'Win-win-win': Three-day hybrid work week is a success, largest study to date published in Nature says

The three-day in-office hybrid work schedule is a "win-win-win," according to a study published in the prestigious science journal Nature. 

In the study, Nick Bloom from Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research — a highly regarded expert on work modes who has been researching remote productivity since well before the pandemic — provided concrete evidence for the benefits of hybrid work.

Bloom has previously argued that hybrid work benefits both employees and employers and has continued to advise employers to offer more flexible work arrangements as more companies call employees back to the office.  

The study from Bloom and co-authors, Ruobing Han and James Liang, is the largest to date on the benefits of hybrid work among university-trained professionals, and largest covering hybrid work to use a randomized control trial structure, considered the "gold standard" in experimental design. It involved 1,612 employees at Trip.com, a multinational Chinese technology firm, and took place across six months to analyze job retention, satisfaction, productivity and development, The study used a two-day-at-home work week because it is the primary structure for the 70% of global employees working on a hybrid schedule. Bloom estimates that about 100 million employees worldwide now have some form of a hybrid schedule, many in knowledge worker roles.

The data shows that the three-day in-office hybrid work approach improved retention and satisfaction, and resulted in equal employee success across creative and team-oriented employees in functions like marketing, finance and engineering — which often offer hybrid structures.

Non-manager attrition for hybrid employees had a 2.4% rate, a one-third reduction from the control group of