A Simple Way to Improve Employee Well Being Without Denting Productivity
During the coronavirus lockdowns, 50% of European workers were estimated to engage in some form of smart working. Smart working at its worst, though, because it was unplanned and in many cases full-time, with a strong potential to create a sense of social isolation. The flip side of the coin is that this experience revealed that smart working is feasible both for routine and for non-routine tasks, and agreements that allow employees to work from home one or more days per week are now common in the Western world. What is still lacking is a scientifically rigorous assessment of its effectiveness.
In a study forthcoming in Management Science, using a randomized controlled trial (the gold standard of scientific research), Paola Profeta and Marta Angelici (Bocconi Department of Social and Political Sciences) concluded that the flexibility of smart-working improves the well-being and work-life balance of workers, without reducing their productivity.