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- A new study found that productivity was lower in a group of workers randomly assigned to WFH.
- The study also surveyed workers on their preferences for WFH versus coming into the office.
- One of the study's authors told Insider those who prefer WFH are also the "most distracted" at home.
A new study on worker productivity is attracting buzz for a finding that could fuel the case for companies trying to bring workers back to the office. It found that randomly selected data-entry workers in Chennai, India were 18% less-productive working from home than from the office.
Yet the study also uncovered another surprising statistic about the kinds of workers who opt to work from home. It found that those who prefer to work from home are — at baseline — actually 12% faster and more accurate in their work.
Still, the study found that these workers are approximately 27% less-productive at home than at the office. Those who prefer to work from the office — even if they're initially slower or less-accurate — are just 13% less-productive when working from home.
David Atkin, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the authors of the study, told Insider by email that "we find that those whose productivity suffers relatively more when they work from home are actually more likely, not less, to choose WFH."
So why are workers opting to work in settings where they're less-productive?
"One explanation for why workers are choosing to work where they are less productive is that the workers who most need to be around the house during the workday are exactly the workers who are most distracted working from home," Atkin wrote to Insider. These could include subsets of workers who need to care for children, tend to household responsibilities during the day, or are from poorer households, a report summarizing the study's finding noted.
While workers' preferences and circumstances are bound to vary across countries, and industries, the study's findings could offer a springboard for companies to design policies that optimize productivity while offering their employees flexibility.
Atkin suggests that hybrid work arrangements could be an answer, even though they weren't explored in this particular study.
"I would speculate that being able to WFH several days a week, and go the office the other days, may balance workers' demands for WFH with the productivity costs we find — and the ability to provide face-to-face training and team interactions that are major drivers of productivity in more complex job settings," he wrote.