Stanford University

William D. Eberle Professor of Economics

Professor of Economics

Associate Professor of Economics

Assistant Professor Of Economics

Teamraderie

Advisor

Gable

Tandem

Roam

Scoop

Radious

Kadence

Stern Strategy Group

Professional Speaking

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Senior Research Economist

Stanford Professor | LinkedIn Top Voice In Remote Work | Speaker on work from home | co-founder wfhresearch.com and wfhmap.com

Nick Bloom is a Stanford Economist who has been studying remote work for over two decades. He is the co-founder of www.wfhresearch.com, a platform that provides insights and best practices on working from home. He is also an advisor at Gable and Tandem, two companies that offer solutions and services for remote workers and teams.

As a leader in his field, Nick has contributed to the policy and public discourse on remote work, meeting President Obama, speaking at the 2014 Working Families Summit, and delivering a 2017 TedX talk. He has also consulted with hundreds of CEOs and managers, helping them navigate the challenges and opportunities of remote work. He has been featured extensively in national and international media, sharing his expertise and findings. His mission is to advance the understanding and adoption of remote work, and to empower workers and organizations to thrive in the new world of work.

One topic that keeps coming up is employee frustration at being asked to come to the office to then spend most of the day on zoom/teams, doing email/slack, and individual work. This can all be done from home. 

In SWAA we surveyed folks about how much of different activities they undertook on a typical WFH day and on a typical office day. They spend only about 80 minutes on in-person activities in a typical office day. The rest of the time they are doing activities that could be done from home.

So it appears we have too much commuting for the amount of in-person activities teams need. The solution is try focus in-person activities on office days - this is what most employees find valuable to commute for. Then let employees WFH on the other days.

Results pack: https://lnkd.in/ggfFyzUw

Nick Bloom

Gordon Mullan (Remote Work and Virtual Presenting Coach)

I get asked a lot about the 4-day week. It is a complex issue so a longer post. 

If you treat leisure as a good we should spend some of our ongoing productivity growth on more leisure. US productivity grows at about 2% a year, totaling 242% since 1950. So we can now produce in 11.7 hours what we could produce in 1950 in 40 hours. This productivity growth is why John Maynard Keynes famously predicted in 1930 that we would work 15 hours a week by 2030.

Average hours in the US have fallen on average from 2,300 a year in 1950 to 1,700 in 2023, a 23% drop. This is something, but not much. Only one-tenth of the productivity growth since 1950 has gone to working less. The other nine-tenths has gone to spending more. Society is using higher productivity mostly to buy larger TVs, cars, electronics and other goods and services.

So can a four-day week fix this? There are actually four-versions of the 4-day week. The first three already exist and I will call "muggle" versions for being present here and now. These "muggle" versions should be encouraged. The fourth version is more "magic" in that it is wonderful, but I'm less sure it exists. 

(1) WFH-Friday:  This is a 4-day week in the office. Friday is at home, typically working but in a more relaxed setting. 
(2) No-work Fridays:  You get paid for 4-days and work for 4-days. This is also known as part-time. Great idea - I worked a 4-day week at the IFS. 
(3) Shift changing:  For example, work 4 days for 10 hours rather than 5 days for 8 hours. Often happens in hourly pay jobs, like in Amazon warehouses.
(4) Work for 4 days, get paid for 5 days and produce 5-days of output:  Sounds amazing, but I have not seen strong evidence on this. I have seen reports sponsored by 4-day week advocacy groups, usually examining small NGOs and government agencies. So it can be done. But from talking to 100s of managers in larger private sector firms it is unclear if this extends more broadly. The typical response is "If I could easily cut hours and pointless meetings I would - I don't want to work long hours either". 

So, I think the 4-day week is a great long-run ambition. But I do not think this will come from a Politician led piece of Government regulation. The best hope is continued productivity growth. If this continues at 2% a year we can split 1% to higher pay and 1% to lower hours. In 20 years we could be earning 20% more and working a 4-day week :-)

To boost productivity we should focus on better education, research, infrastructure, training and political stability. Oddly enough good economic policy is probably our best route to a 4-day week.

Keynes essay: https://lnkd.in/gReJJKJe
Data: https://lnkd.in/gbhcHTzr

Mannan Amin

Is WFH is over? 

No. But, I have been asked four times this week based on a new report. I'm not linking to the report to avoid supporting suspect data. Three points:

1) WFH is not over. It has been totally flat since late 2022. You can look at survey data from the Census or SWAA. You can look at swipe data from Kastle. You can look at the Flex Index. Or you can even look at *turnover-corrected* job-postings (below). They all show WFH dropped back from its 2020 high, but has been stable from late 2022 onwards.

2) Not all reports are the same. This report was based on job-postings data, which needs careful handling. The reason is job-posting rates depend on turnover. For example, Fast Food has about 200% annual turnover, while Professors like me have about 5% annual turnover. So Fast Food companies post vacancies 40x more per job than Universities. So, if you don't adjust for turnover rates using postings data you focus on high-churn jobs like fast-food, which don't offer WFH :-(

3) The media has a bias towards "shock" stories. The reason is all of us - including me - tend to click on these. One solution is Linked-In. The crowd here is very good at calling out BS. Something posted on Linked-In that survives 24 hours without a bunch of data critiques is probably good :-)

Cited data sources:
WFH rates: www.wfhresearch.com
Flex Report: https://lnkd.in/gY4CWpXq
Office Swipe Data: https://lnkd.in/giXrpsNw
Turnover-correct job-posting data: www.wfhmap.com

Eric Hazan

I was at Yale Law School for the Raben lecture, on the future of WFH. Great event (slides below) with super interesting discussions including:

1) WFH is hugely impacted by tax and legal systems, and policy needs to adapt. For example, if you live in California and work in New York you pay state tax twice - CA taxes on where you live and NY on where you work :-( 

2) Flipping this around there is a huge opportunity for governments to generate remote job booms by offering supportive tax and legal systems. Remote jobs are highly mobile, so policymakers should target these :-)

3) Early career mentorship and training in professional firms means for *new* hires (e.g. associates) the future is likely hybrid. Mostly in-person days for mentoring and training, with some WFH days for absorbing and reading.

Slides: https://lnkd.in/gv95fwi9

Call For Research Papers: Conference on Remote Work

Stanford CA, from October 9th to 11th

Please submit research papers on the measurement, cause and effect of hybrid and remote work. Conference will be in person with a live zoom broadcast (and recorded for presenters that give permission). 

To get an idea of the types of papers that would fit please check out the last two years of conferences: https://lnkd.in/gfnkuHyK

Submission portal: https://lnkd.in/g6aAQDbV
Full call for papers: https://lnkd.in/gQ7y7D_9

With Jose Maria Barrero Emma Harrington Natalia E. Prithwiraj Choudhury and Steve Davis

Rajyeshwari Ghosh

Magda Ferretti, PhD

Fascinating paper on the four day week over the last half century. Key findings:

1) The four day week has been growing in popularity since the 1970s. It has tripled in popularity in the US (see chart below), adding 8 million workers. It is also growing in Germany, Holland and South Korea (the other countries examined).

2) This growth is not due to changing demographics, industry mix, firm size or commuting time. The study struggles to find any easily measurable group driving this increase. The four-day week appears to be rising everywhere.

3) Four-day week workers have lower hourly wages. But this four-day wage penalty is shrinking over time. 

The authors argue facts (2) and (3) can be explained by a model in which workers increasingly want to bunch leisure. They want 3-day weekends, perhaps to travel. As society gets richer having long-weekends is more appealing. Firms increasing are able to productively employ 4-day workers. There is a wage discount, so it's not ideal for firms. But this wage discount is falling as firms get better at effectively using 4-day workers. 

The paper has some great discussion, and for anyone interested in economics it's a good example of the way we approach data and model questions.

https://lnkd.in/g5dysNNq

Friday is increasingly turning into WFH day. Turns out Friday afternoon is peak WFH of the WFH day. We polled our SWAA panel last month on days of the week and times of the day for meetings in person, remote and mixed. Turns out Monday mornings are the big in person time - presumably kick-off-the-week meetings. Friday afternoons in reverse are the biggest remote meeting time - perhaps a more relaxed weekly wrap-up (or folks already travelling away for the weekends).

Hopefully helpful data for planning your own team cadence, and interested if others see that. I'm an outlier here as my PhD group lunch is on Friday so that's always my in-person day (perhaps that's why I'm an academic :-) ).

Here is the full report: https://lnkd.in/dpvUkunC

Roam's "The Office of Tomorrow" launch - live in London!

Attention London Founders, Pioneers, Investors, and Curious People, join hosts Howard Lerman, Sam Blond and Jon Buss for this one-of-a-kind show, cocktail party, and extraordinary networking opportunity at Wilton's, the world's oldest Music Hall.

At this stunning, iconic venue, you’ll see how a Roam Virtual Office is radically transforming company culture and productivity with ad-hoc, quick conversations that average just 8 minutes. You’ll also hear from extraordinary London founders and some surprise guests.

The event will be on the first night of SaaStr Europa and is just a 10-minute walk from the venue. All Saastr attendees are encouraged to RSVP.

When: June 4th
Time: 18:00
Where: Wilton's Music Hall 
RSVP: https://ro.am/tour/london

Seats are limited. Please RSVP ASAP!

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