NEW HAVEN, Connecticut – There is no shortage of hyperbole in the debate about whether companies should demand a full return to office work.
According to Citadel’s Ken Griffin, the hedge fund owes its record-breaking $16 billion haul last year to its . But such sound bites ignore all the benefits that remote work offers to employers, employees and the economy more broadly.
Naysayers dismiss employees’ preference for remote work as a manifestation of entitlement or “quiet quitting” (doing the bare minimum to remain employed). But that snap judgment is far too crude. A by Harvard University economist Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Insights lab estimates that there are around 2.6 million people in the United States who should be working, but are not. At a time when many employers cannot fill vacancies, offering greater flexibility both increases the applicant pool and contributes to higher retention rates, easing the pressure on hiring.
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