By Kayla Schilthuis-Ihrig

The remote work productivity debate will never end, and frankly, it shouldn’t.

Leaders and employees alike should never stop being critical of how time is spent and seeking improved productivity levels.

Is it tiring to refine and edit how we work constantly? Sure. Change is always tiring to a degree, but thankfully, marketers are resilient to change because it’s inherent to what we do.

I feel like I’ve lived nine lives as a marketer: unpaid intern, salaried in-office employee, hybrid worker, remote contractor.

Most of my experience has been completed outside of the office setting, and as a remote work enthusiast and author, I prefer it that way for my productivity and quality of life. But am I the norm? Where are other marketers most productive?

I asked more than 100 marketers if they feel more productive (and happier) working in the office or at home. Here’s what they had to say.

Table of Contents

• Remote, Hybrid, In-Office: The Marketing Landscape Today
• Productivity Statistics
• What Experts Have to Say

Remote, Hybrid, In-Office: The Marketing Landscape Today

Today, millions of marketers are showing up to work across the globe. How are they working? These are the three main organizational models.

Fully In-Office Teams

The concept of a fully in-office team doesn‘t need much of an introduction. Despite remote work dating back to the 1980s, completely in-office teams were still the norm until the pandemic.

However, it’s a mistake to think that “in-person” always means together. Employees naturally spend a lot of time away from their desks for internal meetings, on-site client meetings, etc.

One company monitored their in-office team and found that employees only occupied their desks 66% of the time. The 44% desk vacancy was so reliable that they reduced the number of in-office workstations.

I used to be a marketer at this company, and while the switch sounds jarring, finding an open workstation was never once an issue.

Prevalence: Only 22% of 117 marketers in our survey said they always work in the office.

While these behaviors can happen anywhere, these are the primary productivity concerns of the in-office model:

1. Time theft. No employee works every moment of an 8-hour workday. Workers naturally spend time chatting around the coffee machine or at their teammates’ desks, and sometimes, the amount of time wasted moves beyond the acceptable limit while still being on the clock.
2. Interruptions, distractions, and over-stimulation. Your focus is constantly tested by the busyness of an office setting. The stimulation will reduce productivity for some workers, particularly marketers who are neurodivergent.
3. Cyberslacking. Someone may be sitting at their computer looking focused while instead working on personal tasks. As the cliché goes, “Working hard, or hardly working?”

Some large corporations that require a fully in-office team include Goldman Sachs and Tesla.

Hybrid …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog