Are Teams More Productive When They Work Remotely or in the Office? A New Study Says It’s a Tie

When it comes to project management, remote work is just as productive as office work, a new global survey showed. 

This is according to the findings of the Project Management Institute (PMI), which determined that the performance rate changes were essentially the same across different work situations. For those working remotely, the performance rate was 73.2 percent, while hybrid and full-time in the office rates, clocked in at 73.4 and 74.6 percent, respectively. Although working in the office full time had a slightly higher performance rate, the study noted that this is not statistically significant.  

The Pulse of the Profession 2024, which surveyed more than 2,500 professionals in different industries across the globe from June to August 2023, points out that the negative connotation associated with remote work is unfounded. Instead, the research group could not determine a significant benefit to forcing people back to the office, “especially considering the negative impact such a move would have on employee morale and retention and the operational costs of in-person work.”

With these results, PMI President and CEO Pierre Le Manh hopes this would prompt project professionals–whether they work in small businesses, or large corporations–to empower their teams with the flexibility of choosing how and where to do their best work. 

“I really hope that leaders in particular will understand that spending too much energy in trying to bring people back to the office may not be very useful,” he tells Inc. He said they should focus less on who can be in the office, and more on “who are the right people for the job.” 

There are other studies that also dispel the myth that remote work is unproductive or less cost effective. For example, an analysis of more than 500 public companies during the first two years of the pandemic found that those that applied a flexible work arrangements had actually outperformed their peers, according to a 2023 report by the hybrid workplace software company Scoop Technologies and Boston Consulting Group. Their study found that flexible companies generated 21 percent revenue growth on an industry-adjusted basis, as opposed to those that required in-person work, which increased revenue by 5 percent.