Remote vs Hybrid vs In Office: What REALLY Works? With Professor Nick Bloom
Professor Nick Bloom - Professor of Economics at Stanford University, work-from-home researcher and expert
Nick Bloom is the William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He previously worked at the UK Treasury and McKinsey & Company and the IFS. He has a BA from Cambridge, an MPhil from Oxford, and a PhD from University College London. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of the Guggenheim and Sloan Fellowships, the Frisch Medal and a National Science Foundation Career Award. He was elected to Bloomberg50 for his advice on working from home.
Remote, Hybrid, Return to Office—there are so many ways to work in 2025, and as the debate in popular media rages on it can feel utterly overwhelming to know how and where we actually work best.
To help us wade through the mess of public discourse, and cut to the facts, we sat down with Stanford University Professor of Economics Nicolas Bloom whose research spans global geographies and focuses on helping us understand work from home, hybrid and office-based work, along with management best practices and uncertainty.
And the answer to ‘what is the best way to work’? It’s kind of complicated.
In this conversation we explore why work is complicated, and Nick presents his research on how hybrid work, done well, is the best answer we’ve currently got.
We hope this conversation with Professor Nick Bloom will debunk some of your misconceptions around where and how we can work best. Nick’s research presents a compelling case for hybrid work, but even more importantly than simply mandating this, is making sure that the coordination of hybrid work is done well, getting clear on what work should be done together, and being explicit on performance metrics, such as outputs over desk monitoring is crucial in making time in the officer, together count.
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Find his research on Work from Home here.
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Alexis Zahner: Remote hybrid return to office. There are so many ways to work in 2025, and as the debate in popular media rages on it can feel utterly overwhelming to know how and where we actually work best to help us wade through this mess of public discourse and cut to the facts. We sat down with Stanford University, professor of Economics, Nicholas Bloom, whose research spans global geographies and focuses on helping us understand work from home, hybrid and office space, work alongside management, best practices and uncertainty, and the answer to what is the best way to work.
[00:00:49] Well, it's kind of complicated. So in this conversation we explore why work is complicated and Nick presents his research on how hybrid work done well is the best answer we've currently got. Nick Bloom is the professor of economics at Stanford University. He previously worked at the UK Treasury and McKinsey and Company and the IFS.
[00:01:10] He has a BA from Cambridge, a master of philosophy from Oxford, and a PhD from University College London. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of the Guggenheim and Sloan Fellowships, the FRI Medal and a National Science Foundation Career Award. He was elected to Bloomberg 50 for his advice on working from home.
[00:01:34] Nick's research really helps us explore the nuance and complications around where and how we work best, and we hope it helps debunk some of the myths around this for you too. Now, let's dive in.
[00:01:48] Sally Clarke: Thank you so much for joining us on, we Are Human Leaders. Nick, we're so excited for this conversation and we'd like to get started by getting to know you a little bit better, and if you could share a little bit of your own journey to this incredible work that you are doing today.
[00:02:01] Professor Nick Bloom: It's a weird long journey that I have been working on work from home for more than 20 years now. It kind of started to be honest, I'm, I'm 51, I'm one of four kids. Both my parents worked and I remember I grew up in London when, you know, one of us was sick or there was some big snow day or something. And you know, my parents would worked from home and I used to ask them what it was like and they said it's terrible.
[00:02:24] You know, this was in the eighties before this personal computer. So it's carrying piles of paper and phoning into the office. I then had another weird break. I had a student at Stanford do founded a company, James Liang. The company's now trip.com. It's a huge company now, and he wanted to run a big experiment.
[00:02:39] So combining factors, I've been working on this, I have to say, no one was that interested in work from home until March, 2020, and then it just exploded.
[00:02:48] Sally Clarke: Amazing. Nick. And I'm curious to know, sort of, so you had that experience of seeing your parents and their struggle back in the eighties. I remember those days myself, with the physical limitations of working from home then.
[00:02:59] Was that something that you then looked at in your university study? Sort of how did you connect the pieces to the research that you're doing today?
[00:03:05] Professor Nick Bloom: Well, it was always interesting. It, I mean, another angle on this is my wife worked at the Bank of England and then a consulting company in the uk and she had two kids there and one over here.
[00:03:15] And it's a difference in, you know, maternity leave across companies and countries. So work from home used to not really be a topic. If you go back to the eighties or nineties, it was so rare, and suddenly you have the personal computer, you have broadband, you have video calls, and then you know it was ready.
[00:03:32] It was kind of primed to go, to be honest. But if you look in the data before the pandemic, so this is 2019, about 5% of all four days in the US and it'd be similar for the uk, Australia, New Zealand will work from home, so it just didn't happen very often. The pandemic takes a number from 5% to in April, 2020 to 60%, which is like incredible more than half of days.
[00:03:54] Full Bay days were from home and it's obviously fallen back a lot, but it's now at about 25%. So the pandemic basically five x work from home. And that's something I just got really fascinated on. Is it here to stay? Depends who you speak to. Is it good, is it bad? You know, everything around that.
[00:04:11] Alexis Zahner: It is front and center.
[00:04:12] Since Covid, Nick, as you've suggested there, and we'd love to dive into your research into this a little bit more. Can you tell us what are some of the contributing factors to this shift to remote work and how has that sort of shifted pre pandemic, post pandemic?
[00:04:28] Professor Nick Bloom: So I think the biggest factor is, frankly, it's just profitable for companies.
[00:04:33] So ultimately we're in a capitalist economy and what makes businesses money tends to stick and to explain. Right now there are about 60% of people that can't work from home at all. So let's kind of put them to the side. They are frontline, you know, hospitals, nurses, you know, food service, et cetera. The remaining 40% of us can, three quarters of them are hybrid.
[00:04:54] Many of your listeners, many people that you know, I come across. So that's the majority. So then the question is, why is hybrid profitable? I had a paper that we published in Nature last year where we did this big randomized control trial where we randomly ordered folks in this in Trip Do com. This big company, they basically were all in the office five days a week and they said to them, look, we're gonna do an experiment for six months.
[00:05:18] Half of you lucky winners are gonna get to work from home two days a week, and the other half can stay as you are and then we'll assess it. You know? In fact, after two years, what they found was having people work from home on Wednesday and Friday had no effect on productivity. So you go and interview the employees and they'll say yes.
[00:05:35] You know, coming to the office is good for mentoring, it's good for teamwork, it's good for innovation, but by the time we've got three days a week of that, it's not obvious that days four and five are helpful. In fact, if you work from home, the upside is it's quiet and you save them. You. So performance was not affected.
[00:05:56] And the other thing I, yeah, I'll let you guys I, yeah, follow up. But they saw quit rates were down by a third and for the company they said quits are hugely expensive. And so that was very profitable.
[00:06:05] Sally Clarke: Amazing. There's so much there. And you know, Lex and I, before our conversation with you, talked about our own experiences of early in my career, working at a company where it certainly was sort of.
[00:06:14] In person, you know, as a corporate lawyer as well. There was, even though technically and certainly the pandemic proved that that was very much doable from home, but at the time it was just mandated you have to be in the office almost as a kind of, oh, I think they thought of it as a potentially a slippery slope.
[00:06:29] If we start letting people work from home, will they ever come back? And now this situation where the data so beautifully shows that this kind of mindful hybrid, if you will. Of two, three days balance, where people are getting that sense of connection and those things that we need from one another as as human beings, but also having the space to not commute for a couple of days a week to perhaps have a little bit more flexibility in their schedule so they can throw some washing on or take, pick up the kids, whatever it is.
[00:06:54] But that balance also really impacts performance. And I imagine also since you know, engagement and all those other things that will reduce the quit rate as
[00:07:01] Professor Nick Bloom: well. Totally. So, I mean, the profitability, 80% of Fortune 500 companies now have. Managers and professionals and hybrid. So trip.com, who I worked with on the experiment, they're NASDAQ listed, they're worth about 50 billion.
[00:07:15] They reckon hybrid would save them with increased profits, to be honest, by like tens of millions of dollars a year. 'cause it just cut quit rates. And they said, look, quits are really expensive for the business. If someone quits, you're gonna go out, re advertise, reinterview, re it, up to speed, et cetera. And so I love work, you know, I love hybrid.
[00:07:33] I like working from home. I'm home today. I think if you wanna sell it, if you're a manager or an employee and you wanna sell it to a CEO or shareholders, the best way to do it, quite honestly, is to say, look, it's profitable, because that ultimately is.
[00:07:49] Alexis Zahner: Now Nick, I've worked fully remotely, hybrid, and as Sally mentioned earlier, in both of our careers, fully in the office, is there a sweet spot of days from home versus in the office?
[00:07:59] How should we look at that?
[00:08:00] Professor Nick Bloom: So Alexis, it varies a lot on what you're doing. So to go through the. Three groups. So there's a bunch of folks have to be fully in person. Like if you're an airline pilot or you know a surgeon. Like nobody really.
[00:08:11] Alexis Zahner: For now. Yeah, for now. We might have robots. Soon
[00:08:16] Professor Nick Bloom: the pilot tells me he's, or she's flying my plane from, you know, their living room.
[00:08:20] I'm like, no, no thanks. I'd rather you're up. That's like 60% of jobs. There's 30% that tend to be hybrid. The best, optimal number of days. I wouldn't say there's any hard evidence on it. I'll tell you the most common is three in the office, two at home. Whether that's optimal, it's less obvious. The second most common two and four are also quite frequent.
[00:08:40] Generally it's really a trade off between in office. Seems like it's better for mentoring, probably for innovation, probably for building culture at home is better for deep quiet work. And actually employees look like they work more minutes at home. So managers are amazed by, but you're saving an hour and a half every day.
[00:08:58] You work from home. And most of that time people will spend on, you know, extra leisure, sleep, whatever. But some of it, they work more. So that's hybrid and then fully remote is a mix. There are not so many fully remote folks. If you look at who they are, they are mostly. There are some high-end people, so Alexa, I dunno what you were doing, but there's some, you know, coders, writers, journalists, et cetera.
[00:09:19] There's quite a lot of people in that bucket now. They're in call centers, data entry, payroll at Stanford University. We have 20,000 employees in 2000, fully remote, which makes sense, but they're not mostly in management positions.
[00:09:31] Sally Clarke: Yeah. On the remote, sort of the fully remote or even sort of four days remote.
[00:09:37] Nick, I'm really curious about the notion of loneliness in the workplace. It's something that I've been doing some research on myself and you know, we're seeing pretty high rates of loneliness at work here in Australia, and I'd just be curious to hear your thoughts on whether remote work, per se, by definition, would increase loneliness.
[00:09:57] And perhaps what leaders might be able to do when they're thinking about, you know, if they're leading a primarily remote workforce, what can we do to combat loneliness to the extent that we can?
[00:10:07] Professor Nick Bloom: So,
[00:10:07] Sally Clarke: great question.
[00:10:08] Professor Nick Bloom: I think it's definitely the case that forced fully remote can generate loneliness. So in March, April, May, 2020, when so many people forced to be at home five days a week and they didn't want to, there was a big loneliness epidemic.
[00:10:21] By now, you know, 2025. If folks are choosing to work from home fully, remotely, typically they're happy with it. We actually survey tens of thousands of people, including Australia. What you find is some people say that we ask them about mental health and physical health, and some people say like, about 20% say it's best if I come in every day and they're like, ah, you know, I get lonely and depressed and I sit 'em, you know, I lie in bed.
[00:10:44] There's that saying about the three enemies of working from home at the bed, the fridge, and the television. Like somebody
[00:10:51] Alexis Zahner: truth. I hear that truth. Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:53] Professor Nick Bloom: So like that's 20%, they're best in person. There's interestingly about 30% the exact reverse. And you know, I have friends like this, they'll say, look, I'm in my thirties, forties, I've got young kids, I live far away.
[00:11:04] I have no problem with lonely. I say, I've got a problem with, you know, noise and uh, at home I can't get away. And I actually like, during the day, it's a bit of peace and crap. And then there's people like me that are hybrid. So. Generally, it looks like mental, physical health is typically best when people get the ability to choose and they select the role that they like best.
[00:11:23] Alexis Zahner: Nick, you just mentioned a really interesting concept there and that was the idea of forced remote or forced in the office. So that tells me that autonomy has a big role to play here. Can you tell us a little bit more around that? How does the sort of freedom of choice impact people's experience of work?
[00:11:40] Professor Nick Bloom: Yes, freedom of choice is really important, but it had I, I'll come onto the managerial implications 'cause it's kind of tricky, but. Certainly 2019 was bad 'cause you're forced in every day. 2020 April was probably bad to you 'cause you're forced at home every day and it looks like an average. People are a lot happier.
[00:11:55] The average survey respondent wants to come in about two and a half days a week. So interesting. Hold tens of thousands of people. It's all over the place. It's like, you know, it's like favorite ice cream flavors, you know? Or favorite, I don't know, beer and wine. There's a mix, but there is an average. Then as a manager, how do you deal with it?
[00:12:13] I think. Team by team, you actually want clear coordination. So you know there are two. So whats my, you know, I come up hundreds of times honestly from talking. I must have talked about easily more than a thousand managers and firms on how hybrid in particular works. Best one is coordinate. Do you wanna have folks come in on the same day and then actually is a reduction in choice?
[00:12:34] And then the other is, you know, performance evaluations rather than desk watching on the first. What I think it means is for organizations, they want to clearly lay out. In advance of hiring people, what? Enormous for the company. So, Alexis, if you know, if you signed up to come work at Stanford and we told you you're gonna get to work from home five days a week and you picked it, you'll probably be very happy.
[00:12:54] Where the cause problems is, we hire you on five and we say, Hey, we're return to the office. You could have come in for five and now you're really upset.
[00:13:01] Alexis Zahner: Yeah. And on that Nick, we are seeing a rise in the mandating of returning to the office full time. Obviously it's all over the news. Major companies, especially in the US doing this quite polarizing topic.
[00:13:14] Do you think that this is a good idea?
[00:13:16] Professor Nick Bloom: You are right. The news is full of it. Actually, I had a, I had a long interesting discussion, Eric Yuan, the CEO of Zoom last week on exactly this, but two points. One is if you actually look at the data, pretty fascinating now have the best data in the us. I have some Australian data on 23 and 20, 25 actual days in the office have not really changed that much.
[00:13:36] So it's pretty flat. We have surveys, we have cell phone tracking data. We also have swipe data. All of them show it's pretty flat. So then the question is, why is that? Well, I was looking at data from Cadence, which are a company that makes desk booking software and you know, kind of monitoring things. And they were saying they're seeing the number of desks, days booked has been rising, but actual attendance flat.
[00:13:59] So I think what's going on is theoretically people are coming in the office more and maybe they're even telling the boss and the head of hr, they're in the office more. But in practice where we see by cell phones, cell phones are perfect, they're like amazing data. 'cause no one leaves their cell phone far from their body.
[00:14:14] So if you can track a cell phone, you can track a person. For example, Placer AI has data showing how many cell phones enter in and out of buildings that are primarily offices. And it's flat. You know, it was flat for the last two years, so I think there's a lot of hot air on return to office mandates. In practice, it looks like the world's kind of settled on three days, and companies like Amazon that are acquiring five.
[00:14:38] Mostly are not able to achieve that. In fact, there was something in the Wall Street Journal interesting a couple of weeks back saying they don't even have enough desk or parking space, like they can't even get people in. So yeah, I'll give you an anecdote. It was actually up in, um, Washington, DC about a month ago, and there are two enormous organizations based up there and very similar businesses.
[00:14:57] And one of them said, look, we mandate folks to come in four days a week, but we don't enforce it. And I said, how's it going? And they're like, it's a bit of a mess. Like some people come in some days, some in others. Whenever anyone comes in, they're kind of angry 'cause only half the team is in there on Zoom all day.
[00:15:10] Organization B said, we mandate three, we enforce only two. So effectively on the ground it's just two. And they said it works great. People just come in Tuesday, Thursday and when they're in, it's lively and energetic. You are connected up. Employees don't seem to mind it. And I say, that didn't make so much more sense.
[00:15:26] It's like that old Roman saying of, you know, a good law is an enforceable law that a sensible plan, they enforced it and people seem happiest with it.
[00:15:34] Sally Clarke: And it really sort of taps into, I think that concept that you mentioned, Nick, of clear coordination because if you are saying to people, you know, Tuesdays and Thursday, Thursdays is when we're gonna be in leaders also then can really plan to that.
[00:15:45] You can map to that, you can schedule to that. It just creates that clarity that takes a lot of the uncertainty and the decision making off of the desks of your people as well.
[00:15:53] Professor Nick Bloom: Totally agree. I completely agree. I think the two silts one is just coordinate and be clear. So it's a heck, you know, like, I dunno whether Amazon would ever get five days in.
[00:16:04] I suspect not Sally. If you were my manager, then imagine I'm a good employee. You know, Amazon, you, I dunno. Amazon probably has 10 levels down from Andrew chassis to the people that deliver parcels. Let's say you are three levels down, you're a reasonably senior manager, you'll be rewarded and your bonus and your promotions based on your team performance.
[00:16:22] And if I'm like a star employee in your team. You are probably going to me. Look, Nick, you know, if I tell you I'm gonna leave, unless if you make me come in five days a week, you'll probably go, Nick, why don't you come in three, I'll cover you for the other two. I'll say you're out on sales trips or conferences or meeting clients.
[00:16:39] How's HR gonna know? They, they can't track it. You don't? Yeah. This is why this thing becomes unenforceable. It's just a bad plan. It's hard to enforce.
[00:16:46] Sally Clarke: And then if you just think about the extra legwork of all of that sort of falsifying, actual, you know, you know like what an absolute waste of energy at all levels there.
[00:16:55] I. I'd love to sort of hold space for this kind of process for a little bit, Nick as well. So I'm imagining that it is that person who's in that sort of middle management position and things have been a hundred percent remote since the pandemic, let's say, and now senior leadership is mandating that that return to work, say three days a week.
[00:17:11] We want them back in the office three days a week. That's all the guidance you get. What tips would you give to that leader to navigate that process as optimally as possible for their teams?
[00:17:22] Professor Nick Bloom: Great question. The first is, I think I try and coordinate the day. So if you had enough space, you've literally got enough desk for everyone to come back.
[00:17:30] I would probably say everyone comes back Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Why those three days? 'cause they're the most popular and it's easiest to get people back. There are ups and downsides. You know, I, I could spend half an hour talking about this, but to be honest, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is kind of probably the best bet if there isn't enough space.
[00:17:46] For example, Eric Yuan was saying at Zoom. They've grown a lot and there's no longer enough desk space for them to come back, then I'd probably break it down by function. So he was saying engineers are in Monday, Wednesday, sales are in Tuesday, Thursday. Now that's not ideal 'cause if you're ever on a meeting between engineering and sales, you can, you know, it's hard to do it in person, but at least if most of the engineering meetings are within engineering and most of the sales meetings within sales, then you know, you don't lose it.
[00:18:11] But. I would a be clear. And so what I wouldn't do is let people choose their days. 'cause what you'll find is a complete mess. I mean, I had a friend of mine that I said I was talking to her and she has to come in two days a week. She said, oh, I come in Monday, Friday. And I was like that. Those are unusual days.
[00:18:30] Like, you know, I don't normally hear people come in Monday, Friday. And she said, yeah, well I don't like my colleagues
[00:18:35] Sally Clarke: office is empty. Perfect solution. Exactly.
[00:18:39] Professor Nick Bloom: You know, you can see why it seems a bit self-defeating at this point. She might as well just be fully remote.
[00:18:44] Alexis Zahner: And Nick, you've kind of alluded to this a little bit already, but when it comes to what people are actually doing in the office and at home, what advice would you give to that same manager around structuring the sort of priorities there?
[00:18:56] Professor Nick Bloom: Again, great question. I would make use of, you know, there's a term called return on commute. So endless layer here, people say, look, if you are gonna persuade an employee to come in, literally they're spending an hour and a half of their time to come in and out and that nobody likes. And commuting's actually in these studies hated even more than working.
[00:19:12] So you've gotta generate something up for them. And that's not the bagel or the, you know, the ping pong table. No one's bothering to commute an hour and a half. So what it means is that a lot of in-person events, meetings, trainings, lunches, and so if possible, it's not always totally possible, but try and organize those, you know, all hands meetings where there's 10 people, which is best in person or luncheon event on the Tuesday, Thursday, you're in today.
[00:19:36] Cross office stuff that you have to do on Zoom anyway, reading, writing, preparation, paperwork. Maybe, or you know, maybe, you know, Sally, if you and I were working regularly, I'd see you most days. If we're gonna have a meeting, it's totally fine to do it on Zoom, just one-on-one. It's possible that some of these got shifted onto the work from home days.
[00:19:52] So you want to basically make people feel happy at the end of the day for coming in. And that means exactly, avoid having them spend all day on Zoom in a cubicle. 'cause then they're gonna get to the end of the day and think, why have I come in? It's like. Frustrating.
[00:20:06] Sally Clarke: I love that Nick. And I'd love to get just a little bit more granular if we can, in terms of messaging.
[00:20:11] 'cause I think for a lot of people when they hear that news, they're probably gonna feel like something is being taken from them. You know, this flexibility or the the right, this choice that they have. When we get sort of look at that messaging, what might leaders be able to say to help people understand that there is going to be some benefit to this situation, that this is actually gonna be really good for the team.
[00:20:30] What would you say to those team members?
[00:20:32] Professor Nick Bloom: I mean, it's tricky. So the first thing is it's typically not good news. So look, if you are still fully remote and you're being in called in three days a week, typically you don't want to mean when you have to force somebody to do something. It generally, you know, it's not always in their best interest, they want it.
[00:20:48] So message one will probably be, if I were managing a division, look, this is better than what there could be. If you look at, you know, what Trump and Amazon are doing, it could be five. If I were a manager, I'd say, look, we don't want you in all five days a week, but you know, the boss or the CEO or the shareholders are demanding.
[00:21:03] We've gotta come in some days. If we don't do that, what I've often heard is a lot of managers have said, if we don't have anyone coming in, we're closing the offices. Then we're advertising positions globally, and that's a pretty scary situation in Australia or the US or the UK where you're competing globally.
[00:21:20] 'cause you can find someone in Argentina or the Philippines can do your job for a third. The rate. So I think step one would be, look, I, I know it's not good news, but it's probably better than what the alternative would be. I think step two would be then just trying to coordinate and make it, you know, as pleasant as possible is when people come in.
[00:21:39] Also worth mentioning, the research evidence show that mentoring and promotions generally are faster when people come in. What's hardest? So Sally, you were talking about when you worked in a law firm, it's often mentoring of others. So when I talk to law firms, the junior associates and new associates want to come in, but the partners don't.
[00:21:55] 'cause they're like, I, I mentored I'm, but they have to do the mentoring. So it's often that discussion about, well, it may not just be you are getting mentored, but you have to help and mentor others.
[00:22:04] Sally Clarke: Yeah. It's something I thought a lot about during Covid and just imagining all these new, fresh graduates.
[00:22:09] Who were entering the workforce for the first time and staying at home, you know, being sort of onboarded remotely from their bedrooms as it were. And is something that I thought, you know, missing that kind of opportunity to sort of formal and informal mentoring and the things that you can pick up and learn from people sort of much more easily when they're in the same room as you.
[00:22:28] So I think, you know, where I've kind of landed intuitively, and it's really interesting to hear that the research backs this, is that some kind of blend of the two done well can really sort of meet. The different needs that we have as a human being as well. I think I consider myself an ambivert and I certainly enjoy sort of working alone, but I'll always hit a point, usually only after a few days where I start to notice that I actually could use some people around me.
[00:22:51] And that kind of buzz of having other people working even on completely different things around me is actually something that does energize me and contribute to my capacity to perform. So it's really fascinating to me to also hear that this is exactly what the data is saying. Am I reading that correctly?
[00:23:06] Professor Nick Bloom: Yeah. So there's a couple of things. One is this, this kind of concept of in office, like, it's like dog years. I, uh, spoke to somebody, this has come up quite a few times. I was talking to someone that runs an accounting firm and she was saying, look, the folks that were trained fully remotely over the pandemic, probably we see two years of training.
[00:23:24] Then as about as good as one year fully in personal, one year hybrid. I was like, I've heard this a lot, but she gave me some pretty good, you know, she said, look, when you're in person, people pay attention more. When they have client meetings, they're not, you know, you saw Jamie Diamond's outbursts. I don't mostly agree with Jamie Diamond, but he's right.
[00:23:41] There is some extent of when people are on Zoom, there's a bit of a tendency, it's a big meeting to kind of be doing your email or checking text or, so we also see that by the randomized control, see people that fully remote their promotion rates drop. My takeaway from all of the data and research I've seen is once you're in the office about two to three days a week, that seems to flatten out.
[00:24:06] So yes, it looks like there is some trade off. If you're fully remote, you may get promoted less frequently, but on the other hand, to be clear, you may better to get a job you couldn't otherwise get if you are living further away. So that's, it's, but it's worth, you know, being kind of eyes open on that.
[00:24:20] Once you get to two, three days a week, it's not obvious that coming in four, five days actually increases promotions. You don't really see that in the data.
[00:24:27] Alexis Zahner: There's so much nuance in the conversation. Nick and I can't help but think, to your point around sort of multitasking and things like that on Zoom, I'm so bad for it.
[00:24:36] My, I really struggle with the attention of doing a, a big zoom meeting and having my emails up on one screen and LinkedIn on another screen, et cetera. And it seems to me that there's a lot of deeply human elements that can't be replicated in a lot of ways over the computer screen, for instance, just the capacity to be truly present with people.
[00:24:54] As you've just mentioned there, some of those things that I think go a long way in actually building deeper bonds. And I've heard sort of other experts talk to this around the idea of like this relational equity. The strength of those relationships being able to be built sort of deeper when we have that one-to-one contact in person as well.
[00:25:11] Would you say this potentially is a bit of the case as well?
[00:25:14] Professor Nick Bloom: Totally. I mean, I give you a person example, I'm hybrid. I'm probably in the office two days a week in our home, three, and I notice now when I'm in the office, when there are meetings, if I don't have something square up before it, I'll actually turn up five minutes early.
[00:25:29] The reason is a few other people turn up five minutes early and you end up kind of having a bit of chitchat. So the meeting's supposed to start at three. I may go down for kind of two 50 and then invariably there's a few other folks. You get five, 10 minutes of social time. And then if I don't have anything straight after, it's the same thing happens.
[00:25:45] And you are right that the meeting itself, the content isn't really changed. I feel that in person versus on Zoom say, but you get those five minutes before and after that you wouldn't get when you go through a Zoom interview.
[00:25:57] Sally Clarke: And what I'm hearing also, Nick, is that there's kind of a lot of, you know, there's individual needs that we have and these can also change during phases of our life.
[00:26:04] For example, at during one phase, we may prefer to not be promoted but not have to commute. And during another phase we may be willing to go into the office to sort of get that promotion and earn more. And I think there's a lot of. Being able to sort of hold space for that nuance and to understand that different people have different needs, but creating that sort of cohesion and predictability where possible, I think there's that, that kind of balance strikes me as perhaps what leaders could be aiming for.
[00:26:29] Professor Nick Bloom: Yes. In the data you generally see people up to from kind of 21, 20 up to 25 are pretty keen on going in typically four days a week. Why? Because it's social. They want to get mentored and you know, their apartments are flats aren't great. When people get into their thirties and forties, they're most keen on work from home.
[00:26:47] I think, you know, in the day it's generally kids, a lot of it's around kids. It's also they have a bit more money. They maybe live further away and you know, in a bigger house, et cetera. And then when you get to 50, particularly 55 plus, folks seem keen on coming back in. So the tricky thing is, of course in an organization you need some kind of common cadence.
[00:27:06] So I mentioned law firms. That typically means the associates will come in anyway. You are kind of beating up on the partners to say, look, you guys, you've gotta come in three days a week because the associates need to be trained by you. I think if you want to go from one extreme to another, say you want to go fully and personal, fully remote, that may skew the mix of, you know, the labor force.
[00:27:25] So if you are fully remote, you probably are gonna be particularly appealing to thirties and forties. If you're fully in person, I suspect you're gonna find it hard to hire, you know, mid, late, early forties folks 'cause they're less keen on it.
[00:27:38] Alexis Zahner: So much incredible data and research that you've helped us unpack today on this debate.
[00:27:43] And I wonder if you could leave us with perhaps one key message that you would like leaders to know or to think more about in terms of the fully remote, hybrid and in-person debate.
[00:27:56] Professor Nick Bloom: So I, there's two key five I, I'm gonna be an economist. I'm gonna add one and pretend I don't count very well. So we love it.
[00:28:04] I, I would like sidestep fully remote and fully in person. Hybrid's the hardest, there are two key things that come out of hybrid. One we've talked about, which is coordination. So it's pretty critical to coordinate on days and to be honest, probably enforce on those. So if it were my company. I would probably pick Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and enforce reasonably well on that and just encourage people actually to go home on Monday, Friday.
[00:28:25] Point two is the importance of performance reviews, and this is very much an HR point. When people are in the office, I hear off managers over and over again. You can kind of watch what they're doing. So Alexis, if you are my manager, you can walk by, I'm at my desk typing away when you walk by. Is it, you know, am I doing work with Python or xl or am I watching Champions League or Netflix or whatever.
[00:28:45] But when I'm at home, you've no idea. You've no idea what I'm doing. And so you need to basically move to more output performance evaluations. Do I get my job done? Are my client's customers happy and my coworkers happy? Oddly enough, for me, it's better too as the employee. 'cause I think, oh, Alexis isn't breathing down my neck all the time.
[00:29:03] If I don't reply to that email in 10 minutes, she's gonna be mad. So if I wanna go to the dentist, I can do it, but I have to make up for it in the evening if I wanna pick my kids up. So, you know, one is coordination two is more of a focus on performance review. Two in particular does require more HR time and resources.
[00:29:19] And I've been pushing that. Work from home is great, but it needs a bit more management in terms of performance review. And that takes time and effort for managers in hr.
[00:29:27] Sally Clarke: Amazing. That is such an important takeaway. We could ask you so many more questions, Nick, but it's been so fabulous to have you with us today on We Are Human Leaders.
[00:29:35] Thank you so much for being with us.
[00:29:38] Professor Nick Bloom: Hey, thanks so much for putting up with me for 30 minutes.
[00:29:47] Alexis Zahner: We hope this conversation with Professor Nick Bloom has bombed some of your misconceptions around where and how we can work best. Nick's research presents a compelling case for hybrid work, but even more importantly than simply mandating. This is making sure that the coordination of hybrid work is done well.
[00:30:06] You get clear on what work should be done together and the need to be explicit on performance metrics, such as outputs over desk monitoring. These are crucial in making our time together in office count. If you'd like to learn more about Professor Nick Bloom and check out more of his research, find all of the details in our show notes at www dot.
[00:30:30] We are human leaders.com. Thank you for being with us for this episode of We Are Human Leaders, and we'll see you next time!