Apr 20, 2015 06:00:00

It turns out that work productivity and satisfaction are higher at home than at work

By

Aitor Aranda

Online travel site, ' Ctrip (Ctrip) ,' Nicholas said Bloom, a professor of the co-founder and is also a graduate student James Liang and his economics is, 'nine months to some staff of Ctrip call center Only give them the opportunity to work from home 'and found that the group that worked from home improved their productivity.

To Raise Productivity, Let More Employees Work from Home-HBR
https://hbr.org/2014/01/to-raise-productivity-let-more-employees-work-from-home

Nicholas Bloom is the founder of Ctrip, a professor of economics at Stanford University, and is responsible for programs such as 'Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship' at the National Institutes of Economics. Is also the person who acts.

Mr. Bloom said that half of Ctrip's employees he founded were at home to answer the stunning question, 'If I work in pajamas, will my employees' performance improve?' I did an experiment of working for nine months, working the other half at work. Another reason Cliptrip experimented was that `` working from home could save money on equipment such as rent and furniture at work, so more money could be saved than lost productivity. I thought it might be the case. '

The experiment was led by Professor Bloom of Stanford University.

According to the results of the experiment, telecommuting staff answered 13.5% more calls than staff working at work. In addition, it seems that 13.5% of telephone calls correspond to one week's work at Ctrip's call center. In addition to improving productivity, it has been found that staff working from home shows higher satisfaction for work than staff working at the workplace, and in addition, staff working from home for an experimental period of 9 months He said that he was able to save $ 1900 (about 226,000 yen) per person.

The graph below shows the average number of telephone calls for the group that worked as a call center at Ctrip at home (green) and the group that worked at a call center at work (yellow-green). The experiment actually started from 'EXPERIMENT STARTS' in the middle of the graph, and the telephone answering number when working at the call center as usual before the experiment started is also on the graph. Looking at the graph, it can be seen that the number of telephone calls from home working staff has never been lower than the average of the workplace staff since the start of the experiment.

Ctrip explains the details of the experiment to the subjects during the experiment, and has the staff who wishes to work from home work at home. During the experiment, some staff quit working from home and returned to the workplace, and Mr. Bloom commented on this, 'Did you realize that you are not suitable for working at home?' It seems that staff who actually quit working from home did not have very good telephone responses. Also, in the experiment, productivity improvement over a certain level has been seen over 9 months, `` This is too long for the initial burst, and it is a good indication that working at home has a certain effect It is '.

Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, has been a big topic by

completely banning the company's employees from working from home, but Mr. Bloom said, `` The problem of working from home is that it is so simple. That's not to say. Mayer's ban on telecommuting could be due to a number of factors, and perhaps the morality of telecommuters at Yahoo was declining. ' Mr. Bloom also stated that the occupation type 'call center', which was the subject of the experiment, was easier to measure the work content than other jobs and was easier to work from home.

By Daniel Rashid

A big question about productivity at home and at work is that, besides the work of the call center, 'Does home increase productivity in brain and creative jobs?' Bloom argued that 'more mechanical work could benefit from working from home,' Bloom said. According to past experience, 'working at home about once or twice a week' is a good way to prevent employee mental exhaustion and increase satisfaction.

In addition, Bloom cites another reason for experimenting with telecommuting on Ctrip, to show the effectiveness of telecommuting to management staff. Bloom has always shown employees the opportunity to work from home to establish a flexible work system, and has allowed them to work from home, for example, on weather days when it is difficult to get to work. We conducted an experiment to show the effectiveness of working from home to executives who disagree with such efforts.

By Oscar Shen

Working from home has been more effective than Bloom had envisioned, but it is unclear whether this has resulted in a surge in home workers at Ctrip's call centers.