Studies: Home office increases productivity

The possibility of working from home can increase productivity by around 20 percent compared to pure office presence, as suggested by a study by the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering and Organization IAO and Techniker Krankenkasse (TK). However, it depends on the right balance between home office and presence: too much home office reaches a tipping point that causes productivity to decrease. According to the study, this tipping point begins at a home office share of about 60 percent.

"We could see that the productivity advantages of home office only exist up to a certain point," explained study leader Josephine Hofmann. Beyond the tipping point, too little time is spent together in person, which leads to the loss of necessary professional and social exchange. Furthermore, information needed for productive work in the home office is often missing. The less employees come to the office, the more the effect intensifies. Presence time should therefore be used to prevent "social erosion processes" between those working remotely.

According to the information, for the study, all teams at TK with administrative tasks and customer contact were observed over a period of two years, comprising around 11,000 employees. The benchmark for productivity was the number of customer requests processed and customer phone calls. "We see that many employees prefer home office for concentrated work, but professional exchange and collaboration still work best in personal contact," commented TK board member Karen Walkenhorst on the results. According to employee surveys, home office is also advantageous for the compatibility of family and work and for minimizing stress.

Another study by Fraunhofer IAO refutes the argument often heard in the debate about home office, that sheer office presence is a key factor for a company's innovative capacity. Innovation can very well arise independently of location; rather, there is no direct linear relationship between presence and innovative capacity, according to the results of the research team.

The study is based on surveys of 2,000 people, in which the researchers divided employees with innovation requirements into subgroups – depending on innovation performance and higher or lower office presence. Both groups with higher and lower office presence showed different creativity and innovation values.

Offices must foster innovation

The best values were achieved by a group with an average office presence of 36 percent, 49 percent in home office, and 15 percent working remotely. The lowest values were achieved by a group with a high office presence of 71 percent. At the same time, however, a group with an average office presence of 82 percent also achieved high innovation values.

The difference in the groups with a lot of presence: The high-performing group rated the office spaces as particularly conducive to creative collaboration and cross-departmental meetings; the low-performing group rated the offices as only "moderately positive" for these purposes at best. The research team concludes from this that companies that want innovation on-site must also design the workplace accordingly. Simply calling people back to the office is not enough. According to the study, classic soft factors such as varied tasks and enjoyment of work also play a role in innovative capacity.

(axk)