I’m guessing um many of you pretty
suspicious about working from home I
used to work when I worked in London I
worked at McKinsey in the Treasury which
is the finance ministry and my friends
would tease me all the time about
working from home they would say are
working from home is shirking from home
or working remotely remotely working you
know they were not very kind to me about
working from home they claimed I watch
those old black-and-white movies all day
and actually did nothing at all you know
if you traveled on the subway you’ve
probably seen these sketchy adverts that
say things like work from home earn
thousands of dollars monthly which
strikes me as you know a an implausible
the implausibly large amount of money
and be you know way too many exclamation
marks even for someone that’s done
middle school English and you know if in
another direction if you if you listen
to music who you follow the charts you
may have you may know this song it’s
work from home by fifth harmony uh you
can probably figure it it’s not a very
good representation of the positivity of
working from home this was the this was
about the you know the cleanest cut
photo I could get from the album they
have the most amount of clothes on in
this picture compared to anything else
to tell you how bad it is the Chorus
Line is a ain’t nothing but sheets
between us let my body do the work
you’re the boss at home which tells you
this is really not about work it’s you
know something else is going on so this
is a you know also very negative about
working from home online it’s it’s a
similar so if you go to Google or to
Bing and you punch in working from home
into image search what do you get well
you get something that looks like this
ah a lot of pictures of basically naked
people
cartoons people jogging juggling way too
many babies to actually be doing
anything constructive the reason I show
you being is being nicely shows you
three other sort of multiple other
searches which are common searches that
go with this and you can see other
common searches are working from home
funny
welcome home comic
and my favorite is working from home
underwear but apparently people are
regularly searching from all the time so
you know maybe you can push it up the
top if you’ll go out and search on it
now and you know it’s not just online
the media so I talk to journalists quite
a lot and journalists most of the time
are actually working from home despite
that they were very suspicious about
working from home when the big storm
erupted after that Lita memo from Yahoo
in 2013 so you know if you cast your
mind back you may remember Marissa
Mayer’s the CEO of your home back in
2013 on a quiet Sunday some memo gets
leaked out claiming they’re going to ban
working from home at the firm now
Marissa Mayer probably never could have
guessed that in her long time at Yahoo
you know going through her start her
time there all the ups and downs and
eventually exiting this would be the
event that generated the most press
coverage for her and you know the press
went wild for the next two weeks there’s
masses of coverage and print media on
radio media on TV media and you can see
here I put up some examples from The
Economist from The Wall Street Journal
from the New York Times from Bloomberg
all of it was debating very heavily
about the pros and cons of working from
home and one hand there are people
saying yeah they’re loafing off they’re
not doing anything they’re watching TV
in their underwear to the other side
saying you know this is the workplace of
the future it’s a more productive way to
operate I should actually end saying are
probably know probably the example of
why working at home is potentially
seeing us so bad as a friend of mine
told me a great anecdote which is she
said her 12 year old daughter went out
shopping with some friends and a tovrea
daughter came back and she bought a
baseball cap and on the baseball cap it
said working from home her mum said to
her you are not wearing that baseball
cap out of the house as if it was like a
t-shirt that said you know hey big boy
I’m easy or something so you know tells
you how load working from home is sunk
as the concept but I’d say I work from
home a lot ah I’m very positive about
working from home and I actually think
it has enormous potential as much
potential that say something like you
know the driverless car legs let me
explain why so there the average
American spent about 45 minutes a day
commuting into work about another 45
minutes a day commuting back
well almost all of that’s done by card
there are about a hundred and fifty
million working Americans there’s
probably about another 500 million
people working in similar situations in
Europe and South America and Asia and
Africa now imagine if we could take to
some share of those people and allow
them to work from home in a daily basis
the enormous amount of time you’d say
the huge amount of money you’d save in
terms of reduced culture and you know
moreover the amazing impact you have on
reducing pollution so I think it has
tremendous potential and then you should
ask yourself why you know what why we
work why do we focus so much and working
in the office well this is addition
that’s gone back a couple of hundred
years to the Industrial Revolution so
you know I guess I guess many ways who
can blame the British for this but
before the Industrial Revolution around
1800 everyone basically worked from home
we were we were farmers we’re artisans
were craftsmen and around 1800 modern
workplace has started to be formed we
started to mass in factories and offices
and the modern form of commuting to the
office and back or to the factory and
back started to be set in store but you
know a lot has changed in the last 200
years in a sense we don’t need to be
like this anymore
you know there’s modern communications
as modern computers as the Internet and
so one of the things on argue is you
know the way that we organize the office
the way we organize factories is
something that’s very backward looking
it doesn’t need to be that way anymore
you know it reminds me a lot I have kids
and it reminds me a lot of these long
summer holidays so the summer holidays
for three months is a huge challenge for
parents and what enough to do to do with
your children for three months and then
you ask why do we have these long summer
holidays and again it’s one of these
throwback things that we had them
because once the school day was starting
to be structured a couple of hundred
years ago we release kids to go and
harvest the fields and you know I don’t
know about any parents here but most
kids certainly are not doing any
harvesting anymore in the you know the
bear in the summer so I’m gonna argue
working working from home as a future
looking technology I think it has
enormous potential now that’s my claim
um what I’m going to talk about for the
rest of the day is some evidence to
support that I wanted to collect
evidence that was scientific my father’s
actually a scientist he does lots of
drugs testing I talk to him a lot about
that if anyone hears in the
pharmaceutical industry or works for the
federal drug
ministration you know that to prove
something like a medical device you have
to separate out into a large pool of
subjects randomly pick some treatment
randomly pick some control allow them to
you know one take the drug one not and
follow them forward for months on end so
I wanted to do something very much like
that from working from home to
scientifically test it I was fortunate
enough that I found a company that would
do that with me it’s called sea trip
they are China’s largest travel agency
they have about 20,000 employees they’re
worth about 20 billion dollars on NASDAQ
here is a picture their headquarters in
our Shanghai they they look like any
kind of in a modern office the very
Dilbert ask look lots of desks in
cubicles and thousands of people working
taking calls typing away at computers
dealing with customer complaints coming
up with new products managing their team
now why were they interested in working
from home well they’re interesting
working poem because Shanghai is a
phenomenally expensive place to run a
business it has incredibly expensive
property prices and they were growing
rapidly and their aim was to try and
grow but without increasing their office
space now it’s probably a similar
thought for many people here that
operate in the Bay Area or in New York
or in Chicago or London or Paris you
know Toronto or Tokyo or Johannesburg
wherever you are around the world office
space is becoming very expensive in big
cities so this is what motivated them to
start down this road so rather than is
roll the whole thing out they thought
they’d run you know working working the
bus at Stanford a big working from home
experiment so there they got a large
number of volunteers from two divisions
that wanted to work from home and they
set it up as a randomized control trial
so in a very Chinese style James Liang
who’s the CEO who’s pictured here drew a
ping-pong ball of having urn the urn
said even which meant everyone that had
an even birthday so we were born on the
second the fourth the 68 the 10th of the
month you got to go and work at home for
the next nine months if you had an odd
birthday so like my selfie the first the
third the fifth the seventh the ninth
except a month you stayed in the office
for the next nine months and in fact we
tracked these two groups for about two
years so this was des trance it up as
scientifically as we could now what did
we find
Oh before before we go to the results I
should point out here are the people
working from home ah it’s not clear it’s
not clear we look at these guys exactly
what’s going to happen the person in the
bottom right you know doesn’t look
exactly very enthusiastic to me so as
someone nervous
so are they about some of these
characters in the top right it’s another
picture to show the downside of working
from home
that’s her bed in the photo so she has
about a four foot commute you know but
which is great and very efficient on the
other hand I personally I know I really
wouldn’t want to spend you know 21 22
hours a day in the same room day in day
out so you know it’s certainly not for
everyone and to point out just to get
the experiment clear they’re typically
working in teams of 10 to 15 people and
they all have the same manager so here’s
a team manager she’s running her team
some of them who mean randomly sent home
some of them are randomly still left in
the office but they’re all working under
the same manager those at home come in
one day a week so they may all come in
on Wednesday so they’re at home Monday
Tuesday Thursday Friday the whole team’s
at home on when whole team’s in the
office on Wednesday and she commanded
them she can see what’s going on they’re
all working the same shifts so the only
thing that’s really changing is where
they’re working so what do we find
well before I show you there is out so I
know you know repay you by saying
remember what motivated it what
motivated it see trips desperate to save
money because they’re paying an enormous
amount to house all these people in
Shanghai that their viewers that save a
lot of money on getting rid of rent they
probably take a bit of a hit on people
going home and based basically goofing
off remember one of them saying they’re
wondering about them worrying about them
watching of the Chinese equivalent of
Jerry Springer or playing computer games
so they’re kind of mildly pessimistic
and you know but you know they wanted to
see what happens so what do we find
well we found massive massive
improvement performances so a 13%
improvement in performance from people
working at home which is huge that’s one
almost one day a week so how on earth
did this happen where did this come from
well it came from two things one is
people working from home really work
their full shift so if in the office
you’re supposed to be there 9:00 to 5:00
Monday to Friday but that often come in
late because the motor bike broke down
they have the long lunch break because
they’re going to have a drink or two
they leave early to let the cable repair
guy in whatever it is they were they’re
definitely not working all of the 9:00
to 5:00 Monday to Friday whereas people
at home were much better at keeping time
the second fact was it’s far easier to
concentrate at home for all of you
that’s worked at home you know the
office is actually an amazingly noisy
environment so hear stories of you know
the person on the desk next door to me
her boyfriend’s just left her she’s in
tears there’s a cake in the breakout
room Bob’s leaving come join you know
the world cups of sweepstake is going
you’ve got a whatever it is the office
it’s actually super distracting so that
was finding one finding to quit rates
dropped by 50% so for anyone out here
that’s a manager you know the nightmare
of endlessly advertising interviewing
recruiting training getting up to speed
employees only to see them leave again
now see trips quit rate is about 50% a
year which turns out to be about the
average for the whole US so this again
is an enormous impact the basically
employees are voting with their feet
they love working from home not only do
the employees benefit but the managers
benefit because they can spend less of
their time painfully advertising
recruiting training promoting exiting
again and spend it more on work finally
are at the end of the experiment it was
so successful see trip rolled it out to
the whole company and they let everyone
change their mind so some people
actually gave up working from home
there’s the old saying that yeah the
three great enemies that working from
home are their fridge the television and
the bed and so some people you know got
overcome by one or many of those three
and they you know like they wrote really
said look I can’t take it anymore I’m
coming back into the office other people
change their might well you saw off the
end of it its performance goes up by
twenty four percent because basically
only the people that are left or any
other people that work from home the
people that can concentrate so choice in
combination working from home is just
hugely impactful and it doesn’t need to
be four days a week it can be one day a
week if you want but certainly some
combination of a bit of working from
home and a bit of choice is incredibly
impactful so what about sea trip they
reckon they made about $2,000 more
profit per person at home they were
super positive they rolled it out to the
whole the whole firm so I want to end by
saying our
I want to kill the cartoon stereotype of
working from home I go this that
Simpsons I love Homer Simpson he’s close
to my heart in some ways I love this
cartoon because a homer since was too
lazy to actually put on his own to get
dressed he’s wearing his pajamas so it
looks like actually Marge’s nightgown
it’s hard to tell and be he’s too lazy
to even get up to touch the communities
pushing it with a broom you know I want
to kill the stereotype of working home
and say look there are massive benefits
for employees they’re much more
productive and they’re happier but
managers you don’t have to spend so much
of your time recruiting and training
people all the time for firms you make
far more profit and see trips case they
made 2000 dollars extra per person from
save rents and greater productivity and
full you know society there’s a huge
saving and reducing congestion reducing
driving times and ultimately reducing
pollution so you know think very
seriously I implore you to think very
seriously about working for them even if
you try just one day we give it a try
there’s not much to lose and there’s a
lot to get thank you [Applause]