Does remote work impact productivity?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

The Hard Shoulder, with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman, on Newstalk, with Ciara.

Shane Coleman (0:08)

Now, I want to turn to a study by the National Economic and Social Council. It's a forthcoming study. It's expected to conclude that there's no clear-cut evidence about the impact of remote and hybrid employment arrangements on productivity in the workplace. But is this really the case? For more on this, we're joined by Emmet Malone, Work Correspondent with the Irish Times, and Maeve Mc Elwee, Executive Director of Employer Relations with IBEC. Emmet, to you first, yourself and Martin Wall have been writing about this in the Irish Times already. What can we expect from this report? You've kind of got a little bit of a sneak preview of it.

Emmet Malone (0:48)

It's pretty short on hard conclusions really. What it does is, it's a very extensive review of the existing evidence.

So what it does is, it looks at all the surveys that have been done, all the studies, and it really kind of concludes that there is no very clear-cut conclusion to be made. If more employers believe that productivity is boosted by bringing people back to the office, most employees believe that they're more productive when they're at home.

But in general, it says that the view of employers towards hybrid and remote working is settling on the neutral to quite positive. And yet, what we see constantly at the moment, including in IBEC's most recent report there last week, is a slight edging, not huge increases, but a slight edging up in the numbers of firms that are bringing people back in two, three, four days a week. So it's a very mixed picture. And this report, as I say, looks at a lot of different surveys. It cites many times the research of FORSA, the largest public sector trade union, but a lot of other things, academic studies from home and abroad, employer studies from home and abroad. What's disappointing about it is, and certainly what I expected to see in it, because we were waiting for it, we knew it was coming for months, is that it doesn't look at what civil servants and public servants do. It carries out no new research of its own. And given the kind of huge sample that would have been there, and the various types of work practices operating across the public and civil service at the moment, that seems like a really huge missed opportunity.

Shane Coleman (2:30)

It does. Just a couple other things I just wanted to talk to you about, just in relation to your piece, Emmet.

You quote the report as saying, a consistent finding is that employees tend to report higher, or at least equivalent levels of personal productivity when working remotely or in hybrid settings. It did remind me a little bit of the old Mandy Rice Davis quote from the Perfumo Affair. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? I mean, of course employees who are working from home are going to say, and I'm not saying they're not, but they're inevitably going to say, oh, I'm more productive at home than I am in the office.

Emmet Malone (3:04)

Yeah, well, I guess they would. But what they point to over and over again in the surveys is the amount of time that they save in commuting, their other benefits to them, they, you know, shorter lunch breaks or whatever.

And a lot of them would argue that they feel the benefit of it and they want to keep the benefit of it so that they make sure they work harder. But I accept the point. There is very little that's, you know, outright black and white scientific about this. And some firms do report that they find that it's better when they have people on site. But what this survey point suggests is and this research suggests is that perhaps the biggest factor is how the people are managed. And one of the recommendations it makes to the government is that it support it, that it carry out its own training for its own middle managers to manage how people are working remotely or in hybrid and that it supports the private sector in doing the same thing.

Shane Coleman (4:04)

Okay, interesting. Might explore that a little bit more in a minute. I want to bring Maeve Mc Elwee in from IBEC. Maeve, are you surprised at what's in this report?

Maeve Mc Elwee (4:14)

Good afternoon, Shane.

We weren't surprised by what was in the IBEC report. No, I think what we're seeing is a stabilisation of the numbers working in remote and hybrid type positions.

And what we've seen over the last number of years is exactly what we had predicted in many ways, which is that employers, where it works well for the business and it works well for the individual, are maintaining their policies. But what we're seeing is a tightening up of the days that people are required to be on site because that initial feedback post-COVID was around the fact that, why am I coming in to do a hybrid meeting, sitting in my office on a Teams call or whatever service and platform you're using? So actually what employers are doing is streamlining the times that people are in. So people are all in together. And that's, I think, really what the key learning has been, and what we would have expected to see. And very interesting what Emmet is saying about people feeling they're more productive when they're at home. And of course, it's that individual versus collective productivity. It's not in any way to suggest that individually people are not productive at home. We know that they are. But what we also know for generations of people working together is that people work very well collectively. And there is an additional productivity that naturally comes about as people get to know each other better. They build those relationships. And even those conversations at the water cooler about, did you see the traders at the weekend? That builds friendships. It builds relationships. And it builds those connections that actually help people to develop more productivity in the office because now you've got people who are networking, sharing information, exchanging views. And that's really good. It's really good for mental health as well.