A snapshot in the context of USA…“Roughly a quarter of full-time employees in the US work from home for at least part of an average day, according to federal records,” says Nuwer. “If the trend extends so that 25 percent spend half the workweek telecommuting, then some big savings are in store, estimates Global Workplace Analytics, a research and consulting group.”
Source: http://business.inquirer.net/235703/benefits-working-home
Look at the stats: “$170 billion saved by businesses in real estate costs, $466 billion worth of work gained through increased productivity, up to $7,000 saved by individuals on work-related costs (such as transportation and dry cleaning), two to three weeks of free time gained by workers spared their commute, 51 million tons of greenhouse gases reduced by taking cars off the road.”
….highlights the broader points.
A rising share of employees now regularly engage in working from home (WFH), but there are concerns this can lead to ‘‘shirking from home.’’ We report the results of a WFH experiment at Ctrip, a 16,000-employee, NASDAQ-listed Chinese travel agency. Call center employees who volunteered to WFH were randomly assigned either to work from home or in the office for nine months. Home working led to a 13% performance increase, of which 9% was from work- ing more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days) and 4% from more calls per minute (attributed to a quieter and more convenient working environment). Home workers also reported improved work satisfaction, and their attrition rate halved, but their promotion rate conditional on performance fell. Due to the success of the experiment, Ctrip rolled out the option to WFH to the whole firm and allowed the experimental employees to reselect between the home and office. Interestingly, over half of them switched, which led to the gains from WFH almost doubling to 22%. This highlights the benefits of learning and selection effects when adopting modern management practices like WFH. An interesting read at https://people.stanford.edu/nbloom/sites/default/files/wfh.pdf
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