There is no shortage of hyperbole in the debate about whether companies should demand a full return to office work.
According to Citadel’s Ken Griffin, the hedge fund owes its record-breaking $16 billion haul last year to its staff’s full-time presence in the office. But such sound bites ignore all the benefits that remote work offers to employers, employees and the economy more broadly.
Naysayers dismiss employees’ preference for remote work as a manifestation of entitlement or “quiet quitting” (doing the bare minimum to remain employed). But that snap judgment is far too crude. A recent study by Harvard University economist Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Insights lab estimates that there are around 2.6 million people in the United States who should be working, but are not. At a time when many employers cannot fill vacancies, offering greater flexibility both increases the applicant pool and contributes to higher retention rates, easing the pressure on hiring.
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