Dr Michelle Dickinson: nanotechnologist on new research examining the benefits of hybrid work environments

The COVID-19 pandemic substantially changed how many office-based workers worked, and overnight working from home became the norm for millions of people.  

Since then, many businesses have tried to force workers back into to the office full-time believing that staff can’t be trusted to work effectively from home. This is often against the wishes of their staff who enjoy life without a commute and embrace their ability to keep up with household tasks by doing laundry on their lunch break. 

So, what should companies be doing to help them to remain profitable? 

New research out in the journal Nature has found the answer that works best for both businesses and their staff. 

The researchers took 1600 graduate workers all who worked at the same large travel booking company and studied them over a six month period. 

The participants were randomly split into two groups, one group was required to work from the office every day, the other group was allowed to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays. 

The study found that even though their managers might have believed that the group working from home weren’t working as hard, there was no measurable difference in the productivity of workers in either group as measured by performance reviews. 

There were however many benefits found in the hybrid workers, the majority of which reported they had increased job satisfaction. The data also showed a 33 percent reduction in resignation rates for the hybrid workers compared to the in-office staff. This reduction in resignation rates was significantly higher for staff members that had long commutes (52 percent) and for women (54 percent). 

The researchers calculated that on average, it cost the company $20,000 (USD) in recruitment and training for every staff member that quit, so being able to retain staff by giving them a hybrid work environment could save them millions of dollars. 

The study concluded that if you want to keep your organisations productive and profitable while keeping your staff happy, hybrid working is the best solution. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB and.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
It's time for our science study of the week and
joining me as another girl doctor Michelle and Dickinson.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
This is really interesting, this study because there is so
much debate at the moment as to whether we should
be all back in the office working a little bit
from home, working from home. A lot of people have
different opinions on.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
It, and a lot of it's to do with trust.
A lot of it is to do with trust us
trust if you are a manager or a business owner
that your staff can work from home as effectively as
they could from in the office. And there's a huge
debate right now and everybody, everybody's upset because nobody has
what they want. People have loved thanks to COVID nineteen
people had to work from home. They were forced office

(00:51):
workers at least, and they actually quite liked it, especially
those who have big commutes, those who have kids, who
are trying to balance a lot of things. And actually,
if I'm not having to commute two hours a day
to get to the office, and I can use my
lunch break to catch up on just doing the laundry
and just tidying the hand so when I come home,
it's actually not a bomb site. I feel like my
work life balance is more balance. And then all of

(01:12):
the managers are like, yeah, but you're obviously not working.
You know, it's hard and blah blah blah. So here's
the study. It's in the journal Nature. It's a lovely study.
It's quite a big study. They took sixteen hundred graduate workers.
And here's the only thing that was negative. The workers
that they took, they all worked for this big travel
agency company, like a travel booking company. They were split
into two groups, but they were not allowed to choose

(01:35):
which group they're in. So one group, fifty percent of
them eight hundred, had to work from the office for
the whole study that was six months, and the other
group got to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays.
And so the only gripe of this story is the
employees going, I wanted to be in the other group,
like I wanted to be working from hope, but the
study wouldn't work without that. So they did this study
and they followed them for six months, and the studies

(01:57):
really lovely. So what it showed is that basically as
we would expect, the people who are allowed to do
what we call hybrid working, so they had to come
in the office Monday, Tuesday, Thursdays. Because what we do
know is when you are in the office, lots of
cross collaboration happens, lots of ideas happen that don't work
when you're just doing an online video call for a purpose.

(02:18):
So those bump into things are where innovation happens. Those
still need to happen Monday, Wednesday, Thursday. But on Wednesday
Fridays the people who stayed at home.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Were much happier.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
But what I love about the study is they did
a massive productivity audit and so a lot of managers go, no,
you have to come back to the office because you're
not working as hard. There was zero difference in the
productivity as measured by a whole bunch of metrics in
people who work from home or people who work from
the office. So people go, oh, you're working from home,
you're not doing as much. It's not true. The data
says you work just as hard.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
But that's if it's a hybrid situation. To that hybrid
so there is still that time because you've got that
face to face time and the office you've got that
opportunity because I think it's much easier to keep up
staff morale if you're all in an office. I think
that can definitely suffer if you're not all together and
poose totally.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
And this study actually was quite rigid about their hybrid
So some people going from home a bit. No, this
was saying you have to be in because then you
can't expect when you're bump into each other things are
going to happen. Otherwise, what happens is some people who
you need to be there at the same time are
on a work from home day and it doesn't work.
So they said very clearly, only Wednesdays and Fridays all
work from home, and that's when you're just going to
nut down and get all your data stuff done, and

(03:28):
those other collaboration meetings can happen when you know everybody's
going to be in the office. So the study didn't
look at fully work remote all of that because they've
taken their data and gone, we know what sort of
is working. Let's look at the data. So the hybrid
environment is working really well. But this is what blew
my mind. So over the six months, they looked at
their retention rate, so how many people in the organization,

(03:48):
and these are relatively new graduates, how many are quitting?
There was a thirty three percent reduction in retention rate,
so thirty three percent less people quit if they were
hybrid and that's on average. And then they looked into
the STAPA later, fifty two percent less people quit who
were on hybrid if they had a long commute and

(04:09):
the commute was considered two hours or more, or if
they were women. Fifty four percent less women quip if
they were offered a hybrid role than if they had
to be.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
In That's interesting and what I ran.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
What I loved about this numbers is they ran for
this organization how much does it cost to recruit and
train a new staff member? And it cost them twenty
thousand US dollars, so about thirty five thousand New Zealand
dollars to find a new person and train them in
their coruitment. So this company went, well, this isn't crazy, right,
If we can retain fifty percent, we are saving millions

(04:42):
of dollars per year just by going into a rigid
hybrid model.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
We can people find or read the study Machine.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
In the journal Nature. It's lovely, it's easy, and if
you're struggling with what the best balances and what to do,
this has some lovely day.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
There we go, take the science and to your boss.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
And trust morning then where we go as hard at
home as they are in the office.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
More from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin. Listen live
to News Talks at B from nine am Sunday, or
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