Work from Anywhere or Co-locate? Autonomy versus Learning Effects at the United States Patent Office
While employees might prefer work arrangements that offer greater autonomy, such as work from anywhere (WFA) policies, there are possible negative productivity effects of WFA, due to a lack of learning from co-located peers and increased coordination costs. We study the effects of WFA on productivity at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and exploit two features of the setting that lend themselves to econometric analysis: First, our setting allows us to tease out how the lack of opportunities to learn from co-located peers affects productivity. Second, we exploit a natural experiment in which the implementation of WFA was driven by negotiations between managers and the union of patent examiners, leading to exogeneity in the timing of individual examiners’ transition to WFA. We observe mixed results of WFA across experienced and new hires: for experienced hires, WFA results in a 3.9% increase in output and a 24% reduction in turnover, without affecting the proportion of rework; however, for new hires, an increase in output due to WFA is followed by an additional increase in rework, indicating a negative learning effect from the lack of co-location with experienced peers. We employ micro-data on cost of living, degree of autonomy, and proxies for examiner effort to shed light on mechanisms. Back-of-the-envelope welfare estimates indicate that the 3.9% increase in patent grants at the USPTO could potentially create $1.16 billion in value for the U.S. economy.
Keywords: Working Conditions; Performance Productivity; Learning; Cost vs Benefits;
Citation:
Choudhury, Prithwiraj, Cirrus Foroughi, and Barbara Larson. "Work from Anywhere or Co-locate? Autonomy versus Learning Effects at the United States Patent Office." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-054, November 2018. View Details