It’s time for companies to stop blaming remote work for low productivity, says the CEO of a digital talent acquisition firm dedicated to remote work in the US.

“Countless studies have shown that better work-life balance, such as exactly the kind that remote work creates, make workers more productive, happier and less likely to quit in general,” says Joseph Boll, CEO of RemoteWorker.jobs, an online jobs board and resource website for remote workers, remote work jobseekers, and hiring managers, employers and HR personnel seeking to recruit and hire the top talent for remote positions.

It has been a popular trend among some anti-remote-work businesses and public figures to point fingers at remote work as the reason for declining productivity levels reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) earlier this year. Even before those statistics were released, media headlines amplified disparaging comments from business leaders who made baseless claims about remote workers “slacking off.”

However, new data from the BLS makes a correlation between productivity and work-life balance. The BLS reported that productivity increased by 2.4% in Q2, while the number of hours worked actually decreased by 1.3% and employment remained “unchanged.” According to RemoteWorker.jobs, this suggests that people who work fewer hours — and hence have more time to live their life — may be more productive in general.

“This lines up with what researchers have already confirmed about remote work — that when employees have better work-life balance, they are more productive,” Boll notes. “They’re less stressed out about not having enough time to live their lives, and they’re less likely to feel burnt out. We’ve seen similar results with the four-day workweek in Europe, where businesses found that productivity increased significantly when employees spent less time on the job and had more free time to themselves.”

Other studies have also found that remote workers waste less company time than in-office workers do, being more likely to focus and work effectively rather than being distracted by gossip or doing non-work activities on the clock. Further, studies show that lack of inclusive work culture, rather than remote work, impacts collaboration; and that getting rid of remote work through return-to-office (RTO) mandates actually fosters resentment, making employees less productive, more likely to “Quiet Quit” or more likely to resign altogether.

“It’s time to end the false idea that productivity challenges are because a remote worker is at home slacking off,” says Boll. “Research and remote worker testimony confirm that this is not the case — it’s actually more likely to be true of an in-office worker. If a business’ remote team is having productivity challenges, it signals a company issue and likely a morale difficulty that needs to be addressed instead of unfairly placing all the blame on remote work.”

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About Remote Worker (US)
Remote Worker is designed to help hiring managers and businesses connect with job-seeking professionals for remote work positions. We are affiliated with Remote Worker (UK), ClickJobs.io, EcoCareers.org and Caribbean Employment Services Inc. For more information, visit https://www.remoteworker.jobs or contact [email protected].