, willing to take a 5% pay cut for 2–3 days of work from home [ 5 ]. Employees working from home report being as productive as they were at the office before the pandemic [ 6 ]. These positive experiences have led to the prediction that, after the pandemic, 20% of all office work will be carried out from home. This continuation of work from home is expected to boost productivity by almost 5%, although largely unobservable by standard measures, as it stems mainly from a reduction in commuting [ 1 ].

Working from home has clear advantages, as well as disadvantages, for both work performance and human health and well-being. Multiple studies show positive effects on job satisfaction and turnover intent [ 7 – 9 ]. Bloom et al. [ 10 ] report that work from home leads to less commuting and fewer distractions. In addition, exhaustion leading to burnout is negatively related to work from home [ 11 ]. Perceived autonomy seems to be one of the main drivers of these positive effects: the degree to which employees can choose a location and time to work, independently of their supervisors, both predict the intensity of working from home, as well as job performance, mental burnout, and job dedication, even during the pandemic [ 10 – 13 ].

More recently, Bloom et al. [ 14 ] found only modest self-reported and realized productivity increases for WFH during COVID-19, whereas others identified productivity decreases for those who did not WFH before the pandemic, suggesting selection bias in previous studies [ 15 ]. Moreover, output assessments among ICT workers suggest productivity actually drops at home [ 16 ]. In the past, the positive relationship between WFH intensity and productivity has repeatedly been found to be non-linear. Golden & Vega [ 17 ] find that the relationship between WFH intensity and productivity is nonlinear, with optimal productivity at 16 WFH hours per week, beyond which job satisfaction and performance decline. A survey by State of the Work in 2022 found that, among 2,000 respondents, 45% think career growth will be at risk with increased WFH [ 18 ]. Unsurprisingly, it is coworkers’ relationships that suffer most from WFH, leading to professional isolation, which in turn has the potential to escalate into decreased performance and increased turnover intent [ 9 ]. Offline or online communication could mitigate these negative effects, but only partially [ 13 , 19 ]. For instance, Yang et al. [ 20 ] find that firm-wide remote work inevitably lowers communication quality, as less communication leads to a worsening of information sharing.

Beyond having implications for coworker relationships, WFH may also bring new interpersonal problems to light. Felstead & Henseke [ 21 ] suggest that homeworkers are burdened by the “social exchange theory”: they work harder, longer, and work unpaid hours in order to justify their freedom to work from a preferred location. Workers thus (over)compensate for the perception that they might work less when not being observed. The resulting work exhaustion may offset the positive effects of WFH on productivity, and may even lead to burnout symptoms [ 22 ]. In addition, research shows that people working from home find it hard to detach from work, disrupting their work-life balance [ 13 , 23 ]. Interestingly, the work-family conflict was previously considered to decrease with WFH, supposedly due to increased autonomy [ 9 ]. The current perception of WFH having a negative impact on work-life balance could therefore also be a pandemic-specific challenge.

Although academic findings on the implications of WFH vary, it is also important that beyond the average effects, substantial heterogeneity has been documented across jobs and individuals. To our knowledge, this heterogeneity has solely been explained by work and personal characteristics. For instance, the degree to which a job is suitable for WFH strongly predicts productivity [ 6 ]. A job previously executed behind a desk (e.g., financial services) is more easily shifted to a home office as compared to a manual, labor-orientated occupation. A heavy workload and the degree of monitoring by supervisors also negatively impact the work effectiveness from home [ 13 ]. Jobs that have high levels of interdependence with colleagues, or are outcome-oriented, suffer when WFH intensity increases [ 24 ]. Overall, limited support and inadequate feedback by the employer mitigate the positive effects of WFH [ 11 , 13 ].

At the individual level, self-discipline seems to be a key factor in explaining the effectiveness of WFH [ 13 ]. The degree to which an individual is able to ignore distractions that are not present at the office is important, especially without the same level of social control by co-workers. Additionally, women seem to suffer more from WFH as compared to men [ 6 ]. Women state their job to be less suitable for WFH in general and the presence of children affects WFH productivity for women more negatively as compared to men [ 25 – 27 ]. Finally, the pandemic showed that young workers seem to appreciate work from home more, and opted for WFH more often as compared to older workers [ 28 ]. These results, however, are not stable per se. Another study shows opposite results, where both women and older workers reported being more productive when WFH [ 29 ].

Work from home: The role of the physical environment

What has gained limited attention in explaining individual differences in WFH satisfaction and productivity is the physical climate in which daily work takes place. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to increased attention to the effect of air quality in indoor spaces on pathogen spreading. Specifically, ventilation has become the spearhead combating the airborne spreading of the COVID-19 virus at public and private indoor gatherings [ 30 , 31 ]. The attention to air quality reinforces an existing trend in which workplace quality is becoming more and more important. In the office, employers aim to facilitate a healthy and comfortable work environment for employees, with the goal of promoting productivity [ 32 – 34 ]. Suboptimal air and light quality, temperature, and noise have all been shown to negatively affect productivity and increase sick building symptoms, such as headaches, in the office [ 35 – 38 ]. Hence, ergonomics, temperature, and noise pollution are all considered by modern employers in order to minimize interference with comfort and wellbeing (and ultimately: productivity) in the office [ 39 ].

For the move to the home office, a trade-off is to be expected. On the one hand, suboptimal ergonomics at home are not as easily mitigated [ 40 ], and workplace professionalism or quality may suffer [ 41 ]. For instance, not having a dedicated office negatively influences productivity at home [ 29 ]. On the other hand, research suggests that controlling the thermostat at home might benefit WFH satisfaction [ 42 , 43 ]. Looking at indoor environmental quality more broadly, Tahmasebi et al. [ 44 ] show that people working at home during the pandemic close their windows more often as compared to before the lockdown. Combined with CO 2 data, they conclude that WFH often leads to worse indoor air quality. Generally, the professionalism or quality of the work environment might suffer, while people’s experienced control over these conditions at home might increase.

To address this knowledge gap, the current study examines the relationship between the home office and work-from-home success. We hypothesize that higher satisfaction with the physical environment in which WFH is being performed is associated with higher perceived productivity and lower burnout tendency. Moreover, in line with the recent research focused on air quality and performance in controlled settings, we hypothesize that improving the home office air quality through ventilation will be associated with higher office satisfaction and subsequent work-from-home outcomes.

Survey participants

We surveyed 1,002 Dutch individuals via the Flycatcher panel. Flycatcher is an academically-orientated research organization that established a high-quality panel representing the Dutch population (for example, see [ 45 – 47 ] for studies using the Flycatcher panel). Flycatcher randomly selected participants from their panel for an online survey, where participation was reimbursed. All Flycatcher participants received written informed consent, were allowed to drop out at any time, and included participants actively consented to participation (‘double-active-opt-in’). For the purpose of our research, we included just office workers (with a minimum age of 18 years old), who worked at least part-time from home at the time of the survey. People without work, previously without work, or working exclusively from the office were excluded from our sample. All data was collected unanimously and thus cannot be traced to an individual in the panel. The research setup was reviewed and approved by Maastricht University’s Ethical Review Committee Inner City Faculties (ERCIC_195_09_06_2020).

Empirical setting

The data collection took place in November 2020. At that time, the Netherlands had been in some form of lockdown for over 8 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The government strongly recommended WFH, with the exception of healthcare and other essential workers, and prevented employers from requiring employees to work in person. During this time, employers were not allowed to force their employees to come to the office, and social activities were severely limited. Respondents were asked to answer a selection of questions based on two moments in time: current (working from home) and one year ago (working from the office). Fig 1 provides an overview of the timing of data collection relative to the development of COVID-19 restrictions.

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Timeline of Dutch national COVID-19 policies in 2020, color-coded by restriction intensity. Dark red represents the most stringent restrictions, while light green represents the most liberal policies from a social perspective. Key events include lockdowns, partial lockdowns, and periods of alleviations and restrictions, with specific measures noted at each stage.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.g001

It is relevant to point out that we utilize the COVID-19 restrictions to eliminate selection problems hampering previous research. Before the pandemic-related restrictions, the success and satisfaction of WFH could potentially be explained by self-selection following the request to (voluntarily) move to work from home. Inherent intrinsic motivation, personal characteristics, and ability to adjust to the physical environment could all be omitted factors in that request. From a company perspective, those previously offered the possibility to WFH likely had job characteristics with at least a partial fit with remote work. Due to the pandemic, the susceptibility to selection bias is eliminated, leading to a clean research setting to evaluate the impact of WFH on satisfaction, productivity and burnout.

Material and variable construction

The survey included several previously validated modules. First, in order to measure productivity and work satisfaction, the survey included the Health and Work Questionnaire (see [ 48 – 50 ]. Following a cluster analysis, a revised version was developed, more specifically fitting the working-from-home situation (WFH-HWQ) [ 51 ]. This easily-administered questionnaire allows for the assessment of various factors of work-related health and productivity: productivity, productivity by others, peer relationships, nonwork satisfaction, and stress and irritability.

The survey included several other single-scale estimations of WFH productivity and satisfaction, such as self-reported productivity, satisfaction (with work in general, and with the WFH situation), and happiness. Additionally, participants stated their willingness to continue with WFH. These items were all measured on a 10-point Likert scale, ranging from absolutely not (1) to completely (10). In order to capture the negative spectrum of productivity, a short module measured burnout tendency, comparable to Bloom et al [ 8 ]. Adopted from the Maslach burnout inventory [ 52 ], 6 questions were scored on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from never (1) to always (7), capturing emotional exhaustion. In addition to these six items, we added a 7-point Likert scale for sick days as well as break time during office hours.

To assess the physical characteristics of the home office, we included two separate modules. The UC Berkeley Center for the Built Environment (CBE) module assesses the perceived indoor environmental quality [ 53 ]. This survey has been extensively used in peer-reviewed research [ 54 , 55 ] and measures satisfaction with all relevant indoor environmental factors, such as indoor temperature, air quality, lighting, and noise. We also included the physical office characteristics available in the CBE module. These factors focus on satisfaction with a variety of attributes in the (home) office, such as desk, chair, screen, hardware, and Wi-Fi satisfaction. All factors are measured on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from very dissatisfied (1) to very satisfied (7).

In addition to the CBE module on the environment of and hardware in the home office, we included a set of metrics to further assess indoor environmental quality and a variety of job-related measures. The former included layout of the home office (open versus closed), lighting (natural light versus no natural light), and ventilation (none, mechanical systems like HVAC or fans, or manual methods such as opening windows or doors). Additionally, participants were asked to estimate the surface of their home office (length and width in meters), and how often they ventilated their home office (as a percentage of time spent in the home office). Job-related characteristics included the ability of the respondent to perform their work from home (1–10 scale), the company size (1–5, 5–15, 15–50, 50+ employees), length of the workweek in hours, and job category (e.g., governmental, non-governmental, self-employed, or on-call).

Finally, demographic information included age, gender, income, family size, household situation, and housing characteristics. The household situation could support or hamper productivity as compared to the office situation. The house that respondents reside in could interfere with the perceived quality of WFH office characteristics. We therefore match respondent data, based on 4-digit postcode, to data on average urbanicity (‘stedelijkheid’; STED), address-density (‘omgevingsadressendichtheid’; OAD), and house value (‘waarde van onroerende zaken’; WOZ).

Empirical model

Linear regression models..

Model 2 shows the combined model including both the effect of home office hardware and home office indoor environment on our dependent variable y i .

This model also adds physical characteristics of the home office as controls ( OC i ), including lighting, means of ventilation, and the room plan. In the Supporting information, an additional model is shown, in which we match our participants at postcode level to average house characteristics. Running model 2 with and without home office controls, we estimate four models in total for both productivity and burnout tendency.

For all models, we standardized continuous variables, since they are originally measured on different Likert scales, to simplify the interpretation of the coefficients (coefficients are standardized unless specifically mentioned otherwise). As a result, the coefficients are z-scores and must be interpreted such that each coefficient indicates the change in the dependent variable for each standard deviation increase of the independent variable. Upon inspection, S2 Table shows that both desk and chair, as well as screen and the hardware factor, have a correlation ( r ) exceeding 0.70. Since correlations between these variables are not surprising, they can be specified as a combined variable. Thus, for any further analysis, the scores on these two pairs are combined and averaged per participant.

Structural equation model.

Following the main analysis, we implement a mediation analysis, using structural equation modelling (While our study employs a cross-sectional design, which limits the ability to establish causality compared to a cross-lagged design, extensive research from controlled experimental settings supports the relationship between ventilation and air quality and their effects on satisfaction, well-being, and performance. Nevertheless, we remain cautious and consider our assessment an analysis of direct and indirect associations. For more on this, see the Limitations section). This analysis of direct and indirect associations assesses the impact of the physical environment on productivity, mediated by hardware and indoor environment satisfaction factors. For the analysis, we construct two latent variables, ‘Office Hardware’ and ‘Office Indoor Environment’ which each consists of all individual hardware and indoor environment satisfaction variables (see S1 Fig for the loadings per latent variable). The factors are loaded by the marker variable identification approach. By doing so, the estimators of the latent variables on the dependent variable are fixed on the original 7-point satisfaction. In other words, the estimators indicate the effect per point estimate increase on a 7-point scale identical to the scales of the underlying variables (Following model specification analysis, we find strong covariance between the latent variables ‘Office Hardware’ and ‘Office Indoor Environment’, and indicator items desk and chair as well as screen and hardware. Since the correlations between these variables are intuitively not surprising, they can be specified in a saturated model. This saturated model, containing additional parameters estimating those correlations, indeed fits the data better than the restricted model with these correlations fixed to zero (chi-squared difference = 568, DF difference = 3; p < .000; note that we do not combine the pairs desk & chair and screen & hardware pre-analysis in contrast to the multivariate regression, but enter them individually whilst declaring covariance in the SEM model. Doing so increases the Cronbach alpha of both models with 0.05 and improves the overall model fit).

Descriptive findings

Demographics..

The survey was completed by 1,002 participants of which 58.1% are male, with mean age of 43.89 (SD = 12,54). All participants had work that was at least partially executed from home, with 57.9% of the respondents exclusively working from home. Table 1 shows further demographic characteristics. 54.6% of our sample completed higher education (as compared to just over 40% for the Netherlands more broadly in 2019 [ 56 ]) and 53.6% earn more than the median income in the Netherlands. These metrics support the notion that cognitively demanding (desk) jobs are more likely to be suitable to be performed from home [ 6 ]. Considering the home office, we find that they are relatively spacious (M = 25.1 m 2 , SD = 17.4) and predominantly illuminated by natural light (82.6%). Note that we use the estimated length and width of the office (in meters) to calculate the total surface in m 2 . Extreme values (potential mistakes) for either metric ultimately led to unrealistic outliers. As a result, we truncated the office surface from 2 to 100 m 2 (46 data points are excluded).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.t001

Home versus work: Performance differences.

Table 2 shows the general scoring on the main variables of interest, comparing the home office situation with the office by applying nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank tests on paired samples’ median differences. For example, the average WFH-HWQ factor productivity score at home is 6.84 out of 10 (SD = 1.28 with a maximum of 9.90). Compared to the office, the WFH-HWQ factor productivity scores higher at work ( p < .001), whereas self-reported productivity does not differ ( p >.06). The overall trend for the other WFH-HWQ factors (excluding Stress) shows a higher score for the office. The single-question estimations of productivity and satisfaction show a slightly higher, yet similar, trend. Since S1 Table shows that the WFH-HWQ factor productivity estimator is strongly correlated with its single-question counterpart ( r = .73, p < .0001), we solely refer to the WFH-HWQ productivity factor when we discuss productivity scores.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.t002

The average burnout score suggests that most of the respondents show limited signs of burnout while in the home office (on a 7-point scale; M = 2,87, SD = 1,25). This score does not deviate much from similar reports of a larger Dutch sample, which uses the same measurement [ 57 ]. Yet, relative to working from home, the office performs better: at home, the burnout tendency is significantly higher compared to the office ( p < .01).

Home versus work: Physical differences.

Fig 2 shows the distribution plots of both the office indoor environmental scores (A-D) and office hardware (E-I) scores. WFH increases the satisfaction with all office indoor environmental factors: Temperature (A), Air Quality (B), Lighting (C), and Noise (D) all score higher as compared to the work environment (mean scores range between 5.37 and 5.13 for the home office, compared to 5.07 and 4.59 for the office; on a 7-point Likert scale). For office hardware, we observe the opposite trend: overall office hardware satisfaction is higher in the office. The satisfaction for the desk (E), chair (F), screen (G), hardware (H), and Wi-Fi (I) range between 5.23 and 4.41 at home, whereas the office hardware satisfaction levels range between 5.52 and 5.37. Table 2 shows that all differences are statistically significant, using the non-parametric Wilcoxon rank sum test and Bonferroni multiple comparison corrections. These observations support the notion that at home, optimizing ergonomics (e.g office hardware factors) remains challenging [ 40 ] while increased individual control over office indoor environment is preferred [ 42 ].

Comparison of satisfaction levels between home and the office environments across various factors. Panels A-D show indoor environment satisfaction ratings for (A) Temperature, (B) Air Quality, (C) Lighting, and (D) Noise, whereas Panels E-I show hardware satisfaction ratings for (E) Desk, (F) Chair, (G) Screen, (H) Hardware, and (I) Wi-Fi. Each plot includes boxplots and data distributions, with orange representing home office and blue representing traditional office settings.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.g002

It is important to confirm that respondents are considering and rating their home office as distinctly different from their office. We correlate each variable’s score at home and at the office. As shown in S2 Table , scores correlate moderately with different variables within the same environment (home office or regular office), but correlations are much lower between the same variables in different environments. For instance, the correlation between temperature and noise at home is r = 0.41, which is considered a moderately strong correlation. Comparatively, the correlation between the temperature at the office and the home office is negligible ( r = 0.06).

Regression results

Explaining productivity and burnout in the home office..

Table 3 shows the estimated standardized coefficients and standard errors of the home office hardware and home office indoor environment variables in explaining productivity. Models 1–4 show that all office hardware variables at home are positively associated with productivity, such that increased satisfaction with each office hardware variable is associated with an increase in productivity when WFH (coefficients ranging from 0.18 to 0.15; SD = .03 to .05). For example, a 1.32 increase of Wi-Fi satisfaction on a 0–7 satisfaction scale translates to a 0.23 increase on a 0–10 productivity scale. This effect is relatively strong, comparable to the effect of, for example, sometimes having children at home during working hours to having no children at home (see S3 Table ). The home office indoor environment variables show a similar pattern: without exception, all variables are associated with increased productivity (coefficients ranging from 0.21 to 0.08; SD = .04). Combining both home office hardware and indoor environment variables in model 3 decreases the size of the coefficients for some variables in the productivity model. Adding additional controls in model 4 hardly affects the model: all office hardware variables remain relevant predictors of productivity, as well as temperature and noise satisfaction (indoor environment).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.t003

Table 3 , models 5–8, show the coefficients for the same home office hardware and home office indoor environment satisfaction on burnout tendency. For the burnout models, the association is negative, meaning that an increase in satisfaction on either variable’s satisfaction is associated with a decrease in the individual level of feeling burnout. The most robust predictors of burnout tendency are desk, chair and Wi-Fi satisfaction (home office hardware), as well as air and noise satisfaction (home office indoor environment).

Comparing both tables shows that, on average, office hardware and indoor environment coefficients and significance levels are generally higher in the productivity models. For example, noise satisfaction is meaningful for both productivity as well as burnout tendency, yet the coefficient is about 50% higher for productivity in all models (0.21 to 0.16 versus -0.13 to -0.09, for productivity and burnout, respectively).

Individual heterogeneity.

Factors other than hardware and indoor environment, for example, household characteristics, may also affect productivity and burnout Tendency. S3 and S4 Tables report the full specifications of Model 3. The results show that the degree to which work can be performed from home does not add predictive value to our model. Women tend to report higher levels of productivity ( δ = 0.15, SD = .07). Not living alone, i.e., having a larger household, decreases burnout score and increases productivity ( δ = -0.10, SD = .04; δ = 0.11, SD = .04, respectively). Having a partner who is not (or only sometimes) home during office hours is associated with increased productivity ( δ = 0.14–0.15, SD = .08) compared to the baseline of having no partner at all. In that sense, having a partner seems good for productivity, if they are not constantly present at home during working hours. For children, a predictable, strong, and linear relationship emerges: burnout tendency increases and productivity decreases when children spend more time at home during working hours. Interestingly, having a dog increases the burnout score significantly ( δ = 0.17, SD = .08).

Finally, previous research indicated that during the pandemic, young employees seemed to appreciate WFH more, and opted for the home office more often as compared to older employees [ 28 ]. Contrasting, we find that the difference between older and younger respondents is negative: the difference between 20-years old versus to 40-years old is an increase in the WFH productivity score of about 0.25 (on a scale from 1–10). In terms of economic significance, this effect is twice as strong as the gender effect on productivity. In addition, we document that older respondents report a stronger willingness to continue to WFH (0.01 standard deviation increase per year of age, SD = .003; see S5 Table ). Together, our results reflect that older workers not only report to be more productive at home and at the office than younger workers, but also seem to have an overall higher willingness to continue to WFH.

Mediation analysis.

We extend our analysis by exploring whether behavior at home (as it relates to using the home office) is associated with satisfaction with hardware and indoor environment. Although office characteristics are fixed or dependent on capital expenditures, the indoor environment can to a large extent be manipulated by human actions. Specifically, we measure the behavior of respondents working from home through active ventilation, both at the extensive and intensive margin.

We implement a mediation analysis through structural equation modelling in order to understand how the home office environment is associated with productivity. Our model specifications show that the ‘Office Hardware’ and ‘Office Indoor Environment’ item loadings are meaningful per latent factor. Further reliability calculations confirm the factor’s consistency, with both factors showing a Cronbach alfa above 0.8 (a = 0.80 and a = 0.85, for ‘Office Hardware’ and ‘Office Indoor Environment’, respectively). Additional model fit tests confirm that our saturated model fits the data well (CFI/TLI > .95, RMSEA close to .05, and SRMR < .05).

First, the latent variables ‘Office Hardware’ and ‘Office Indoor Environment’ have a strong and distinct direct association with WFH productivity, as can be seen in Fig 3 . For both factors, a standard deviation increase is associated with around a 0.3 standard deviation increase in productivity. Second, the percentage of time that the home office is ventilated is significantly associated with both increased hardware and indoor environment satisfaction. Each standard deviation increase in ventilation of the office increases satisfaction with 0.29 and 0.27 points, respectively. Third, ventilation no longer shows a direct association with productivity, which is not captured by its relation to hardware or indoor environment satisfaction (p = 0.88). Hence, the association of ventilation with productivity is fully mediated by satisfaction with hardware or the indoor environment. Both indirect unstandardized parameters via the latent variables are estimated at 0.002, with a total estimated effect of ventilation on productivity of 0.004. Thus, moving from 0% to 100% ventilation of the office is associated with a productivity increase of 0.4 on the 10-point scale through higher hardware or indoor environment satisfaction. Considering that the average productivity score is 6,11 (SD = 1,06), the magnitude of this association is not trivial. This effect equates to 8.18% of the mean and 47% of the standard deviation of the productivity variation in our sample.

Structural equation model depicting the relationships between ventilation, office hardware, office indoor environment, and productivity. Paths are labelled with standardized regression coefficients. Solid lines indicate significant relationships, while the dashed line indicates a non-significant relationship. All coefficients of solid lines are significant at ***p < 0.001.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.g003

Replacing productivity with burnout tendency or willingness to continue WFH in the model shows the same mediation association. Both models, shown in Fig 4 , are well-fitted (both show CFI/TLI > .95, RMSEA close to .05, and SRMR < .05), and for both models, the association runs fully through the latent variables. The total estimated effect of ventilation on burnout tendency is -0.004, with comparable mediation through satisfaction with home office hardware and environment. Moving from 0% to 100% ventilation of the home office is associated with a burnout tendency decrease of 0.4 on the 7-point scale. For the willingness to continue with WFH, the significance and strength of association are stronger for hardware compared as compared to the indoor environment (a = 0.003, p = 0.016; a = 0.005, p < .000, respectively). Moving from 0% to 100% ventilation of the office is associated with an increased willingness to continue WFH of 1.2 on the 10-point scale.

Structural equation model depicting the relationships between ventilation, office hardware, office indoor environment, and willingness to continue with WFH (top) or Burnout propensity (bottom). Paths are labelled with standardized regression coefficients. Solid lines indicate significant relationships, while the dashed line indicates a non-significant relationship. Solid lines coefficients are significant at *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, and ***p < 0.001.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.g004

Discussion and conclusion

The success of WFH, and the likelihood of its continuation after the pandemic, is dependent on sustained employee satisfaction with and employee productivity in the home office environment. But satisfaction and productivity, in turn, may also be influenced by the physical characteristics of the home office. We use survey data to study the effect of home office satisfaction and environment-improving behavior on productivity, burnout, and willingness to continue with WFH.

Comparing WFH with working from the office first shows that the self-reported productivity is lower at home compared to working at the office. This is contrasting earlier findings based on self-reported productivity, but consistent with multiple non-self-reported outcome analysis [ 6 , 15 , 16 ]. When looking at the physical characteristics of the office, we find that the indoor environmental satisfaction appears higher at home, whereas physical hardware satisfaction such as desks and chairs are preferred at the office. This implies that optimizing ergonomics at home remains challenging [ 40 ] while individually being in control of the indoor environment at home is preferred [ 42 ]. Overall, we find a relatively low score for the willingness to continue WFH, in contradiction to many recent reports, which supports a deeper investigation into factors facilitating successful WFH [ 4 , 58 ].

The association between the both home office hardware as well as indoor environment satisfaction and productivity is profound. Higher satisfaction in both these domains is associated with higher WFH productivity and lower burnout tendency. The majority of all indoor environment and hardware factors included in this paper (with the exception of air quality) are associated with increased productivity and decreased burnout tendency. We find heterogeneity in the reported effects–women and larger households seem to be more productive at home, while having children at home decreases productivity and increases burnout scores. Having a partner increases productivity, but only when they are not around during office hours. Finally, we find that older workers report being more productive, having lower burnout scores, and stating to be more willing to continue to WFH compared to younger workers, contrasting existing evidence [ 28 , 29 ].

To show the influence that real behavior could have on WFH success, we investigate the association of ventilation with productivity. By means of a mediation analysis, we confirm that the amount of time that the home office is ventilated is not only directly associated with increased satisfaction but also indirectly with increased productivity. Practically, we find that changing from not ventilating to ventilating the home office all the time (moving from 0% to 100%) is indirectly associated with 0.5 points on the 10-point scale increased productivity. The magnitude of this estimate on productivity is comparable to moving from no children at home to always having children at home during working hours (0.7-point decrease of productivity). In addition, moving from 0% to 100% ventilating time is associated with 0.4 points on a 7-point scale decreased burnout tendency, and 1.2 points on a 10-point scale increased willingness to continue with WFH. Hence, we find that ventilating the home office is a crucial underlying factor predicting overall satisfaction and is indirectly associated with increased productivity, increased willingness to WFH, and decreased burnout tendency.

Implications

The main contribution of this paper is to show that the physical characteristics of the home office, including the indoor climate, is associated with employee productivity and satisfaction when WFH. Specifically, we not only connect the outcomes of WFH to self-reported satisfaction, but also to behavior that actively influences the indoor environmental quality. The move from the office to the home office needs to be combined with careful design and investment in the quality of the office and its indoor climate. Failure to do so is not only likely to be associated with decreased productivity, but also decreased willingness to work from home, and increased burnout tendency. The physical climate is a determining factor in successful work from home prolongation. As such, this paper reaffirms that the effect of a healthy indoor climate affects productivity, related to previous research that shows significant health effects of indoor climate [ 33 , 34 , 59 , 60 ].

Additionally, our results also suggest that it is crucial to objectively measure the quality of the physical environment, as merely collecting self-reported satisfaction scores might paint an incomplete or even incorrect picture. This is not only shown by the fact that satisfaction scores are influenced by improved ventilation, but also by the fact that self-reported air quality satisfaction, the closest subjective measure related to ventilation, is not associated with productivity. Thus, solely based on self-report analysis, ventilation would have been an unlikely factor considered to improve the success of WFH. Since evaluations of working generally, as well as evaluations of indoor air quality specifically, are heavily reliant on self-reported scores, this conclusion is not trivial.

Limitations

Our results have some limitations. Self-reported data may introduce common method variance, potentially affecting the relationships between predicting, mediating, and outcome variables [ 61 ]. We counter these effects by deemphasizing the compartmentalization of work conditions and characteristics with productivity (outcome) measures. Although we do not measure objective productivity, we at least partially alleviate this concern by using an extensively validated questionnaire.

Second, practical constraints limited our ability to implement a cross-lagged design with multiple measurement points which is considered the normative approach for establishing temporal precedence and causality in mediation analysis [ 62 , 63 ]. Our study employed a cross-sectional design, which has precedent in the literature [ 64 , 65 ], and can still provide valuable insights. We justify our approach based on the model fit and both theoretical as well as literature support of the causal role of air quality improvement on satisfaction and performance [ 36 , 41 , 66 ]. However, we acknowledge that this approach does not allow for the determination of causality with the same rigor as a longitudinal design. Future research should aim to utilize cross-lagged designs to further validate our findings and establish clearer causal relationships.

Third, data on in-office work comes from recall data which may be biased [ 67 ] or influenced by the broader undesirability of pandemic-era work [ 68 , 69 ]. We report on differences between the situation during and before COVID-19 (at the office). To do so, we did not ask our participants at that time, but rather asked them to recollect from memory. Unfortunately, recollection itself is less accurate than asking in the current situation [ 67 , 69 ]. The current situation could even influence the recollected score, as it serves as a reference point [ 51 , 68 ]. The mere fact that WFH is mandatory could put the productivity at work (as well as life in general) in a more generous daylight that it truly was. Taken together, our data quality would have improved if we had foreseen the pandemic, and pretested our subject before the outbreak. Alas.

Finally, the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic itself could be reflected in our subjective scores, making the observed behaviors, attitudes, and outcomes different from remote work under more typical conditions (mood-as-information theory [ 70 ]. While our research provides valuable insights into the pandemic WFH experience, caution should be exercised when generalizing these findings to other contexts or periods.

In conclusion, we find strong evidence that a favorable home office is associated with multiple WFH success outcomes. Moreover, air-quality-improving behavior is associated with home office satisfaction improvements. The move from the work office to the home office needs to be combined with intentional design and investment in the quality of the office and its climate. Failure to do so will likely have adverse ramifications for the future of WFH [ 5 , 71 , 72 ].

Supporting information

S1 table. correlation table: productivity and stress..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.s001

S2 Table. Correlation table: Hardware and indoor environment.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.s002

S3 Table. Regression results: Full specification (Productivity).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.s003

S4 Table. Regression results: Full specification (Burnout tendency).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.s004

S5 Table. Regression results: Full specification (Willingness to continue WFH).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.s005

S1 Fig. Structural equation model latent variables loading and covariance.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0306475.s006

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Working from home vs working from office in terms of job performance during the COVID‐19 pandemic crisis: evidence from China

Jingjing qu.

1 Shanghai AI Lab, China

2 School of Business and Administration, Northeastern University, Shenyang China

Despite being a worldwide disaster, the COVID‐19 pandemic has also provided an opportunity for renewed discussion about the way we work. By contextualizing in the early periods of China's ending of lockdown policy on COVID‐19, this paper offers evidence to respond to an essential discussion in the field of working from home (WFH): In terms of job performance, can WFH replace working from the office (WFO)? The present study compares job performance in terms of quality and productivity between WFH and WFO from 861 Chinese respondents using entropy balance matching, a quasi‐experimental methodology. Results reveal that WFH enhances job performance in terms of job quality but lowers it in terms of job productivity. In addition, the present study aims to capture and empirically measure the variations in fundamental job characteristics in terms of job control and job demand between WFH and WFO by applying the job demand control support model. More specifically, we find that job control items, such as ‘talking right’ and ‘work rate’, and job demand items, such as ‘a long time of intense concentration’ and ‘hecticness of the job’, are vital factors that contribute to how these differences exert influence on employees' performance in the context of the pandemic.

• WFH is positively related to job quality but negatively related to job productivity.
• WFH affects job performance via job demand and job control.
• Social support contributes to job productivity when working from home.

Introduction

The outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic boosted an unprecedentedly massive and rapid shift of people's work routines (Bartram and Cooke  2022 ; Yan et al.  2021 ). To a large extent, millions of employees around the world have been forced to resort to remote work (Bouziri et al.  2020 ; Hurley and Popescu  2021 ; Rogers  2021 ; Woods and Miklencicova  2021 ), which leads to the most significant social experiment of ‘working from home (WFH)’ emerging in human history (Zhang, Yu and Marin  2021 ). According to a report in LinkedIn, as Asia‐Pacific responded to the crisis, organizations in China, Australia, India and Singapore, quickly adapted to support a remote workforce. WFH differs considerably from working from office (WFO) in terms of job attributes and work environment. WFO is characterized by a relatively high degree of formalization and a fixed working routine, including place, time, and task arrangements (Palumbo  2020 ). Information and communications technology (ICT) was widely adopted with regard to work and organizational management (Balica  2019 ; Kassick  2019 ; Nemțeanu, Dabija and Stanca  2021 ; Olsen  2019 ). WFH is characterized by the freedom from constraints associated with working in a formal and fixed workplace due to progress in ICT (Nakrošienė, Bučiūnienė and Goštautaitė  2019 ).

Long before the COVID‐19 pandemic, WFH had already been suggested as a modern human resource policy for organizations, and it has resulted in a definite trend firmly entrenched in society (Illegems, Verbeke and S’Jegers  2001 ; Stanek and Mokhtarian  1998 ). It enables employees to be more productive by avoiding long commutes, skirting office politics, having fewer office distractions, and giving more chance to develop a better work–life balance (Hopkins and McKay  2019 ; Nakrošienė, Bučiūnienė and Goštautaitė  2019 ). Simultaneously, a stream of scholars have argued that WFH is not an alternative working routine and may even lead to poor employee performance (Fonner and Roloff  2010 ). Thus, a key question in the field has been raised: Can WFH replace WFO? Around this question, the debate has become fierce alongside the development of ICT and globalization. Nevertheless, past research has not yet reached a consensus, which constitutes a significant gap in the current knowledge.

Thus, drawing on the above research gaps, the present research is designed as a comparison study contextualized in the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic. On the basis of the job demand–control–support (JDCS) model, a well‐documented theory that elucidates the effects of fundamental job characteristics (Johnson and Hall  1988 ), and combined with entropy balance matching (Watson and Elliot  2016 ), the present study investigates the difference between WFH group and other working cohorts in terms of job characteristics and its effects on job performance. More specifically, based on the JDCS model, we propose the mediation effect of job demand and job control and the moderation effect of employers' anti‐epidemic policy as the social support on the relationship between job demand/job control and employee job performance.

The contributions of this study are as follows. First, we shed new light on the mixed effects of WFH on job performance. We find that WFH can increase job quality but reduce job productivity. Second, underpinned by the JDCS framework, the present paper empirically tests the differences of job characteristics between WFH and other working routines regarding job demand, job control and social supports, and its direct and indirect effects on employees' satisfaction on performance. In this case, the present paper extends the JDCS model from the field of classical work routine to understand WFH. Furthermore, we employ the entropy balancing method to alleviate the methodological concerns with selection bias in the previous literature. Doing so allows for examining the causal effect of WFH on job characteristics and job performance to support the random hypothesis in comparison quasi‐experiment research.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The next section presents the literature review, followed by a discussion of the hypothesis development. Further sections present the methods and results, respectively. The final section presents a discussion and implications, followed by future scope and conclusion.

Literature review

WFH is a working arrangement in which employees fulfill the essential responsibilities that their job entails while remaining at home using ICT (International Labor Organization  2020 , 5). Although a slight difference exists among terms such as WFH, teleworking, telecommuting and remote working, these concepts are largely interchangeable. WFH is considered home‐based teleworking, because teleworking may include various locations away from the primary worksite or the employers' premises (such as mobile working). Telecommuting refers to substituting telecommunications for commuter travel. Some differences exist between the terms teleworking and telecommuting, mainly because teleworking is broader and may not always be a substitute for commuting, but they are relatively minor. The basic difference between telework and remote work is that a teleworker uses personal electronic devices in addition to working physically remotely from a place other than an office or company premises, whereas remote work does not require visits to the main workplace or the use of electronic personal devices; and compared with WFH, remote work has the flexibility to work anywhere rather than being limited to the home. In addition, WFH may imply a long‐term contract, and individuals may have an emotional relationship with the organization; however, in remote work, this is not easy to achieve (Tønnessena, Dhira and Flåten  2021 ).

This paper aims to illustrate whether WFH can replace the classical working routine. A comparison study between WFH and other working routines seems to be a promising way to solve this question. However, we should consider two significant challenges of conducting a comparison study on WFH and other working routines. First, a ubiquitous theoretical framework is critical for providing solid support to capture fundamental job characteristics of diverse working routines. Only by doing so can we compare the difference between WFH and the other cohorts at the datum line. Second, we need to conquer the self‐selection bias. Most employees considering the possibility of WFH as the alternative way are familiar with applying ICT applications (e.g. email and online meeting apps) and necessary equipment (e.g. laptop and smartphone). In addition, employees' meta‐cognitive knowledge – their understanding of their capacity to cope with various situations under WFH ways (e.g. interruption caused by children and communication with line manager) – may play a similar self‐selective role. On the basis of these self‐selective factors, individuals evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of WFH and make decisions (Williams, McDonald and Cathcart  2017 ). Not controlling for this nonrandom self‐selection implies that observed job performance may reflect individuals' superior knowledge, capacity, or equipment rather than the actual effect of WFH. However, it is difficult to isolate the effects of job characteristics of WFH and the influence of individual heterogeneity explicitly associated with WFH. Thus, this paper adopts the JDCS model to investigate the effect of WFH on employees' job performance.

In the last 20 years, inconsistent findings have been found on the effect of WFH on employees' performance, especially in terms of work efficiency, turnover intention, goal completion, work motivation and job satisfaction (Gajendran and Harrison 2007 ; Golden  2006 ). On the one hand, some studies have found that WFH leads to high job performance (Bloom et al.  2015 ; Campo, Avolio and Carlier  2021 ; Choukir et al.  2022 ; Ipsen et al.  2021 ; Liu, Wan and Fan  2021 ). On the other hand, studies have found that WFH may lead to employees' lack of supervision, miscommunication, and less organizational commitment (Madell  2021 ). These disadvantages can create uncertainty that affects job satisfaction and consequently lead to lowering performance among employees, as gauged by companies' key performance indicators (Pepitone  2013 ). Some scholars have argued that WFH is negatively related to employees' job performance (Mustajab et al.  2020 ; Van Der Lippe and Lippényi  2020 ). Raišienė et al. ( 2020 ) suggested an investigation of the influence of WFH on job performance based on a contingency view, which depends on employees' gender, age, education, work experience, and telework experience. Table  1 summarizes the related literature.

Summary of related literature

Hypothesis development

Which one is better influence of wfh on job performance.

The JDCS model provides a sound theoretical basis for the influence of WFH on job performance. It originated from the job demand–control (JDC) model, which explains how job characteristics alter employees' stress, performance and satisfaction (Karasek and Theorell  1990 ). The JDC model posits two fundamental characteristics of an occupation: job demand and job control. Job demand is defined initially as ‘physical consumptions and psychological tensions involved in accomplishing the workload’, which negatively relate to workplace well‐being and relevant performance (Karasek and Theorell  1990 , 291). Job control (originally decision latitude) is the extent to which an employee has the authority to decide and utilize skills concerning the job and exert a positive effect on workplace outcomes. The JDCS model compounds the prominence of environmental factors on the overall well‐being within the workplace (Baka  2020 ). Thus, social support was integrated into the JDC model (named JDCS model) as a further fundamental characteristic of the work environment, implicating its synergistic effect on reducing stress and promoting well‐being in the working environment (Johnson and Hall  1988 ).

Given the inconsistent findings on the relationship between WFH and job performance, we further investigate the effect of WFH on job performance based on the JDCS model. The COVID‐19 pandemic has made WFH a sudden reality, as the ILO defined WFH in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic as a temporary and alternative home‐based teleworking arrangement (ILO  2020 ). Waizenegger et al. ( 2020 ) articulated the differences between remote e‐working before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic.

Given the two mechanisms of JDCS, we further investigate the effect of WFC on job performance separately from the perspective of job demand and job control. On the one hand, WFH may lead to high job control, which benefits job performance, because not all job functions and tasks can be done outside the employers' premises or the specified workplace (Waizenegger et al.  2020 ). WFH is not practical or feasible or cannot be deployed quickly in some jobs and tasks (Williams, McDonald and Cathcart  2017 ). Accordingly, employees can arrange their time and energy with adequate job autonomy when they are WFH. They can deal with tasks under the best working status and promote work productivity and quality. On the other hand, WFH may lead to high job demand, which decreases job performance. Job demands are typically operationalized in terms of quantitative aspects, such as workload and time pressure (Hopkins and McKay  2019 ; Karasek and Theorell  1990 ). The boundary between working and leisure times becomes ambiguous when employees are WFH. Employees are usually pushed to work for longer hours and face high job demand, which is harmful to work productivity and quality. Therefore, assessing the influence of WFH on employees' feeling of their work completion is vaguer and more complicated compared with WFO, which leads us to propose our first hypothesis as a set of two alternatives:

Employees who are WFH are more satisfied with their job performance (i.e. job quality and job productivity).

Employees who are WFH are less satisfied with their job performance (i.e. job quality and job productivity).

Mediating role of job demand between WFH and job performance

On the basis of the JDCS model (Karasek and Theorell  1990 ), we tend to examine the differences of job fundamental characteristics and the moderating effect of social support on job performance between WFH and other working routines. WFH may increase job demand due to its possibility of pushing individuals to work for longer hours and increase the intensity of individuals. It will lead to a high investment of personal resources and bring adverse effects afterward.

First, WFH acquires more personal energy and time to invest in dealing with ‘communication via technology’, and employees may need to learn and equip with knowledge accordingly, including terms of using WFH tools and methods of collaboration (Yang et al. 2021 ). Moreover, employees may face the risks of technology fatigue or crash, which may result in negative psychological effects of misinformation and putting off work accomplishments (Khan  2021 ). Second, when employees need to continue to work beyond the regular working hours, they will inevitably face continuous additional work pressure, which makes them unable to relax and recover physically and mentally. Accordingly, more personal time and resources are demanded to invest in the job (Xie et al.  2018 ). Ayyagari, Grover and Purvis ( 2011 ) believed that WFH forms in such a convenient manner where employees may be required to stay on call for quarantine for a long time. WFH may influence employees' everyday life and lead to a perception of higher expectations for their working hours and intensity by their company and work loading. Ter Hoeven, van Zoonen and Fonner ( 2016 ) also verified this and reported that WFH may cost extra job demands from employees, including financial assets, energy, time and psychological capital. If those demands are too high, they may further make a series of workplace deviation behaviors, such as time‐encroached behaviors, to alleviate their loss of personal resources (Vayre  2021 ), consequently reducing their job performance.

The relationship between WFH and job performance is mediated by job demand.

Mediating role of job control between WFH and job performance

We further reason that the relationship between WFH and job performance is mediated by job control. The most prominent advantage of WFH is regarded as flexibly anytime and anywhere, which can significantly enhance employees' sense of job control and autonomy (Richardson and Thompson  2012 ). Mazmanian, Orlikowski and Yates ( 2013 ) found that employees who complete work tasks through WFH would have increased perceived work control and work flexibility. WFH can also enhance job autonomy in respect of task arrangement, work manner and task order (Mazmanian, Orlikowski and Yates  2013 ). Studies have also verified that WFH will promote employees' benefits in the field of the family via a more flexible and adaptable arrangement (Dockery and Bawa  2018 ). As a result, it can balance their work and family duties concerning the different daily situations and perform well (Tønnessena, Dhira and Flåten  2021 ).

The relationship between WFH and job performance is mediated by job control.

Moderating role of employers' anti‐epidemic policy

Social support is characterized by helpful relations with supervisors and coworkers (Mayo et al.  2012 ). Previous evidence has argued that a lack of support from employers when applying WFH may lead to a series of problems and thus reduce job performance (Palumbo  2020 ). According to the JDCS model, social support often buffers the effects of job demands and job control on the work‐related outcomes of employees (Johnson and Hall  1988 ). We investigate the moderation effect of social support on the relationship between job demand/control and job performance.

First, WFH may lead to isolation among employees if they have fewer interactions with their coworkers, supervisors and managers. Second, employees may not get recognition and support when needed, which may lead to employees' dissatisfaction, as their social needs cannot be fulfilled by WFH (Marshall, Michaels and Mulki  2007 ). Another negative consequence is receiving less recognition for achievements because exhibiting their work achievements is more difficult when all communication is conducted electronically (Zhang 2016). The limitation exists because when employees are WFH, they usually submit their work when it is ready. However, their manager may not see the process involved in producing a deliverable; some employees may work overtime, but their work is only judged by the result, not by the difficulties they overcome. Thus, policies or strategies should be implemented to enhance employers' feeling of embeddedness, not only for the sake of job performance but also for their well‐being and sustainability of human resourcing of organizations.

Particularly, considering the context of the epidemic, support actions from employers aiming to be anti‐epidemic and protect employees will be essential to improve the positive consequences of WFH. Thus, the present paper takes employers' anti‐epidemic policy as prominent social support worthy of examining. Indeed, some Chinese companies coined proactive guidance and support for employees (Reeves et al.  2020 ). The support reportedly helped employees feel less stressed, experience more positive feelings toward their leader and their team, and created an atmosphere of trust and understanding that motivated them to apply themselves more fully to work (Xu and Thomas 2011 ). In this case, we suggest that a moderating effect of the employers' anti‐epidemic policy is significantly observed on the influence of WFH on job performance. Figure  1 shows the conceptual framework.

Social support moderates the relationship between job demand and job performance, such that the relationship is weaker when social support is high rather than low.

Social support moderates the relationship between job control and job performance, such that the relationship is stronger when social support is high rather than low.

The conceptual framework

Our sample was collected from China. It is the first region where the government applied a lockdown policy, which encouraged employers to organize their employees to WFH to mitigate the massive health crisis. Nevertheless, in March 2020, due to the sound control of COVID‐19 spread, after only a few months' lockdowns, Chinese citizens were able to return gradually to their normal work–life routine. As a result, some employees were WFH, and some of them returned to their normal work routine. Different from the previous research conducted in a limited number of industries or focusing on a particular occupation group, such a situation provides us a unique opportunity to design comparison research to understand early, initial reactions of a wide range of occupational groups and industries toward WFH and its social effect in the epidemic context.

Data were collected via an online survey, provided by a Chinese survey company called Wenjuanxing ( www.wjx.cn ), a platform providing functions equivalent to Amazon Mechanical Turk. Research on WFH confronts a widely noted difficulty in managing data face‐to‐face, especially during this particular epidemic term. Thus, we chose to issue and collect the questionnaire online.

We initially did a pilot survey on 1 March 2020, with 100 observations. Later, after adjustments to the questionnaire, we issued the formal study of 5 March 2020, a month after the earliest date for work resumption according to the Chinese government. Thus, some employees were returning to workplace (RTW), and some continued WFH after Chinese New Year. As mentioned before, this particular time allows us to do a comparison study that covers various types of occupation and organization to seek the differences between WFH and RTW when society is confronted with a significant public health emergency. After collecting data for two weeks, we gathered 1342 observations.

Furthermore, to alleviate the self‐selective bias caused by participants passively excluded from WFH due to lacking necessary conditions, we took the inclusion criteria that required the participants to be equipped with requirements of WFH, such as essential online tools and Internet access. We identified the qualified group by asking, ‘Do you think you have the qualified conditions to be working from home (e.g., possesses Internet access, laptop, smart phone, software, and apps)?’ Then, we selected those who answered yes. After cleansing invalid data, the final sample consisted of 861 individuals, among which 442 claimed that they were WFH, and 419 were RTW.

Participants

Our sample comprised participants who were portrayed as young and received a high‐level of education, who were aged around 31–35 on average. The participants were 44% male. The majority of the participants were qualified with undergraduate degree. Particularly, 9.98% of the participants were married without children, 58.65% were married with children, 30.89% were single without children, and 0.4% were single with children. Around half of the participants (50.41%) worked for private enterprises, 16.7% worked for state‐owned enterprises, 15.21% worked for foreign companies, and others worked in government or public institutions. The participants at management positions accounted for 41%. Those who had marketing duties accounted for 31%. Others had positions in R&D. The participants worked for 9.36 days on average after the Chinese New Year (also the deadline of the epidemic blockade), and 71% of them had experience of training or education while WFH. The participants were from 16 places in China, the largest portions were from Guangdong Province (13.43%), Shanghai (7.66%), Shandong (6.15%), and Jiangsu (6.15%).

Dependent variable

Job performance was measured by two items adopted from a structured measurement coined by Viswesvaran, Ones and Schmidt’s ( 1996 ) measurement of job performance (overall job performance, productivity, and quality). We applied the two dimensions of job performance, namely, ‘productivity’ and ‘quality’, which were examined by self‐evaluation questions: 1) In terms of productivity, how do you evaluate the quantity or volume of work produced today (e.g. number of transactions completed)? 2) In terms of quality, how do you feel about how well the job was done today (You can consider several aspects of the quality of tasks completed, including lack of errors, accuracy to specifications, thoroughness, and amount of wastage)? The answers were measured using a Likert scale, from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). As a key self‐evaluation measurement of job performance, Viswesvaran, Ones and Schmidt’s ( 1996 ) instrument has been widely applied by following scholars in the fields of organizational behavior, psychology, and human resource management (Judge et al.  2001 ; Lee, Berry and Gonzalez‐Mulé  2019 ; Murphy  2020 ).

Independent variable

WFH was used here to identify the work status of respondents, with 1 representing WFH, and 0 representing WFO.

Job demand and job control were measured following Gonzalez‐Mulé and Cockburn ( 2017 ) work, which is a well‐documented instrument widely applied in research and referred to as the JDC model.

Job demand was measured by eight questions (e.g. ‘To what extent do you agree that your job requires working very hard?’ ‘To what extent do you agree that your job requires working very fast?’). The answer was measured using a Likert scale, from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree; Cronbach's alpha = 0.83).

Job control was measured by seven questions (e.g. ‘To what extent do you agree that your job allows you to make a lot of decisions on your own?’ ‘To what extent do you agree that you have a lot to say about what happens on your job?’). The answer was measured using a Likert scale, from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree; Cronbach's alpha = 0.75).

Social support was measured by employees' satisfaction on employers' anti‐epidemic policy. The survey question was, ‘Overall, are you satisfied with your employers’ anti‐epidemic support (e.g. financial support, emotional support from line managers, anti‐epidemic knowledge guides, and clear guidelines of WFH)?’ The answer was a dummy one, 1 representing yes, and 0 indicating no.

Control variables

First, we controlled for effective communication as a key factor that affects the quality of job performance, given that the majority of the literature has argued that ineffective communication is one of the greatest challenges of interpersonal collaborations mediated by ICTs in WHF (Wang et al.  2021 ). We controlled a set of communication factors in terms of ‘accurately delivered job content’ and ‘fully expressed the information’, among others. The answers were designed as a Likert scale, from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree).

Furthermore, consistent with earlier studies, we controlled for difference of working hours, namely, the difference between daily working hours and today’s working hours, working experiences, normal daily working hours, daily number of colleagues they worked with, daily number of leaders they worked with, daily number of departments they worked with, daily commuting time, positions, age, gender, education, marital status, nature of employers, position levels, and days of starting work after the Chinese New Year. The definitions of variables are provided in Table  A1 .

Definition of variables

Analysis strategy

Our analysis consists of three steps. In Step 1, to test our hypothesis 1, we applied entropy balance and weighted mean difference Welch's t ‐test (mean after entropy balance matching) methods to compare the self‐evaluated job performance between WFH and WFO employees. Following the approach of recent papers on labor economics and health (Hetschko, Schöb and Wolf  2016 ; Kunze and Suppa  2017 ; Nikolova, 2019 ), our strategy includes 1) data preprocessing to form comparable groups of individuals as treatment and control group (treatment group: WFH employees; control group: RTW employees) by applying entropy balance, and 2) estimating the treatment effect after matching by Welch's t ‐test. We also reconfirmed the regression result (Hainmueller  2012 ).

In Step 2, we investigated the direct and mediating effects of job control and job demand on job performance (hypotheses 2 and 3). We applied the quasi‐Bayesian Monte Carlo method to test the mediating effect of job demand and job control, which is a technique to increase the robustness of the mediating test by employing a strategy of numerous repeated re‐sampling to build an empirical approximation of the sampling distribution and examine the indirect effects by constructing the confidence intervals (CIs; Imai, Keele and Tingley  2010 ). We used the package ‘Mediation’ for causal mediation analysis. In addition, to confirm the validity and reliability of mediating hypotheses results, we used structural equation modeling (SEM) as robustness check, with package ‘lavaan’ to assess the mediating effect of job control and job demand on the relationship between WFH and job performance.

In Step 3, to test the moderating effect of social support, we applied hierarchical regressions at the final step by following the classical approaches to seek the significance of interactions in a set of model tests.

All the analysis is conducted with software R.

Before testing the hypotheses, a benchmark test of a binary correlation matrix is presented in Table  2 . The overall coefficient is not high, and a variance inflation factor was performed at below 10, demonstrating low multicollinearity.

Variables correlation matrix

Influence of WFH on self‐reported job performance (hypotheses1a and 1b tests)

Before proceeding to test hypothesis 1 in Step 1, we first applied the entropy balance and weighted mean difference (mean after entropy balance matching) methods. The quality of entropy balance matching combined with a data description is summarized in Table  4 . Before matching, WFH employees worked for <2.7 h daily on average compared with their pre‐daily working hours. Employees who had returned to work worked <0.53 h on average than their current daily work. After matching, this difference was reduced. WFH employees are used to having less colleagues to work with (mean: WFH = 2.91, RTW = 3.18), are less likely to work at back office (mean: WFH = 0.10, RTW = 0.18), are younger (mean: WFH = 2.62, RTW = 2.77), are less likely to be married and have a child or children (mean: WFH = 0.52, RTW = 0.56), and are more likely to be single and without a child or children (mean: WFH = 0.36, RTW = 0.26). In addition, WFH employees indicated that they started working after Chinese New Year a day later than WFO employees (mean: WFH = 9.36, RTW = 11.09). In particular, WFH employees experienced better interpersonal communication than RTW employees (mean: WFH = 2.74, RTW = 2.67). In entropy balance matching, we matched all conditioning variables, and the bias of each matched variables was reduced to nearly 0, supporting good quality of entropy balance matching. Moreover, differences in mean and variance between the treatment and control groups were largely reduced after weighting (see in Table  A2 ).

Causal mediation analysis of job control and job demand

^ p  < 0.1; * p  < 0.05; ** p  < 0.01; *** p  < 0.001.

Descriptive statistics before treatment, selected covariate variables, before and after matching

Then, we verified hypothesis 1 by measuring the ATT under the balanced matching conditions in Table  3 . After matching, the results for hypothesis 1 are presented in Tables  5 and ​ and6. 6 . The results show that WFH employees are more satisfied with quality (mean: WFH = 4.56, RTW = 4.11, p  < 0.01). In addition, WFH employees feel less satisfied with productivity (mean: WFH = 3.86, RTW = 4.05, p  < 0.01). Hypotheses 1a and 1b were supported.

Treatment effect of WFH before and after entropy balance matching

* p  < 0.05; ** p  < 0.01; *** p  < 0.001.

Regressions on satisfaction with job performance (quality)

^ p  < 0.1; * p  < 0.05; ** p  < 0.01; *** p  < 0.001; Standard errors in parentheses.

Regressions on satisfaction with job performance (productivity)

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; Standard errors in parentheses.

Mediating role of job demand and job control (hypotheses 2 and 3 tests)

Changes in job demand and job control can be observed from Step 1 in Tables  5 and ​ and6. 6 . Under balanced matching conditions, WFH employees experience a significantly higher level of job control (ATT: WFH = 3.67, RTW = 3.58, p  < 0.05). More specifically, such change is noteworthy in the job control of ‘talking right’ (con2; ATT: WFH = 3.24, RTW = 3.06, p  < 0.05) and job control of ‘working rate’ (con5; ATT: WFH = 3.69, RTW = 3.16, p  < 0.001). In terms of job demand, WFH employees experience a significantly lower level than RTW employees (mean: WFH = 3.37, RTW = 3.46, p  < 0.001). The difference is obviously observed in terms of ‘long periods of intense concentration’ (dem3; ATT: WFH = 3.57, RTW = 3.73, p  < 0.05) and ‘hecticness of the job’ (dem4; ATT: WFH = 3.25, RTW = 3.48, p  < 0.01). These results imply that WFH may lead to changes in job control and job demand, which may intermediately affect job performance.

Therefore, in the second step, we tested the mediating effect by applying the quasi‐Bayesian Monte Carlo method in Table  4 . The results show that in terms of quality, the mediating effect of job control and job demand is confirmed as statistically significant (job control = 0.14, p  < 0.001; job demand = −0.02, p  < 0.01). The proportion of mediating effect on total effect is around 23.72% and 4.33%. We also tested the mediating effect of the important items of job control and job demand. We find that the job control on ‘working rate’ (con5; 0.12, p  < 0.10, prop. mediated = 21.05%), job demand on ‘long periods of intense concentration’ (dem3; −0.03, p  < 0.01, prop. mediated = 5.3%), and ‘hecticness of the job’ (dem4; −0.03, p  < 0.05, prop. mediated = 6%) positively mediate the relationship between WFH and satisfaction with quality.

In terms of productivity performance, the mediating effect of job control and job demand is supported (job control = 0.03, p  < 0.05, prop. mediated = 16.4.5%; job demand = −0.03, p  < 0.01, prop. mediated = 21.25%). However, it is noticeable, unlike in the domain of quality, that the mediating effect of job control and job demand contributes to the direct impact of WFH. Such mediating effect trades off the direct influence of WFH on satisfaction with productivity. Items such as job control on ‘working rate’ (con5; 0.01, p  < 0.05, prop. mediated = 5.88%) and job demand on ‘long periods of intense concentration’ (dem3; −0.03, p  < 0.01, prop. mediated = 20.11%) mediate the relationship between WFH and satisfaction with productivity. In this case, hypotheses 3 and 4 are fully supported.

In addition, the robustness check results via SEM analysis (both classical and bootstrap approach is used) is consistent with the quasi‐Bayesian Monte Carlo analysis. Accordingly, hypotheses 3 and 4 are supported as well (see details in Tables  A3 and ​ andA4 A4 ).

Robustness check of mediation effect by structure equation modelling

Moderating role of social support (hypotheses 4a and 4b tests)

Tables  5 and ​ and6 6 present the results of the moderating analysis of social support by applying hierarchical regressions. The results from the first four regression models consider the direct impact of WFH, job control, job demand and social support on self‐reported job performance as benchmark (Models 1–4 in Tables  5 and ​ and6). 6 ). Models 5–7 test the moderating effect of employers' social support on the relationships between job control, job demand and social support with job performance. We initially find that the social support is significantly positively related to satisfaction with quality (0.16, p  < 0.001) and productivity (0.27, p  < 0.001). Toward the moderating effect of employers' anti‐epidemic policy, we find the interaction terms of job demand*social support to be only significant on the regressions on satisfaction of productivity (−0.07, p  < 0.05). That is, hypothesis  4a is supported.

Overall, the results of testing the hypotheses are shown in Table  7 and Figure  2 .

Results of hypotheses

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

The hypotheses results presented in the conceptual framework

Discussion and conclusion

In responding to the inconsistent findings on the impact of WFH on job performance, the present paper found that WFH helps promote job performance in terms of quality but leads to poor job performance in terms of productivity, which indicates that WFH may not always play an ‘either‐or’ (positive or negative) role, as previous theories suggest. To explore the causal mechanism underpinning the findings, based on the JDCS model, we found that WFH affects job performance via job demand and control path, moderated by social support, which indicate that WFH leads to flexibility, and employees have more autonomy to work at any timepoint per day to finalize their job. They usually choose the timepoint to conduct work when they have a desirable working condition, consequently cultivate focus, concentration and creativity (Hunter  2019 ). Accordingly, job quality can be enhanced. Despite a good job quality, WFH employees devote higher job demand. Thus, it is not conducive to job productivity than WFO employees. In addition, we found the positive moderating role of social support from organizations to enhance job performance during epidemic crisis.

Theoretical implications

The present paper aims to contribute in several ways. Our study extends the JDCS model under the context of COVID‐19 by investigating whether WFH can render the change in job control and job demand and exert influence on employees' job performance with the moderating effect of employers' support. The JDCS model can also help explain why WFH plays a mixed role to affect job performance. Prior studies have mainly qualitatively discussed changes to the way that individuals work during the COVID‐19 pandemic (Wang et al.  2021 ), the advantages and disadvantages of enforced WFH (Hallman et al.  2021 ; Purwanto 2020 ), ICT functions that enable to offer affordance to satisfy WFH targets (Waizenegger et al.  2020 ), and the way to provide a resource for WFH (Hafermalz and Riemer 2021 ). Research that indicates why WFH can affect employees' work‐related outcomes, particularly with empirical evidence, is limited. By applying a sample collected in China, we investigated two paths (i.e. job demand and job control) and a boundary condition (support) of the relationship between WFH and job performance.

Our results show that job control and job demand positively mediate the relationship between WFH and job performance. The increased job control and decreased job demand by applying WFH can be considered one of the main reasons WFH helps enhance job quality. This finding is notable because this study tends to clarify the mixed mechanism that WFH affects work‐related outcomes from the perspective of job characteristics and provides a theoretical framework. In terms of job productivity, we find that the increased job control and decreased job demand trade off the negative effect of WFH on productivity. Therefore, when explaining why WFH compared with WFO varies in job performance, the verified mediating effect of job control and job demand underpinned by the JDCS model can only account for job quality enhancement, rather than sufficiently support why WFH lowers job productivity.

The present paper also articulates the specific job control (‘talking right’ and ‘work rate’) and job demand (‘a long time of intense concentration’ and ‘hecticness of the job’) items are vital factors in performance enhancements. On the basis of such findings, we can presume that the ‘talking right’ enhanced by WFH implies that the enforced ‘physical distance’ may shorten the ‘power distance’ inscribed in hierarchical structure, because ICT enables communication flattening information transmitting in traditional stratified management. Reciprocally, such physical distance reduces redundant commands from managers, and workplace distractions trigger WFH employees to have more autonomy on ‘working rate’. Thereafter, in the wake of alleviations on ‘a long time of intense concentration’ and ‘hecticness of the job’, performance is enhanced.

Furthermore, we applied entropy balance matching, a method that has been regarded with more advantages for controlling self‐selection bias in quasi‐experiment research. Future studies could also adopt entropy balance matching to control self‐selection from process control, especially in the crisis context.

Empirical and managerial implications

Empirically, post COVID‐19, WFH may become a vital HRM strategy. According to the Gartner CFO Survey (2020), 74% of companies plan to shift some of their employees to remote working temporarily. Our findings may imply several valuable tips for organizational employers and employees if one wants to accommodate employees to WFH for the long term. We suggest that sustained and pragmatic WFH policy in terms of ‘set working hours’ and ‘taking regular breaks’ should be designed to reduce job demands, such as ‘a long time of intense concentration’ and ‘hecticness of the job’. Furthermore, employers may leave employees more empowerment on scheduling, enhance the equality among different hierarchy people, and avoid lengthy and discursive commands while working to improve the ‘talking right’ and ‘work rate’ autonomy for employees. In addition, social support is found to be a critical boundary condition between WFH and job characteristics. Thus, it is vital that sound and feasible epidemic policies, such as providing personal protective equipment, a financial sponsored program, psychological counselling and support, are put in place and executed as crucial responsibilities (Shani and Pizam  2009 ). And finally, employers need to be aware that more resources should be available for increased virtual collaboration needs as WFH has now taken hold and will be around for a long time in the future.

Limitation and future research perspectives

First, even though in the present study we have controlled for a wide range of variables that may potentially relate to job performance, inevitably, it still misses some relevant variables. For example, even though we have involved communication factors under control, technology fatigue may still contribute significantly on change of job demands and subsequently affect job performance (Yang et al. 2021 ). Second, our dataset is a cross‐sectional one and we asked employees to rate job performance rather than multilevel respondents. The absence of lagged performance data restricts the possibility of examining the long‐term effect of WFH on job performance and relationships between the variables of interest. As already noted, the current sample was collected at the early period of ending epidemic lockdown. By applying the cross‐sectional model, identifying the potential time variance (e.g. honeymoon effect) from the targeted relationship is difficult. Thus, future studies should adopt panel data and compare the present study to test for robustness.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 72102033); Shanghai 2020 Science and Technology Innovation Action Plan (grant number 21692102600); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (grant number N2206012); the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (grant number 21YJC630153); the Social Science Foundation of Liaoning in China (grant number L21CGL013).

Conflict of interest

We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript entitled, ‘Working from home vs. working from office in terms of job performance during COVID‐19 pandemic crisis: evidence from China’.

Biographies

Jingjing Qu is an associate professor at Shanghai AI Lab, China. Her research interests include artificial intelligence governance, artificial intelligence technology innovation and well‐being of entrepreneurs.

Jiaqi Yan is a lecturer at School of Business and Administration of Northeastern University. He received his PhD degree from Tongji University and studied as a joint PhD student at the University of Sydney. His research interests include human resource management, hospitality management and entrepreneurship.

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Comparison Report; Working From Home vs. Working From Office

Executive summary.

The report paper entitled “Working from home vs. working from office” provides an overview of the optimal work-life balance scenario, which is having the ability to work from home while being there for one’s family. People can now enjoy increased job flexibility as a direct result of the technological advancements that have taken place over the last decade. The report aims to demonstrate why working remotely in today’s high-tech environment is significant and what function it plays in the workforce. The primary foci of the paper are a comparison of working from home versus working in an office and an examination of the advantages of working from home. The paper discusses the requirement of working from home, which is taken into account by our organization, which is named “Technologent,” to improve the morale of our employees, reduce our expenditures, and gain flexibility among our colleagues.

Introduction

The expansion and pervasiveness of internet access in today’s society have increased the number of people interested in working from home. Some believe that this makes working possibilities in terms of time and place more straightforward and easily available. On the other hand, some people feel that working in an office atmosphere leads to greater achieveme

Figure 1;  Working at home (Hatayama et al., 2020)

Benefits of Working At Home Compared To Working in the Office

To begin, when one works in an office, one has no independence and is subjected to a significant amount of stress due to the nature of the workplace and coworkers’ expectations. However, this is not the case when one works from home since doing so makes one significantly more relaxed and free from stress, increasing the likelihood of being productive. In addition, working from home is likely to save a significant amount of time, which can then be utilized in a more productive manner (Hatayama et al., 2020). Take, for instance, the amount of time spent traveling to and from work. Those who work from an office are required to make the daily trip to and from work; however, working from home will enable anyone to save time on transportation.

Secondly, working from home may reduce overhead costs for people and employers. Expenses related to transportation include things like the cost of fuel, driver time, vehicle maintenance, and insurance premiums. According to a report that was published in 2015 by the two organizations, it was found that in 2014, transportation delays caused by traffic resulted in the overspend of 3.1 billion liters of gasoline and kept commuters pinned in their automobiles for 6.9 billion additional hours, which resulted in a cost of $160 billion (Villeneuve et al., 2021). The amount of money saved can also be applied to our business. Companies save money since they use less office space, and their employees don’t miss as much work due to transportation issues. According to research carried out by the Canada Bureau in 2013, twenty percent of wage and salary workers could do some or all of their duties from the comfort of their homes (Villeneuve et al., 2021). Telework is touted as beneficial since it may save expenses, increase productivity, and enhance recruitment, engagement, job satisfaction, and the quality of life balance.

Figure 2;  2014 Transportation Statistics (Villeneuve et al., 2021)

Thirdly, a study conducted by Penn State found that working from home helps to reduce the likelihood of frequent conflict scenarios that arise when an individual is unable to spend sufficient time with their family. This is extremely significant for those individuals who are already married and are parents. On the other hand, this is not the case when working in an office because there is little opportunity to spend time with one’s family when required (Villeneuve et al., 2021). In addition, allowing employees to do some or all of their jobs from home has boosted overall job satisfaction among workers, lower turnover rates, and the number of unplanned absences attributed to ill health and other factors. There is no such point as a fancy dress when people work from home since they may dress whatever they want to; there are no regulations, but this is not the case while operating in the office because the majority of workplaces have a dress code in which employees are asked to wear formal attire (Hatayama et al., 2020). Therefore, working from home is not the same as working in the office. People who prefer to dress formally because that is how they feel most comfortable are put in an awkward position. Therefore, they would rather work from home, where they may wear whatever helps them relax, rather than dress casually when working in an office.

Additionally, employees can reduce their expenses by working from home. For instance, by purchasing food, employees can quickly prepare a meal for themselves at home and then be finished with their workday. In contrast to when working in an office, they will need to spend money on purchasing food unless they carry a lunch box, which is quite unlikely given that there wasn’t enough time to prepare one. People choose to work from home to save money for several reasons, including the fact that they do not have to worry about being stuck in traffic or being enticed to spend more cash on late-night activities. On the other hand, even if they work in an office, they are still responsible for all the costs associated with mobility, such as public transit, gasoline, and maintenance. If they are driving, they will likely have additional concerns over parking. They will most likely have a cup of coffee or buy something to eat throughout the day. The total amount of these expenditures add up.

Another advantage of working from home is that it may boost employee mood and improve employee morale. Employees can eat, work, and generally move about in their assigned residential locations. It is possible that alterations in the framework of jobs, such as working remotely, which make it possible for mothers to compete more effectively at all levels, are required to finally remove the gender divide in income and direct more of their earned income toward children, both of which are significant and serious goals (Fuller & Hirsh, 2018). It is considerably simpler for women to achieve work-life balance since they can log off work from home and instantly begin their responsibilities within the family.

Finally, teleworking federal government workers participated in the survey, which yielded quantitative and qualitative data. According to the research, telework’s greater job productivity and the desire to stay with the national govt were found to be positively affected by telework. A common aim among teleworkers is the improvement of managerial skills. Stress is exacerbated when people cannot strike a healthy balance between their professional and personal lives. When compared to those who work in an office, remote employees are less likely to be interrupted. Employers may relax knowing that their employees aren’t going to waste their lunch breaks chit-chatting with coworkers about nothing in particular. As a result of eliminating these distractions in the workplace, productivity will increase (Villeneuve et al., 2021). The freedom to recruit anybody they choose is another advantage for the organization. As a result of the company’s centralized location, there is a smaller pool of possible employees. These regional limitations imply that companies may have to make significant compromises on the employees they hire. The utilization of remote employees has eased the restrictions. You may choose the best person for the job regardless of where they are located.

Drawbacks of Working At Home Compared To Working in the Office

While people work at the office, there are no distractions, but when one works from home, there are many distractions. For instance, if employees are not careful, the lure of a longer lunchtime, an extra tea break, or finishing the day earlier may silently seep into their normal routine (Davidescu et al., 2020). Even if working from home may initially make things simpler, there is a possibility that it might be damaging to the mental health of employees. As social beings, humans can experience feelings of isolation when they are required to work in environments where they are unable to interact with other people. Working from home in a small capacity can sometimes lead to feelings of anxiousness.

In conclusion, working from home may benefit both workers and enterprises since it can improve morale while cutting expenditures for both parties. Employees benefit from increased job satisfaction and greater flexibility when they are allowed to perform their work in the comfort of their own homes. These work schedules are not simple to put into place, and it takes time and effort on the part of both the individual and the organization to make the required changes to realize the possible productivity benefits for both parties. However, if they both put in the necessary time and effort, they will both be able to benefit from it. Employees who work from home can have more control over their work schedules, greater freedom of choice, and greater independence than those who work in an office setting, where they can interact with coworkers and connect with others. Compared to working in an office, working from home eliminates the need for time spent commuting, resulting in further time savings. This is just one example of the many advantages of working from home as opposed to an office setting.

Recommendations

There is no question in anyone’s mind that the current working arrangements provide a few difficulties. The employer has reasonable concerns regarding the employee’s ability to maintain a healthy work-life balance and create a workplace setting in the employee’s home. Creating and keeping to a planned work schedule and having a dedicated workspace in the house that is separate from home distractions are two things that may be done to address these issues and help reduce their impact. When successfully adopting work-from-home circumstances, the most successful companies are typically those who give clear directions to their staff. Employees who have consistently proven good performance will easily convince managers to accept telework requests.

Davidescu, A. A., Apostu, S.-A., Paul, A., & Casuneanu, I. (2020). Work Flexibility, Job Satisfaction, and Performance among Romanian Employees—Implications for Sustainable Human Resource Management.  Sustainability ,  12 (15), 6086. MDPI. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12156086

Fuller, S., & Hirsh, C. E. (2018). “Family-Friendly” Jobs and Motherhood Pay Penalties: The Impact of Flexible Work Arrangements Across the Educational Spectrum.  Work and Occupations ,  46 (1), 3–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0730888418771116

Hatayama, M., Viollaz, M., & Winkler, H. (2020, May 11).  Jobs’ Amenability to Working from Home: Evidence from Skills Surveys for 53 Countries . Papers.ssrn.com. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3599548

Villeneuve, H., Abdeen, A., Papineau, M., Simon, S., Cruickshank, C., & O’Brien, W. (2021). New Insights on the Energy Impacts of Telework in Canada.  Canadian Public Policy ,  47 (3), 460–477. https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2020-157

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Home > Blog > Work-From-Home Jobs vs. On-Site vs. Hybrid: Choosing the Setup That Works Best for You

Work-From-Home Jobs vs. On-Site vs. Hybrid: Choosing the Setup That Works Best for You

I’ve tried working from home and in an office, so if you’re torn between the two, you’re in the right place.

First off, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. The best setup depends on your personality, circumstances, and priorities.

I started working remotely in 2012, long before the pandemic. Back then, it was mainly freelance work.

In 2021, during the height of COVID-19, I landed a work-from-home job with SuperStaff. Now, I enjoy all the perks of regular employment—health insurance, Pag-IBIG, SSS, PhilHealth, and more.

Before that, I spent most of my career working on-site, with a daily 1.5-hour commute from a small town to the city.

To help you decide on the best arrangement for you, let me explain the pros and cons of remote and on-site jobs. We’ll also explore the increasingly popular hybrid setup.

Work-From-Home Jobs

I’ve been working from home since before it was cool, but the pandemic turned everything upside down. Suddenly, everyone was setting up home offices. And, as it turns out, there’s now extensive discussion about remote work.

The Upside: You’re at Home!

Flexibility You get to create a work schedule that fits your life. Morning person? Night owl? It’s your choice!

Cost Savings Say goodbye to gas, bus fare, and overpriced coffee. Plus, you save on lunches and work attire.

Work-Life Balance Balancing work and personal life becomes more manageable. Need to pick up the kids or squeeze in a midday workout? You’ve got the flexibility to do it.

I chose to work from home when I got pregnant and never looked back.

The Downside: Not All Sunshine and Rainbows

Isolation Work-from-home jobs can get lonely. You miss out on office banter and face-to-face interactions.

Distractions Home can be full of distractions — TV, the fridge, or that pile of laundry calling your name. Plus, family members might think they can interrupt you anytime because “you’re just at home.”

Overworking When your home is your office, it’s tough to switch off. The line between work and personal time can blur, leading to burnout.

Working from home can be addictive, but it’s crucial to set boundaries. I’ve had great bosses who respected work hours, but I was the one who couldn’t call it a day.

Is It Right for You?

Work-from-home jobs are fantastic for those who need flexible schedules, like parents or caregivers. You’ll thrive if you’re self-motivated and good at managing your time! It’s especially great for tech professionals, writers, designers, and creatives.

Pro tip: Stay professional. Treat your work-from-home job as if you’re still in the office. Be on time and collaborate well with your virtual teammates.

Invest in your equipment — desktop, laptop, ergonomic chair, and, most importantly, a reliable internet plan. Some employers will provide a laptop or pay for your internet, but it’s worth investing in yourself.

On-Site Jobs

On-site jobs have been the norm for decades. You head to a fixed location daily, clock in, work, and clock out. Pretty straightforward, right?

The Upside: You’re With People!

Structured Environment On-site jobs offer a clear separation between work and home. When you’re at the office, you’re in work mode. When you leave, work stays behind.

Direct Collaboration Need to talk to a coworker? Just walk over to their desk. Face-to-face meetings are perfect for brainstorming and quick updates.

Access to Resources Everything you need is right there — printers, scanners, and specialized equipment. No more struggling with a malfunctioning home printer or slow internet.

The Downside: Physically Draining

Public Transportation Commuting can be a real drag. The time and money spent getting to work, especially in traffic, adds up.

In 2021, Metro Manila’s Metro Rail Transit Line 3 (MRT-3) saw about 45.6 million commuters, averaging 136,935 riders daily. Fast forward to 2023, and that number skyrocketed by over 30%, with daily ridership jumping to 357,198 from 273,141 in 2022. And that’s just the MRT!

Motorcycles dominated Metro Manila’s roads in 2023, with an average daily traffic volume of approximately 1.67 million. Cars followed closely, contributing about 1.57 million to the total traffic volume, which reached around 3.63 million vehicles for the year.

On top of that, a separate survey revealed that 27% of Metro Manila commuters spend an average of 30 to 59 minutes commuting daily.

Rigid Schedule On-site jobs usually have set hours, making managing personal time challenging. However, a structured schedule might not be a big deal if you love what you do.

My schedule was chaotic when I worked for a film production company, but I didn’t mind because I loved the job. The energy drain came from the daily commute.

On-site jobs are ideal if you thrive on routine and structure. This setup is perfect if you need access to specific tools or equipment. It’s also great for social butterflies who enjoy the camaraderie of working closely with others.

Hybrid Jobs

If you love the flexibility of working from home but also enjoy the buzz of an office, a hybrid job is the perfect balance.

You get to work remotely but still pop into the office when needed. This trend is growing as companies adapt to new work realities.

The Upside: The Best of Both Worlds

Balanced Interaction Enjoy the convenience and freedom of remote work mixed with the structure of being on-site. Regular in-person meetings keep that human connection alive.

Adaptability Hybrid work can be tailored to different roles and personal needs, making it a win-win for everyone.

The Downside: Collaboration Across Split Teams

Challenging Inter-Departmental Collaboration Managing schedules and communication can be tricky when teams are split between home and the office. It takes some coordination to get everyone on the same page.

Inconsistency Maintaining productivity and engagement across both settings can be challenging. Establishing a routine is key.

If you crave the flexibility of remote work but still want in-person interaction, hybrid is for you. It offers balance and helps manage feelings of isolation.

Choosing the Right Work Arrangement

Still wondering which work arrangement is best for you? Consider your personal needs, company culture, and job market trends.

Think about what you want. Do you love rolling out of bed and working in your pajamas? Or do you thrive on the energy of a bustling office?

Your preferences and work style matter. You may need flexibility for family responsibilities or personal commitments. That’s okay! Choose what fits your life.

Factor in company culture. Some companies are flexible and support remote work, while others are more traditional. Finding a place that aligns with your values is crucial.

Do your research on potential employers . See if they offer the support you need, whether for remote, on-site, or hybrid work. You’ll spend a lot of time with this company, so make sure it’s a good fit!

About the Author:

Athena Yenko

Athena spent her entire career as a writer. She started as an author in the breakthrough pop literature genre in the Philippines with two published novels. She wrote screenplays and developed concepts for the country’s leading film production company.  Currently, she creates the content strategy for SuperStaff and supervises the editorial team.

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Looking for a Google Workspace alternative? OnlyOffice DocSpace is ready for the job

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