Is Hybrid Work the Best of Both Worlds? Evidence from a Field Experiment

Hybrid work is emerging as a novel form of organizing work globally. This paper reports causal evidence on how the extent of hybrid work—the number of days worked from home relative to days worked from the office—affects work outcomes. Collaborating with an organization in Bangladesh, we randomized the number of days that individual employees worked from the office for nine weeks in the summer of 2020. Our results indicate that an intermediate number of days in the office results in more emails sent, a higher number of email recipients, and increased novelty of work products. Our test for underlying mechanisms suggests that hybrid work might represent the “best of both worlds,” offering workers greater work-life balance, without the concern of being isolated from colleagues.