I really don’t know how much more data we need about this. It’s almost as if RTO is not about productivity at all…

Bloom and Han reported last week in the journal Nature that, over the subsequent two years, hybrid workers showed no difference in performance grades or promotion prospects compared to office-bound colleagues; the company’s computer engineers, for example, did not differ in their coding output across the two groups.

Hybrid workers, however, reported higher job satisfaction and were less likely to quit, especially if they were non-managers, female, or had long commutes. The authors conclude that “a hybrid schedule with two days a week working from home does not damage performance”, adding the result would probably extend to other organisations.