Does Working From Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment

Bloom, Liang, Roberts & Ying · Stanford / Ctrip · 2015

We ran a nine-month randomised experiment at Ctrip, a 16,000-employee travel agency, assigning a group of call-centre staff to work from home while their colleagues stayed in the office.

Home working led to a 13% improvement in performance, of which roughly nine points came from working more minutes per shift — fewer breaks and sick days — and four from handling more calls per minute in a quieter, more convenient environment.

Home workers reported higher satisfaction, and attrition fell by half. Yet when later given the choice, over half asked to return to the office — and the gains for that group narrowed once they did.

The setting is a specific one: routine, individually-measured call-centre work, where output is unusually easy to quantify. Whether the same holds for collaborative or creative roles remains open.