WFH improves your golf game
.... and your career prospects
I bet you didn’t know this so here’s the scoop. Ready?
I came across this most delightful (& yet perplexing) academic finding of the year: researchers at Stanford University1 reported that “working from home has powered a huge boom in golfing”. That boom is most visible midweek and mid-afternoon. For instance, golfing on Wednesdays rose nearly 150 per cent between 2019 and 2022, while golfing at 4pm on Wednesday afternoons is up more than 275 per cent. This surge is less about the growing popularity of golf than about a change in golfing habits: golfing on Saturdays was slightly less popular in 2022 than it was in 2019.
“The most likely explanation,” write researchers Alex Finan and Nick Bloom, “is that employees are golfing as breaks while working from home.” Well, indeed.
What has changed since the pandemic is the awkward question of what office hours should be. Before, if you had a job, then you’d go for a run in the morning, evening or at the weekend. Now you might fancy a run on Thursday afternoon. Who gets to decide whether you can? Who will even know?
WFH policies are evolving but remain confusing - I repurposed an excellent xkcd cartoon above with my WFH caption.
In a world where so many people catch up with emails at 6am or midnight or both, it’s not clear to me that the employee who plays golf or goes for a run in the middle of a working day is doing anything unreasonable.
What disheartens me about the golfers is something else. Finan and Bloom quote one tech executive whose colleague “was taking his Zoom call from the golf course. He was on mute with video off, but once when he was talking I heard somebody talking about the fairway and strokes.”
Attending a Zoom meeting from the golf course risks ruining both the meeting and the game of golf.
C(or)ollary:
Done right, WFH will improve your golf game AND your career prospects. Ready to swing?
At a time when all too many knowledge workers have forgotten the difference between work and play, we need to draw deliberate boundaries between the two. Perhaps we should develop an updated version of “Corporate WFH Athlete” for remedial training. Volunteers solicited.
Nick Bloom summarizes the evidence: (slides here)
To put a spin on a favorite British saying: I’ve been asked about productivity and working from home more times than I’ve had hot dinners. So it’s time to review all the evidence and serve up one big answer to the question: Does working from home work?
In a nutshell, that answer is “yes.”
…..
The work-from-home conversation needs to shift from big-name CEO anecdotes and stories to data and research. When it comes to making decisions impacting millions of employees and firms, we deserve better. The data and research show well-managed work from home can raise and maintain productivity, while cutting costs and raising profits.
It keeps employees happy, reduces pollution by cutting billions of commuting miles, and supports millions of employees with care and disability challenges in work. Indeed, what is not to like?
lol!
Tickled by the subtlety with which you address the point of WFH being a pass to PAW (play at work)! Okay in principle that time spent on work is not the object, completion of work. But also very aware that many take undue advantage of the flexibility it offers...
Absolutely agree! The days you had allowed a weekly once wfh set time for self reflection and improve