Hybrid work is at a healthy level in New Zealand. Photo / 123RF
Hybrid work is at a healthy level in New Zealand. Photo / 123RF
A new study has revealed the number of New Zealanders working from home has risen in the past year, along with the productivity of hybrid workers.
“Hybrid work is at a healthy level in New Zealand,” said Jarrod Haar, a professor of management at Massey University.
Haar’s “wellbeing@work” study surveyedbetween 1000 and 1135 New Zealand workers across six different months between November 2021 and December 2023.
In the most recent snapshot (December 2023), the study found 41.7 per cent of participants were now doing hybrid work, up from 28.4 per cent in June 2023 and 32.3 per cent in December 2022.
“This might reflect greater acceptance of some hybrid work – and we average around two days a week across the New Zealand workforce,” Haar said.
More than half (52.6 per cent) of workers were “all-office” for five days a week, while 5.7 per cent were only working from home as of December 2023.
Haar said those working “all-office” likely reflected jobs where there is no option to work remotely, such as service roles (police, health, supermarkets and retail).
“Many professional and knowledge workers clearly are enjoying working-from-home options,” he said.
Jarrod Haar, a professor of management at Massey University.
The percentage of people working from home exclusively has fallen from 8.3 per cent in June 2023 and is lower than the 7.7 per cent recorded in October 2022.
Working from home for the entire week was at its highest level in November 2021 (14.3 per cent), although that was during Delta restrictions when Auckland was at a various steps of Covid Alert Level 3.
“The five days a week [working from home] is still interesting and reflects a unique element we have only really had since Covid lockdowns, and still represents a solid number of workers who might never set foot in the office,” Haar said.
Hybrid workers are also more productive at home than they are in the office, the study found.
“The data suggests that hybrid workers are on average at least as productive at home as the office, with slightly over half saying they are more productive,” Haar said.
More than half (51.3 per cent) said they were more productive at home, while 34.8 per cent said their productivity was about the same, and 13.9 per cent were less productive.
“[Workers] appear to be repaying their workplaces with good productivity,” Haar said.
“This might be why workers are doing more hybrid work. Managers and leaders see the evidence they are working well – or at least as good as in the office – from home.
“When I compare workers’ job performance - how much they help co-workers, their organisation, or create new innovations - hybrid workers out-perform ‘all-office’ and ‘all-home’ workers.”
And according to a USA Today article, working from home won’t be going away in 2024, experts say.
It cited data from WFH Research, a scholarly data collection project, that found working from home held steady throughout most of 2023, despite a steep drop-off from 2020.
Around the US spring of 2020, more than 60 per cent of days were worked from home, according to the research, but this fell to about 25 per cent by 2023.
However, at least 40 per cent of US employees are now working remotely at least one day a week, a five-fold increase from 2019.
It prompted co-author of the research and Stanford University economics professor Nick Bloom to declare “return-to-office died in ‘23″.
Cameron Smith is an Auckland-based journalist with the Herald business team. He joined the Herald in 2015 and has covered business and sports.
