Bloom, N., Han, R. & Liang, J. Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance. Nature 630, 920–925 (2024)

Objective:

• Use a randomized control trial to examine the causal effect of a hybrid schedule in which employees are allowed to WFH two days per week
• Focus on university-graduate employees in software engineering, marketing, accounting and finance, whose activities are mainly creative team tasks

Case:

• Shanghai, China

Methodology:

• Equivalence test
• Treatment regression

Data Source

• Survey: Trip.com
• Travel time: Weiss et al. (2018)
• Boundary: GADM

Findings:

• Hybrid WFH contributes to one-third reduction in attrition rate and improves satisfaction score

• The impacts on reduced attrition were significant for non-managerial employees, female employees and those with long commutes
• No evidence of a significant effect on employee’s performance reviews

• Managers tend to had more negative views, reporting that hybrid WFH would be likely to affect productivity by -2.6%, whereas non-managers had more positive views (+0.7%)
• After the experiment, the views of managers increased to 1.0%, converging towards non-manager’s views

Coding Reference:

• Stata and data