Remote work isn’t new—I’ve known people who telecommuted in the 1960s, and farmers were working from home long before that.
But many people worked remotely for the first time in 2020, for reasons you may remember. Since then, managers and CEOs have confidently—and loudly—stated that remote work is unproductive and hurts morale. Research doesn’t necessarily agree with them.
To be clear: I would never argue that there are no downsides to working from home. I’ve been fully remote since 2009, and I’m a mess. I’m kidding, mostly, but a 2026 study published in Science by researchers at Harvard University does conclude that remote work “substantially increases isolation and worsens mental health, particularly for those living alone.”
Regardless, I want to explore a few common myths about working from home and see what published papers have to say. Let’s get started.
Hybrid work actually increases productivity
There’s a widespread assumption that remote workers slack off, resulting in reduced productivity. This is a particularly popular idea among managers, but is it based on data? Or is it just a gut feeling?
A widely cited 2015 study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics by researchers at Stanford University shows this well. The paper examines a trial run at CTrip, now known as Trip.com, where 249 call center employees were randomly assigned to work from home or in the office. The study found that remote workers outperformed those who kept going to the office. “Home working led to a 13 percent performance increase, of which about 9 percent was from working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick-days) and 4 percent from more calls per minute (attributed to a quieter working environment),” the abstract states.
It’s also worth noting that half the employees assigned to work from home chose to return to the office, in part because they feared missing out on potential promotions. But a follow-up study, involving some of the same researchers, adds more context. A 2024 study published in Nature by researchers at Stanford ran a six-month trial involving 1,612 employees at the same company (Trip.com).
“The results are clear: Hybrid work is a win-win-win for employee productivity, performance, and retention,” Nicholas Bloom, a researcher on both papers, said in a press release about the study. Notably, managers in the study predicted a drop in productivity at the beginning of the study but changed their mind toward the end, after being shown the data.
Now, you could make the argument that a call center in China isn’t necessarily demonstrative of the broader economy, and it’s true that many jobs aren’t well suited to remote work. But a US Bureau of Labor Statistics writeup from 2024, which reviews many studies that came out of the pandemic era, concludes that “results suggest that the rise in remote work and TFP (Total Factor Productivity) growth are positively correlated”.
Which, again, doesn’t prove that remote work is more productive in all cases. But at the very least remote work is not necessarily less productive—and research suggests it can be better than going into the office.
Hybrid workers are more loyal, not less
Another idea, popular among managers, is that remote work makes employees feel less loyal to their companies. The research here suggests a more complicated picture.
The 2024 study published in Nature mentioned earlier found the opposite. Attrition among remote employees fell by one-third in that study, though notably this was only among non-managers (managers left at the same rate, regardless of whether they worked remotely).
A 2007 study published in The Journal of Applied Psychology by researchers at Pennsylvania State University found that remote work increased employee loyalty. “We found that telecommuters reported more job satisfaction, less motivation to leave the company, less stress, improved work-family balance, and higher performance ratings by supervisors,” author Ravi Gajendran told ScienceDaily.
And forcing workers back to the office means losing senior employees. A 2024 study by researchers at the University of Michigan and University of Chicago found that return-to-office programs at Microsoft, SpaceX, and Apple led to a lot of turnover in a particularly damaging way. “Our results suggest that return-to-office policies can lead to an outflow of senior employees, posing a potential threat to the productivity, innovation, and competitiveness of the wider firm,” the paper concludes. Those senior employees have little trouble finding equivalent work, the study suggests.
Returning to office hurts morale
Managers will argue that returning to the office is important for things like company cohesion and morale. Research, however, suggests such mandates have the opposite effect.
A widely discussed 2023 study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh compared data across 137 S&P 500 companies with public return-to-office mandates. Researchers used Glassdoor employee ratings to judge morale and also attempted to find any financial benefit to the change. RTO mandates result in “significant declines in employees’ ratings of overall job satisfaction, work-life balance, senior management and corporate culture,” the paper states. But at least revenue went up, right? Not exactly: “Firms with mandatory RTO plans do not experience significant changes in profitability and market values,” the paper states.
A 2026 study published in Frontiers in Psychology by researchers at the University of Texas surveyed 7,704 healthcare employees, then followed up in a year to see who did and did not stay in their current jobs. Remote workers reported high well-being and were less likely to leave their jobs. The paper states the findings “suggest that remote work can support well-being and that well-being, not proximity, is a key factor in employee retention.”
It’s possible there are other intangible benefits to in-office work. But this research suggests that there is no short-term morale boost from returning to the office—if anything, the opposite is true.
