Most companies are now calling their employees back into offices, but it appears that data suggests that it might be better for companies to let them work from home.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that employees are more productive when they work from home. “The data indicates that productivity is actually slightly higher when you allow work from home,” he said. But Schmidt said that he’d still prefer people to work from an office, and it was partly because it was better for employees as well.
“I have a strong view that I want people in an office. It doesn’t have to be all one office, but I want them in an office. And partly it’s for their own benefit. If you’re in your twenties, when I was a young executive, I knew nothing of what I was doing. I literally was just lucky to be there. And I learned by hanging out at the water cooler, going to meetings, hanging out, being in the hallway. Had I been at home, I wouldn’t have had any of that knowledge, which ultimately was central to my subsequent promotions. So if you’re in your twenties, you’d want to be in an office because that’s how you’re going to get promoted,” he explained.
Schmidt acknowledged that there were many employees who wanted to work from home because they had pressing reasons to do so, like having long commutes or wanting to spend time with their family. He hinted that these many of these people were correct in feeling that they were more productive when they worked from home, as it was also suggested by the data. But Schmidt felt that it was probably better for them to come into offices if they wanted to do well in their careers in the long term.
There are a whole spectrum of opinions around working from home that the pandemic is squarely in the rearview mirror. Indian IT firms have become increasingly insistent that employees return to offices, and global tech companies like Amazon are also doing away with work-from-home. Some companies, though, like Spotify, are continuing to work from home, and seem convinced to do so for the foreseeable future. But while different companies will continue to have different opinions on working from home, it appears that — if a former Google CEO is to be believed — that working from home does increase employee productivity.