Does working from home make employees more productive?
The Economist [paywall] – “Yes, according to new research, and they should be paid accordingly. Remote working, relatively uncommon before the pandemic, has gone mainstream. Before covid-19 roughly 5% of Americans worked from home. By May the figure had risen to 62%. By October 40% were still shunning the office. Both employers and employees have grumbled that the shift to home-working has been disruptive. But according to new research by Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington, two doctoral students in economics at Harvard, firms may be better off…” From the paper “Working” Remotely? Selection, Treatment, and the Market Provision of Remote Work:
“Why was remote work so rare prior to Covid-19’s lockdown? One possibility is that working remotely reduces productivity. Another is that remote work attracts unobservably less productive workers. In our setting of call-center workers at a Fortune 500 retailer, two natural experiments reveal positive productivity effects of remote work. When Covid-19closed down the retailer’s on-site call-centers, a difference-in-difference design suggests the transition from on-site to remote work increased the productivity of formerly on-site workers by 8% to 10% relative to their already remote peers. Similarly, when previously on-site workers took up opportunities to go remote in 2018-2019, their productivity rose by 7%. These two natural experiments also reveal negative selection into remote work.While all workers were remote due to Covid-19, those who were hired into remote jobs were 12% less productive than those hired into on-site jobs. Extending remote opportunities to on-site workers similarly attracted less productive workers to on-site jobs. Our model allows us to characterize the counterfactual in which remote workers were not adversely selected. Without adverse selection, the retailer would have hired 57% more re-mote workers and worker surplus from remote work would have been 32% greater. Given the central role of selection, Covid-19’s effect on remote work will persist if the lockdown disproportionately causes more productive workers to be willing to work remotely.”
Scott Galloway's Secret To Success: Don't Follow Your Passion. Become A Tax Lawyer.
Scott Galloway (NYU):
The worst advice given to young people is ... follow your passion. What utter bull****. If someone tells you to follow your passion, that means they're already rich. ...
Nobody grows up thinking I'm passionate about tax law. But the best tax lawyers in this nation fly private and have a much broader selection of mates than they deserve. And they get to do interesting things which, by the way, makes them passionate about tax law.
Michele Bachmann, Former Congresswoman, Presidential Candidate, And IRS Tax Lawyer, Named Dean At Regent
Fast Company – “During the year ahead, technology will help us emerge from the pandemic in ways big and small, obvious and surprising. As we come to the end of a crazy 2020, many of us are suffering from COVID-19 exhaustion. But as two vaccines begin their rollouts, we’ve also begun to visualize what post-pandemic life might be like. Most would agree that the new normal that begins to take shape in 2021 won’t be the old one. By forcing us from our routines, the pandemic has prompted us to reexamine the ways we live and work, and how we mix life and work together. The changes that grow from that reflection will be reflected in the technologies we use going forward. I asked startup CEOs, executives at big companies, investors, and other experts for their predictions for the year ahead, from collaboration services to medical innovations to fresh ideas in AI, commerce, and even the tools we use to sustain our democracy. Of course, even the smartest forecasts can be disrupted by reality. A year ago, I asked tech experts to tell us what 2020 would be like; the clear and logical picture they painted would soon get bent sideways, refracted through the weird prism of COVID-19. With any luck, 2021–however it pans out—won’t be so full of rude surprises…”
