In the past, many companies equated “working from home” with “slacking off from home,” fearing the potential productivity losses their company would face if employees had greater workplace flexibility.
Now, a year into the largest remote work movement the business world has ever seen, these fears have been largely overcome. Productivity in the U.S. rose 4.6% in Q3 of 2020, marking the largest quarterly productivity increase since 2009.
But there’s a catch: not every company is seeing productivity boosts with its mostly remote workforce. One study of 800 employers found:
- 67% of companies reported similar productivity levels as pre-pandemic days
- 27% reported an increase in productivity
So what’s separating those seeing gains in productivity from the rest? It could be in how they define productivity and the tools they’re using to track it.