Working from Home in the Public Sector: A Game Changer for Productivity?
Featured paper: Not Incentivized Yet Efficient: Working From Home in the Public Sector
Disclaimer: This content was generated by NotebookLM and has been reviewed for accuracy by Dr. Tram.
Have you ever wondered if working from home (WFH) really makes people more productive, or if it’s just a perk? It’s a big question, especially after the pandemic accelerated the WFH trend. Many organizations are still trying to figure out the best way forward. A new research paper titled “Not Incentivized Yet Efficient: Working From Home in the Public Sector” dives deep into this very question, offering some fascinating insights.
This study stands out because it focuses on public sector jobs, specifically a division of the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) called the Crime Recording and Resolution Unit (CRRU). Why is this important? Because in the public sector, unlike many private companies, workers typically aren’t paid based on how much they produce. Their pay is usually a fixed monthly amount, and they have strong job security. This unique setting allows the researchers to study the impact of WFH without the complicating factor of financial incentives. It helps them figure out the “baseline” impact of WFH on performance.
The “Lab”: How They Studied WFH
The CRRU is responsible for recording details of crimes and incidents from emergency and non-emergency calls into a computer system. This is mainly individual work and doesn’t require team interactions. This makes it an ideal environment to study individual productivity.
The researchers used a clever approach to ensure their findings were truly about WFH’s impact, not other factors. Police staff at the CRRU follow a deterministic rotation schedule that tells them whether they work from home or the office each day. This schedule means workers don’t choose their work location, which is key. Because of this “plausibly exogenous variation in work location,” the researchers could compare worker performance when assigned to WFH versus working from the office (WFO), almost as if it were a controlled experiment. They also confirmed that being assigned to WFH didn’t predict the demographics of the staff or the types of cases they handled.
Their main way of measuring productivity was simply the number of cases recorded per day. They also tracked the time spent actively recording cases and the average time per case. To assess quality, supervisors routinely audited randomly selected cases. The study used extensive administrative data from November 2022 to October 2024, along with a survey for worker perceptions.
The Big Discovery: WFH Actually Boosts Productivity!
So, what did they find? The core result is clear: working from home increases productivity by 12%. This means staff recorded more cases when working from home. It’s important to note that this increase in productivity was not because people worked longer hours. Instead, the staff were, on average, faster at recording cases when WFH.
Furthermore, these productivity gains did not come at the cost of lower quality. Internal audits showed that work quality was unaffected by whether staff worked from home or the office.
The study also looked at individual differences. While there was a lot of variation in how much individuals benefited from WFH, the researchers found that workers who were highly productive at home were also highly productive in the office. This challenges the idea that only certain people are “suited” for WFH. They didn’t find any obvious group of workers that was ill-suited for this work arrangement based on observable characteristics.
Interestingly, WFH also had an impact on absenteeism. The study found that being assigned to WFH reduces the probability that workers are absent by 3.6 percentage points. A portion of this reduction was due to medical absences, consistent with workers managing chronic conditions or feeling less sick at home. The rest was due to non-medical absences, possibly because WFH allows staff to manage unexpected care for children or elderly dependents. When these differences in absenteeism are factored in, the estimated impact of WFH on productivity increases to 12%.
Why the Boost? Reduced Distractions and More
The researchers explored why WFH led to higher productivity. The primary driver appears to be reduced distractions. The survey results from staff highlighted this:
- 35.1% of workers reported fewer distractions as a key benefit of WFH.
- 21.9% explicitly stated they were more productive at home.
- Staff consistently mentioned that the quieter environment at home enhanced their concentration and productivity. This is significant because the office environment was described as a large, open-plan room with background noise from calls and conversations.
Other perceived benefits reported by workers included:
- Avoiding the commute (87.7%).
- Saving money (50%) on transportation and meals.
- Achieving a better work-life balance (42.1%).
- Better mental health and less stress (19.3%).
While these are great benefits for employees, they don’t directly explain the productivity gains, which were driven by factors like reduced distractions and faster work. The study also found that staff tended to start their workday earlier when working from home, which is consistent with fewer distractions.
The researchers rigorously checked for alternative explanations and confirmed that the productivity gains were not due to differences in tasks, characteristics of reported cases, training, administrative duties, or shift lengths.
The Supervisor Effect: Humans Outperform Machines
One of the most compelling findings relates to the role of supervisors. The study compared two periods: one where a computer randomly allocated cases to workers (post-September 2023) and another where supervisors assigned tasks (pre-September 2023).
When tasks were assigned by a computer, WFH increased productivity by 12%. However, when supervisors assigned tasks, the productivity gains from WFH nearly doubled to 20.8%. This suggests that supervisors have a good understanding of their staff’s strengths and can use this information to assign tasks more effectively, thereby harnessing greater benefits from WFH. This finding highlights that managers are an extremely valuable lever organizations can use to maximize the benefits of WFH.
Hybrid vs. Fully Remote: No Additional Gains
Finally, the researchers conducted an experiment to see if working almost exclusively from home (95% of the time) offered additional productivity gains compared to a hybrid model (WFH approximately 70% of the time). The results indicated that working almost entirely from home did not offer additional productivity gains relative to the hybrid status quo. They also found no evidence of adverse effects from working entirely from home during the study period.
Key Takeaways
This research paints a largely positive picture for working from home, particularly for public sector jobs involving semi-routine, individual tasks. The 12% productivity increase, driven primarily by reduced distractions, is significant, especially considering it doesn’t come with a trade-off in quality. The fact that supervisors can almost double these gains by strategically assigning tasks further emphasizes the importance of good management in remote work settings.
Beyond productivity, WFH also offers substantial benefits like saving commute time and costs for employees, and potentially reducing office space expenses for organizations.
However, it’s crucial to remember a key caveat: this study focused on tasks that are individual and where reduced distractions are highly beneficial. The productivity gains observed here may not directly translate to jobs that are more creative, require extensive teamwork, or depend on constant in-person interactions. But for many roles, especially in the public sector, WFH appears to be a highly efficient option.