How hybrid work shapes the employee experience - 1 Jun 2023
Over the last several years, arrangements like the 3-2 hybrid work policy – where employees are encouraged to spend three days working from the office and two days working from “wherever they work best” – have grown increasingly common. Indeed, recent reports find that 50% of U.S. remote-capable employees have adopted some form of a hybrid work schedule. These hybrid policies can come with many advantages for employees, from greater flexibility to less time spent commuting and, in some cases, an increase in productivity and creativity. But what’s been less clear is how hybrid work has affected (and will continue to affect) the longer-term, subjective employee experience. In her talk, Prof. Whillans will present new findings from a collaboration with a top US technology company. Prof. Whillans will share survey and interview data from more than 3,000 employees, a daily diary study with 1,000 employees, and a field experiment with over 200 teams and 1,000 employees. This talk aimed at answering the question: how do hybrid work arrangements shape the employee experience? And, can simple behaviorally informed strategies improve the hybrid work experience?
Ashley Whillans is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Her research focuses on the relationship between time and wellbeing, with a focus on understanding how personal and workplace decisions and policies can shape employee time-use, wellbeing, and stress. She has published her research in top-tier peer-reviewed psychology and business journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Science Advances, Scientific Reports, Nature Human Behavior, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. In addition, her research on time-use and wellbeing has changed the way managers run their meetings and how several technology companies have developed their platforms to encourage optimal collaboration. In addition to publishing in top-tier academic journals, Prof. Whillans has written about her research for popular media outlets including Time Magazine, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal. Her most recent TED talk was viewed over 4 million times across platforms.
This event was a collaboration between the Center for Media and Economic Psychology at the Department of Marketing and Strategy, the House of Innovation and the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship.