Hybrid workers are more satisfied, quit less than onsite workers

Many of us will have found our working situations shifting in the past few years. The onset of the pandemic in late 2019 made indoor shared spaces prime locations for infection, leading companies that were able to take their work remote. For a time, much of the world bonded over difficulties wrangling Zoom, and debated over whether putting a load of washing on during a break was suitable for work hours.

Though some corporations have pushed for a return to the office, for many, this style of working has become one they'll fight to keep. Beyond the obvious benefits of a lack of commute and lower infection risk, many have found working remotely to be more enjoyable. Others, of course, missed the social and community aspects of physically shared workspaces, leading to ongoing debate about whether in-person working should be expected.

According to authors Nicholas Bloom, Ruobing Han, and James Liang, their latest study presents the first randomised control trial to investigate the benefits of hybrid working. The findings, published in Nature, add much-needed data to this debate.

In this study, the authors take a closer look at the experiences of 1,612 graduate employees of Trip.com who were randomly assigned to one of two groups for a six-month period: five days of onsite work per week, or hybrid work of three days onsite and two days home-based work per week.

For these workers, the hybrid situation was a more pleasant. Those in the hybrid group not only reported greater job satisfaction, better work–life balance, and higher life satisfaction, but resigned at a significantly lower rate than the fully onsite group — 33% lower, in fact. This lower resignation rate was particularly noticeable in those with longer journeys to the office, and for women. However, there was an effect of position on this — those in manager roles did not resign at a significantly different rate.

Contrary to an often-cited concern about reduced productivity outside of the office, those in the hybrid group were as productive as their physical-only peers (as measured by performance reviews over the next two years). The employees also felt that they were more productive when working in a hybrid manner — though this belief emerged only after they had tried it, with the group being overall ambivalent about whether it would improve their productivity at the start of the study. The number of workers who received promotions in each group were not significantly different in the two years following the study.

Whether these findings would translate beyond this company's workforce is difficult to conclude. Different cultures and different lines of work have requirements that can vary vastly from each other, which makes it hard to generalise the findings from a single trial conducted at a digitally-focused company.

However, these findings do add weight to the subjective experiences of many, and may go some way to easing corporate concerns about embracing the hybrid working model in the longer term.

Read the paper in full:

Bloom, N., Han, R., & Liang, J. (2024). Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance. Nature, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07500-2