Photo: Cristian Tarzi / Unsplash
A new study into flexible working conditions reveals those who have the option to work from home are more satisfied and less likely to quit.
This is according to a study on workers at the Shanghai office of Trip.com, which is a global travel agency. The study was carried out between 2021 and 2022.
The study found lower quit rates for those working from home two days a week, compared with those required to be in the office for five days a week.
The study also revealed that hybrid workers were also found to be more creative and innovative compared with their peers who worked full-time at the office.
University of Otago management senior lecturer Paula O'Kane said the study should encourage New Zealand companies to trust that having hybrid working conditions was a positive thing to do. She believed some Kiwi companies were having a "push back" on hybrid working conditions and not tending to fully trust the productivity of employees who worked from home.
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Although the study was done in China and there were cultural differences, O'Kane said it was a robust study to be taken seriously by New Zealand companies. She said the study was done on a similar organisation to New Zealand, and it included a large sample size.
The study used a lot of measures including job satisfaction, performance scores and looked at the promotion of the hybrid workers. The report showed no change between these measures between those who worked from home two days a week and those who worked at the office five days a week.
The study showed no negative effects from those who worked from home two days weekly.
However, O'Kane said she was aware studies done by others had highlighted some issues around hybrid workers feeling more isolated and there was a risk of them being more invisible to some organisations.
She said Kiwis are keen to have flexible working conditions and so she wanted to encourage companies to come up with their own robust measures to see how their own hybrid working conditions were going. This could give them more confidence in offering flexible working conditions.
She said hybrid conditions could be done in a way that worked for individual companies. This particular study had hybrid workers at home on Wednesdays and Fridays, but this was a system that worked for that organisation. Individual organisations could choose the best days that worked best for their staff and organisation.