How often should you be working at the office? Here’s what the research suggests

Office attendance from Monday to Friday used to be a pretty standard requirement for many jobs.

But plenty of employees have now developed a taste for working from home. And in response, some of their employers have started to tighten the rules on hybrid work.

Barclays Bank is one of latest big companies to do so, telling thousands of UK staff they must be in the office at least three days a week instead of two.

So what is the right balance for those who split the locations of their working week?

Plenty of research has now been done on that question. And while it does not give a single magic number, the evidence does suggest that the best range is two or three days in the office – on the same days as your colleagues.

For example, in a study involving a large online travel agency in China, more than 1,500 engineers, marketing and finance staff were allowed to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays, while a control group stayed in the office full time.

Over the following two years of performance reviews, the performance of the hybrid workers was equal in quality to those who stayed in the office. And the ones who worked from home were much less likely to leave the company – especially women and the workers with long commutes.

A smaller experiment at an international development organisation went a step further, by randomly varying how many days 148 staff spent in the office.

Those who came in around two days a week said they had a better work-life balance, more job satisfaction and less isolation than colleagues who came in more or less often. Their performance was unaffected.

These studies (among others) suggest that a week split roughly half and half between home and office costs employers little, while keeping staff happier and more likely to stay.

But there is also evidence that the office time counts, and that some work really does suffer at a distance.

In experiments across five countries, researchers found that video calls can reduce the flow of creative ideas. And an analysis of 20 million research papers and 4 million patents found that remote teams were less likely to produce breakthroughs. The evidence shows that being in the same room matters most when people are coming up with ideas together.

But that doesn’t mean office workers should be together all day every day. In the Chinese travel agency trial, staff in the office three days a week did just as well as those in for five. The extra two days bought nothing measurable in performance – but more resignations.

Yet there is a risk that return-to-office rules set a minimum number of days with no maximum, so that the minimum number creeps up. A study of over 1,000 UK managers, found that employees working from home were less likely to be considered for promotion and pay rises. When being seen is rewarded “at least three days” can quietly become four or five days for those who want to climb the career ladder.

Together days

How many days you spend in the office matters less if your colleagues are not there with you.

A study of 48,000 employees at an IT firm found that during hybrid working, innovation suffered the most in teams where office attendance was poorly coordinated. This can mean that people commute in to work, find that their team members or close colleagues are not there, and then spend the day on video calls they could have joined from home. They experience the downsides of office working and get none of the benefit.

Overall then, the research so far on hybrid working suggests a few simple rules:

1. The aim should be two or three days in the office, and that range should come with a maximum as well as a minimum.

2. Those days should be the same for for the whole team. The study of UK managers found that the career disadvantages that came with working from home disappeared in teams where it was the norm.

3. Use office days for the things that benefit from being in the same room, like brainstorming or mentoring new staff. Keep home days for focused work.

No large study has yet directly compared two days in the office with three. But the overall picture is consistent. Two or three coordinated days seems to be the sweet spot, and employers who ask for more should be able to explain exactly what those extra days are for.

Umar Boodoo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.