Relationship between work type and working productivity

Introduction

In this analysis, we examine the impact of the work environment (in the sense of working from home vs. working from the office) on productivity. The aim of the research is to uncover how the work environment can affect the quality of work done and the net hours of time spent on work.

Dataset context: we use data on employees of companies in four areas where working from home has become a trend: IT, Finance and Accounting, Marketing and Communication and Consulting. In addition to age, education, and gender, we looked at whether the employee holds a managerial position, whether they work from the office or from home, the net number of hours devoted to work, and the quality of their work rated by direct supervisor of employee.

Are you wondering if working in a home office is more efficient for your business than working in an office? Our analysis can give you the answers you’re looking for. We want to help you clarify whether working in a homeoffice is actually beneficial for your organisation and what the potential benefits are. Discover new opportunities and efficient ways of working with our research.

Labour productivity by work environment and gender

We first focus on measuring productivity by the net number of hours devoted to work. The interactive chart below shows a comparison of the number of net hours of home office and office work. The interactive menu offers options to view results for men only and women only.

The mean net office time is 6.68 hours and net time working in home office is 6.19. Half of employees working from offices have between four and eight hours of net work. At the home office, the range of time is higher, with half of employees putting in between three and eight hours of work, with a maximum of 15 hours per day and one hour less in the office. Comparing the results for men and women, we do not find significant changes.

Now we can take a look at the chart below, which compares office and homeoffice productivity through work quality ratings.

The quality rating for both home office and office work starts at 100%, with a mean quality rating of 84.5% for office work and a mean quality rating of 82.54% for home office work. 3/4 of the employees from offices achieved a rating of 75% or higher. For working from home, 3/4 of employees scored 71% or higher. For employees working from the office the lower end reaches 40% of the quality rating. In the case of home office, it is 34%. Again, the results for men and women do not differ much.

Work productivity by work environment of managers and workers

The boxplot chart below provides an opportunity to distinguish the number of net hours spent working for managers and workers.

For employees in managerial positions, the mean net time spent working is 7.78 hours for office-based and 7.19 hours for home-based, with 50% of managers working between 3 and 9 hours from home and between 6 and 10 hours from the office. For rank-and-file non-managerial workers, the mean net time spent working from the office is 6.26 hours and 5.9 hours from home. The time variance for working from home is considerable. Although 75% of employees surveyed work between 3 and 8 hours, the maximum number of net hours is as high as 14 hours. For people working from the office, half of employees spend between 5 and 8 hours net working in the office, with the maximum range for most employees being 3 to 12 hours.

The mean managerial job quality rating is 84.18% higher when working in an office and 82.3% when in a working home office. 3/4 of managers score between 100 and 74% on job quality when working from the office and half of managers score between 98 and 71% when working from home, with the top quarter scoring between 98 and 100%. The mean of rating employees is 82.62% when working from home and 84.63% when working from office.

Labour productivity by work environment and sector

In this section, we distinguish between productivity measures in different sectors. In the boxplot charts below, you can use the interactive menu to see the differences between home office work and office work in each measured sector.

In the IT sector, employees working from home typically work longer hours (mean of 9.44 hours) compared to those in the office (mean of 6.11 hours). In finance and accounting, employees work an average of 6.41 hours from the office and 5.66 hours of net time from the home office. Marketing and communications employees spend more time working in the office (mean of 6.89 hours) than from home. Consulting employees also work longer hours in the office, with a mean of 7.39 hours, compared to a shorter range for those working from home (mean of 4.84).

In the IT sector, the average quality of work is 88%, with 3/4 of employees ranging from 100-75% in the office and 100-73.5% from home. In Finance and Accounting, the average quality of work is higher when working from home (85.66%) versus in the office (84.7%), with 3/4 of both groups scoring 100-76%. In marketing and communications, the mean of quality is 82.26% in the office and 80.03% at the home office. In consulting, the mean of quality is also higher in the office (85.37%) than working from home (80.19%).

Conclusion

When deciding on the effectiveness of working from home vs working from the office, the specifics of the job need to be taken into account. While in many jobs, meeting colleagues or clients is essential and face-to-face meetings can have a positive impact on the quality of work (which is reflected in the evaluation especially in the Consulting and Marketing and Communications sectors) in other cases, having your own quiet environment can bring invaluable benefits (such as in IT). At the same time, the evaluation in net hours of work can be misleading in a way. Higher net hours in offices may involve many meetings and negotiations, and the value of the work done may be comparable to home office work, where the employee spends less time on the work in question.