Harvard Business School has published a study which suggest of a sweet spot for a hybrid work arrangement; one where workers who participated in the experiment reported greater satisfaction in working from home, greater work-life balance, and lower isolation compared to those who do work entirely from home.
The report – Is Hybrid Work the Best of Both Worlds? Evidence From a Field Experiment – published in March 2022 is based on feedback from 100 HR employees at BRAC, the world’s largest non-governmental organization, in Bangladesh.
The employees were divided into three types: those who were in the office 0-8 days (high WFH), intermediate WFH (9-14), and low WFH (15+ days in the office). Evaluation was based on the communications of the workers totaling more than 32,000 emails. Apart from the volume of email sent, number of people emailed, and the “novelty of work output”, the negative or positive sentiment of each email was also evaluated.
The result
It turns out the “intermediates” (9-14 days in office) are what the study find to be the sweet spot for the workers. The balanced time between home and office gives them greater satisfaction of work while being free from the isolation.
However, the authors of the study also acknowledge and state that future research should be explored to determine the productivity effects of hybrid work in a wider variety of contexts.
