Sceptical office managers should stick with hybrid working, according to researchers writing in the journal Nature, who found evidence in China that working from home makes employees less likely to quit and can save a business millions of dollars.
The team said hybrid work models "improved job satisfaction and reduced quit rates by one-third," with "significant" reductions seen among "non-managers, female employees and those with long commutes."
"A hybrid schedule with two days a week working from home does not damage performance," according to the researchers, who looked at the effects of the system on over 1,600 China-based staff of Trip.com during 2021 and 2022.
The company found that each resignation cost around $20,000 once it completed recruitment and training of a replacement, meaning the reduction in quit rates from hybrid working could "generate millions of dollars in savings."
China, where the Covid pandemic started, had some of the world’s severest and longest-lasting virus-related curbs on movement by people.
So-called hybrid working, which means dividing time between operating remotely and in the office, became commonplace in dozens of countries during the pandemic and lockdown era, which ran into 2023 in China.
The researchers estimate that around 100 million people in Europe and North America are hybrid workers, almost all of them "white-collar" university graduates.
