![]() ![]() However, against these positive longer-term productivity effects stand potentially adverse effects arising from increased spatial distance among employees, e.g. impaired communication resulting in lower innovation or the fusing of work and personal, family and social life leading to hidden overtime. Emerging evidence provides support for this notion: 61.9% of hiring managers interviewed in a recent US poll stated their intention to rely more on remote work in the future (Ozimek, 2020). This could speed up the transition into a “new normal”, which would have been more gradual in the absence of the crisis, given uncertainties and costs around the necessary organisational and management changes and other hurdles – cultural reluctance or legal constraints. In the longer-term, productivity performance could improve to the extent that the crisis catalyses wider and smarter adoption of efficient telework practices, raising worker well-being and efficiency and lowering firms’ costs. Conversely, a poll among US hiring managers found that managers were more likely to have experienced short-term productivity gains rather than losses due to remote work (Ozimek, 2020), suggesting that productivity losses during the crisis are by no means a foregone conclusion. Indeed, a survey conducted by one of Japan’s research institutes during the lockdown period confirms decreased self-reported worker productivity (Morikawa, 2020). This will create a productivity disaster for firms” (Gorlick, 2020). ![]() In a recent interview, Nick Bloom from Stanford University, who previously identified important gains from telework under normal circumstances among Chinese call-centre workers (Bloom et al., 2015), emphasised that “We are home working alongside our kids, in unsuitable spaces, with no choice and no in-office days. In the short term, compared to the pre-crisis period, the exceptional conditions in which telework was implemented may well have lowered productivity for those who were able to work from home. Telework has been crucial to sustain production during the crisis, but its effects on productivity are unclear. For instance, many workers – especially young, less educated workers at the bottom of the wage distribution – during the crisis worked in jobs requiring physical presence (Brussevich, Dabla-Norris and Khalid, 2020). It should also be kept in mind that, while telework allowed some firms and workers to better ‘weather the storm’, especially those who used telework before, the ability to telework during the crisis was not open to all and differential access to telework may well have exacerbated existing inequalities. This has potentially large impacts on businesses of all kinds, whether they had embraced teleworking in the past or not (OECD, 2020). During this episode, societies have undergone a large scale “forced experiment” where sectors, firms and workers have continued to operate while being physically separated, provided they had the necessary technological, legal and digital security conditions. Teleworking – “work-from-home” or “home-office” – has been a necessary practice for many firms and workers during the lockdown period of the COVID-19 crisis. This policy brief has been produced in the context of the Global Forum on Productivity and benefitted from support by its members. To improve the gains from more widespread teleworking for productivity and innovation, policy makers can promote the diffusion of managerial best practices, self-management and ICT skills, investments in home offices, and fast and reliable broadband across the country. To minimise the risks of more widespread teleworking harming long-term innovation and decreasing worker well-being, policy makers should assure that teleworking remains a choice and is not ‘overdone’ co-operation among social partners may be key to address concerns e.g. While more widespread telework in the longer-run has the potential to improve productivity and a range of other economic and social indicators (worker well-being, gender equality, regional inequalities, housing, emissions), its overall impact is ambiguous and carries risks especially for innovation and worker satisfaction. The use of telework before the crisis varied substantially across countries, sectors, occupations and firms, which suggests a large scope for policies to contribute to the spread of teleworking. Widespread telework may remain a permanent feature of the future working environment, catalysed by the experiences made with teleworking during the COVID-19 crisis. ![]()
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