Smart Working: Work Flexibility Without Constraints

Abstract

Does removing constraints on the time and place of work benefit the utility of workers and firms? We design a randomized experiment of a sample of workers in a large Italian company; workers are randomly divided into a treated group that engages in flexible place and time of work (which we call “smart working”) one day per week for nine months and a control group that continues to work traditionally. By comparing the treated and control groups, we find causal evidence that the flexibility of smart working increases the productivity of workers. We estimate a decrease of one day of leave on average per month, and we exclude a significant decline in objective productivity in any month. We also find sizeable improvements in well-being and work–life balance, and we observe that men also increase the time dedicated to household and care activities. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: This work was supported by the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministries and European Commission (Italy’s Department for Equal Opportunities and t). Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4767 .

Missing the Forest for the Trees: When Monitoring Quantitative Measures Distorts Task Prioritization

“…Workers who understand that working long hours improves their employer's (explicit or implicit) evaluations will prioritize their tasks to extend their work hours while reducing their total productivity. This aspect of transparency may provide part of the explanation for recent research pointing at the benefits of working from home (Angelici and Profeta, 2020;Bloom et al, 2015;Choudhury et al, 2021).…”

“…In contrast, office workers allocated part of their effort to other activities that create an appearance of work without substantially increasing productivity. Similarly, Angelici and Profeta (2020) found that flexible work hours and location increased worker productivity. Choudhury et al (2021) found that working from anywhere was even more effective than working from home, reporting a productivity increase of 4.4%.…”

“…In contrast, when workers work from home, managers are less able to observe direct measures of worker performance, and rely more on "bottom line" productivity outcomes. 2 Some empirical studies corroborate this conjecture, showing a positive effect of working from home on employees' productivity (Angelici and Profeta, 2020;Bloom et al, 2015;Choudhury et al, 2021). Working from home became the reality of a substantial part of the labor market following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic at the end of 2019 (Gartner, 2020), with recent surveys indicating that productivity increased as a result (Barrero et al, 2021;DeFilippis et al, 2022).…”

A Method and Metrics to Assess the Energy Efficiency of Smart Working

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The Importance of e-Recruitment within a Smart Government Framework

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