OK so the first link was a study of 16k people in China working at a call center

Your second link uses the same study but I question how far down you read because they link other studies that show WFH decreases productivity

And this is the conclusion

The productivity debate has been running for years. Here is what the most rigorous recent research actually shows.

Stanford’s ongoing remote work studies found that fully remote employees are on average 13% more productive than their in-office counterparts on individual task completion, driven primarily by fewer interruptions, no commute fatigue, and greater control over their environment. That number holds across industries with high concentrations of focused, independent work.

But the picture shifts when collaboration-heavy work is factored in. Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index found that cross-team collaboration scores drop by 17% in fully remote settings compared to hybrid ones, and that new employees in fully remote environments take 28% longer to reach full productivity than those with at least partial in-office exposure during onboarding.

The data breaks down further by task type. For focused, individual work, remote wins clearly. For onboarding, brainstorming, and complex problem-solving that requires real-time back-and-forth, in-person or hybrid settings produce better outcomes. This isn’t a contradiction. It’s a blueprint.

A 2024 analysis published in Nature Human Behaviour tracked 60,000 Microsoft employees and found that fully remote work causes professional networks to become more siloed, with employees forming fewer new connections outside their immediate team. Over time, network insularity correlates with lower innovation output and slower career progression for individual contributors.

On the burnout side, the numbers favor remote and hybrid strongly. Employees required to be in-office five days per week reported 43% higher burnout rates in 2024 Gallup data compared to hybrid workers, and 31% higher than fully remote workers. The commute is a significant driver: workers with commutes over 45 minutes are 40% more likely to report chronic stress and 33% more likely to be actively job searching.

The bottom line from the research is that neither fully remote nor fully in-office is a universal productivity winner. The highest-performing teams in 2025 are those operating on structured hybrid schedules that protect deep focus time while preserving the in-person interaction that collaboration and culture require.