Hybrid working from home improves retention without damaging performance

The experiment took place at Trip.com, the third-largest global travel agent by sales in 2019. Trip.com was established in 1999, was quoted on NASDAQ in 2003 and was worth about US$20 billion at the time of the experiment. It is headquartered in Shanghai, with offices across China and internationally, and has roughly 35,000 employees.

In the summer of 2021, Trip.com decided to evaluate the effects of hybrid WFH on the 1,612 engineering, marketing and finance employees in the Airfare and IT divisions, spanning 395 managers and 1,217 non-managers. All experimental participants were surveyed at baseline, with questions on expectations, background and their interest in volunteering for early participation in the experiment. The firm randomized employees with an odd-number birthday (born on the first, third, fifth and so on day of the month) into the treatment group.

Figure 1 shows two pictures of employees working in the office to highlight three points. First, in the second half of 2021, COVID incidence rates in Shanghai were so low that employees were neither masked nor socially distanced at the office. Although the COVID pandemic had led to lockdowns in early 2020 and during 2022, during the second half of 2021, Shanghai employees were free to come to work, and typically were unmasked in the office. Second, employees worked in modern open-plan offices in desk groupings of four or six colleagues from the same team, reflecting the importance of collaboration. Third, the office is a large modern building, similar to many large Asian, European and North American offices.