Freakonomics Podcast Explores The Data On Hybrid Work

 The seismic changes forced upon us due to COVID has produced more permanent consequences than most people want to believe.

For example, restaurants has expanded their outside footprint. One of the most visible and lasting changes has been the success of working from home. As companies were forced to set up employees to work at home, there was nail-biting among shareholders that worker productivity could dip substantially. 

Yet, the productivity of work from home employees was, in many cases, higher than when those same employees worked at the office.

In the new episode of Freakonomics Radio, host Stephen Dubner investigates "The Unintended Consequences of Working from Home." In the midst of a contentious debate, Dubner talks to economists about what the data actually show.

One economist, for instance, explains his four key findings from a study analyzing remote work at a Chinese travel agency:

1. "Employees were dramatically happier being allowed to work from home two days a week. You can see this in surveys. Maybe more convincingly, you see it in quit rates. They fell by a third."
   
   
2. "It changed the structure of hours. Folks that were working from home worked on average a couple of hours less a week on their home days but made up for it on other days, on the weekends."
   
   
3. "They end up sending many more messages to coworkers. Now, the fact that they’re messaging people more on their work-from-home days is hardly surprising. They’re not in the office. What was striking is even on days in the office, they were significantly more likely to message people."
   
   
4. "Productivity went up a bit. It wasn’t enormous. It was less in some ways than we expected."

Another economist's findings about a potential "urban doom loop" in cities.

"We're estimating a decline in value of 45 percent in the short run for a New York City office space, and 39 percent in more of a long-term perspective… [An 'urban doom loop'] is a concern about the functioning of cities when one of those linchpins of value has been taken away.

"The basic chain of events that we're worried about is, as city governments have more constrained budgets, as they're faced with declining revenue, they're going to have to either raise taxes or cut services. We've already seen over the last couple of years a lot of challenges in providing city services in areas like education or policing. So cities are going to have to make difficult choices about whether to cut back on those essential services or, on the other hand, raise taxes on residents.

"Whichever way you choose leads to the potential of some of these people leaving the city, thereby lowering the tax base further. We've seen some episodes of this historically. Cities like Detroit, cities like New York in the 1970s and '80s, had a little bit of this destructive spiral going on."

The episode also explores Freakonomics Radio Network and producing partner SiriusXM's own hybrid work experience, and asks perhaps the biggest macro question: How will remote and hybrid work affect the future of work itself?

Listen to "The Unintended Consequences of Working from Home" at freakonomics.com (there's a transcript there, too) or wherever you get podcasts.