The key to hybrid work productivity? Getting the ROI of your commute right

Optimizing this mix of employee activities is critical both for the success of individual companies, and the U.S. economy as a whole. Some might say it’s simple: just let the rank-and-file employees and their immediate supervisors figure it out for themselves.

However, without guidance and professional development in this area, middle managers end up shoehorning traditional office-centric methods of working into hybrid settings. The result is lower productivity, engagement, and morale, which hurts the company’s bottom line, as well as employee well-being and career success.

A new study from the University of Birmingham has found that managers developed a more positive outlook on the benefits of remote and flexible working since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. The research surveyed 597 managers and found that 51.8% of them agreed that working from home improves employee concentration, 59.5% agreed that it increases productivity, and 62.8% agreed that it increases motivation. Furthermore, an even larger proportion of managers, 76.5% believe that flexible working generally increases productivity. Importantly, the study also found that line managers were more likely to see flexible working as a performance-enhancing tool (71.2%) than senior management (65.6%). This highlights the importance of educating senior management on the benefits of flexible working and the positive impact it can have on employee performance.

The worst part of coming to the office

To maximize productivity, hybrid work models have to minimize commuting time for employees. Coming to the office needs to be for a specific purpose that outweighs the significant costs–in time, money, and stress–associated with the commute.

A survey by Hubble asking what respondents liked about working from home showed that 79% of respondents named the lack of commute, making it the most popular response by far. According to a recent survey by Zebra, 35% of Americans would be willing to take a pay cut in exchange for a shorter commute. Of those who would take a pay cut, 89% would sacrifice up to 20% of their salary.

Americans waste a lot of time commuting. U.S. Census data from 2019 shows that about 10% of Americans commuted over an hour each way, mainly those living in dense urban areas. On average, Americans commute a half hour each way.

Moreover, commuting to work costs a lot of money. According to a Flexjobs analysis, employees can save up to $12,000 per year by working full-time remotely. This includes savings on transportation expenses like gas, car maintenance, and parking, as well as the cost of buying professional clothing and eating out at expensive restaurants. While there may be some additional costs associated with working from home, such as increased utility bills and the cost of cooking at home, these expenses are typically much smaller than the costs of commuting to an office.

Peer-reviewed research found that longer commute times correlate with lower job satisfaction, increased strain, and poorer mental health. And happy workers are productive workers, as found by economists at the University of Warwick. They did experiments to discover that a sense of happiness made people around 12% more productive. Similarly, a study run by Oxford University’s Saïd Business School at BT, a British telecommunications firm, found very similar results: happy workers were 13% more productive.

In addition to the boost in productivity coming from happier workers who avoid a commute, those working from home actually work more hours. Chicago University research discovered that employees working from home devote about a third of the time saved from not commuting to their primary jobs.

Tasks hybrid workers should work on from home

After helping 21 organizations figure out successful hybrid work arrangements and writing abest-selling book about this topic, my experience shows that employees often fail to maximize their productivity.

It’s not because they’re lazy or deliberately inefficient: it’s just that they never learned how to do hybrid work effectively–and don’t know what they don’t know.

In fact, most of the work that most knowledge workers do is more effectively done from home anyway, even if the commute wasn’t an issue. For instance, much of the work done by individual employees involves focused tasks that they do by themselves. Research shows that workers are more focused while working at home, without the distractions of the office.

Another category of work that takes up a great deal of time for employees is asynchronous collaboration and communication. That might involve sending emails, editing a Google Doc or Mural board, or doing virtual asynchronous brainstorming. A McKinsey analysis shows that only email takes up an average of 28% of work time for knowledge workers. There’s no reason to commute to the office just to read and send emails.

A third major activity best done from home is virtual meetings. In a survey by the collaboration software company Slack, employees report spending two hours each day in meetings. Stuart Templeton, the head of Slack in the U.K., said that employers risked turning their offices into “productivity killers” by having their staff come in just to do video calls.

“Making a two-hour commute to sit on video calls is a terrible use of the office,” Templeton said.

Of course, for those workers who don’t have a comfortable and quiet home office, it’s important for employers to provide an alternative workplace for these three tasks, either in an employer-owned office or a coworking space. Still, most employees prefer to work on such tasks at home.

To maximize hybrid employee productivity, any office-based activities must outweigh the substantial burden of commuting. In addition, Most of the activities that hybrid employees carry out–such as focused individual tasks, asynchronous communication, and video meetings–are better done at home. That means most hybrid employees should spend most of their time working remotely.

Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., helps leaders use hybrid work to improve retention and productivity while cutting costs. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the best-selling author of seven books, including Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters and The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships. His latest book is Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, speaking, and training for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox, and over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist at UNC-Chapel Hill and Ohio State.

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