Working from home IS here to stay even if some employers are trying their best against it….
Now the early results are emerging. They reveal a mixed economic picture, in which many workers and businesses have made real gains under remote work arrangements, and many have also had to bear costs.
Broadly, the portrait that emerges is this: Brick-and-mortar businesses suffered in urban downtowns, as many people stopped commuting. Still, some kinds of businesses, like grocery stores, have been able to gain a foothold in the suburbs. At the same time, rents rose in affordable markets as remote and hybrid workers left expensive urban housing.
Working mothers have generally benefited from the flexibility of being able to work remotely — more of them were able to stay in the work force. But remote work also seems to bring some steep penalties when it comes to career advancement for women.
Studies of productivity in work-from-home arrangements are all over the map. Some papers have linked remote work with productivity declines of between 8 and 19 percent, while others find drops of 4 percent for individual workers; still other research has found productivity gains of 13 percent or even 24 percent.
Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford and a prolific scholar on remote work, said the new set of studies shows that productivity differs between remote workplaces depending on an employer’s approach — how well trained managers are to support remote employees and whether those employees have opportunities for occasional meet-ups.
Researchers tend to agree that many workplaces have settled into a new hybrid phase, where offices are at about half their prepandemic occupancy levels and about a quarter of American workdays are done from home. That suggests some of the effects of remote work may stick.
As Mr. Bloom put it: “This is the new normal.”….