Lauren Aratani New York · 23 Ago 2023
‘The office is for socialising. At home is for one-on-one Zooms and analysing and thinking’ Prof Nicholas Bloom Stanford University
The backlash against working from home is in full swing. In an ironic turn of events, the video conferencing business Zoom has asked staff to return to the office, while Amazon is reportedly tracking employees to make sure they are at their desks. The two companies are the latest in the US to sour on working from home, but does this mean the impending end of the trend as we know it?
Not according to Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford economics professor and longtime researcher of working from home (WFH). For staff who can do at least part of their role from home, he says, the shift in working patterns is here to stay and is being reinforced by some big changes in the jobs landscape.
He argues the workplace has been redefined by the pandemic. Nearly half of all employees in the US are working from home for at least some of the working week.
Frontline workers, including those in retail, food services, cleaning, security or other jobs that are difficult to do remotely, are all working in person. But for the most part, everyone who can work from home is doing so at least some of the time.
This is a huge shift. In a paper released last month, Bloom and his co-authors found that before the pandemic, people were doing about 5% of their working days from home. Now, it’s at least 25%.
“That is massive because it was doubling about every 15 years before the pandemic. So effectively, you have 40 years of growth in about two years,” Bloom says.
The pandemic coincided with the widespread adoption of two technologies – cloud storage and video conferencing platforms – which make working away from the office much easier. Given how much can be done from home with these technologies, “going to the office five days a week before the pandemic, that was clearly a mistake”, he says. “We could have shifted to what we were doing in 2020 in 2015. We probably couldn’t have done it in 2010.”
For many Americans who do desk jobs, returning to the office five days a week will stay a thing of the past. Most companies still only require employees to come in two to three days a week, typically Tuesday to Thursday, with such hybrid policies working well for employers and staff.
Bloom found the flexibility to work from home did not harm productivity, kept employees happy, helped with recruitment and retention, and had the same value to staff as an 8% pay rise.
There are still many who want to work either fully in person or fully remotely – about 20% and 30%, respectively, of those Bloom surveyed. However, a hybrid policy seemed the best compromise for most employers and employees. So it makes sense to Bloom that Zoom and other technology companies that once declared indefinite WFH are calling staff back in, at least part-time, especially when they have huge, expensive buildings they do not want sitting empty.
Nonetheless, after the pandemic hiatus, many struggle to readjust to working around others, and find it hard to tune out background noise and awkward water cooler talk. This is exacerbated by the office’s shift in function under a hybrid WFH policy, Bloom says, as it ceases to be a quiet place for employees to work.
“The future of the office is you go in for only two or three days a week, and when you’re in, it’s about meetings, trainings, presentations, lunches, events and connecting. The office is for socialising. At home is for one-on-one Zooms and analysing and thinking.”
“If you are working for hours quietly in the office – or trying to – you’re in the office too much.”
As hybrid work becomes the norm, Bloom expects people will factor in how many days they have to be in the office when picking a place to work. Younger workers without children may want more, while those with children who live further out may want less.
“By 2025, one of the big choices when you sign up for a company will be what its working from home policies are,” he says. “You’re choosing to fit what you like.”
And as technology improves – bringing better laptop cameras and software – Bloom expects WFH will continue to grow, though at a slower pace. Much of the transition will come from in-person jobs turning remote, such as office secretaries and staff at takeaways taking orders by phone.
An early advocate for working from home – he gave a Ted Talk making the case for it in 2015 – Bloom recalls the days when people were sceptical about the practice.
“It was so hard to get anyone interested in it. Their eyelids would start to sag down when I talked about it. Pre-pandemic, I tried to organise a remote work conference – there weren’t even enough papers, I gave up,” Bloom says. “And then suddenly the pandemic happened, and amazingly, this thing has worked even better than I had hoped for.”