Valentina Tonei (University of Southampton)
Francesca Foliano and Rebecca Riley
Working from home (WFH) has expanded rapidly, yet its effects on productivity remain unclear. A leading hypothesis is that WFH affects productivity by altering the organisation of work, in particular through increased fragmentation. We provide direct evidence on this mechanism using detailed, representative time-use diaries for UK public sector workers, covering a broad range of tasks across occupations in a setting with limited performance-based incentives. Exploiting within-individual variation across home and workplace days, we show that WFH leaves total time spent working unchanged but substantially reorganises how work is performed: work becomes more fragmented, with shorter focus spells, more interruptions, and greater multitasking, alongside a shift away from sector-specific tasks. These findings identify fragmentation as a central channel through which WFH affects productivity.