Fully remote work expands recruitment and boosts productivity

The Covid-19 pandemic sparked a large and lasting shift to remote work. This column draws on detailed administrative data from a major call centre in Türkiye to show that a permanent shift to fully remote work can expand recruitment and raise productivity without compromising service quality. The transition increased the share of women, including married women, as well as employees from rural areas and smaller towns. Productivity gains were driven by quieter home environments and more efficient communication. But the benefits of in-person onboarding persist, even in a permanently remote work model.

The pandemic sparked a large and lasting shift to remote work. By 2025, more than one in four workdays in the US were performed from home, with similar trends observed across Europe and other advanced economies (Barrero et al. 2021, Aksoy et al. 2022, Zarate et al. 2024, Luca et al. 2025). As remote work becomes a permanent feature of labour markets, two questions remain central for employers and policymakers alike: how does it reshape the composition of the workforce, and what are its long-term effects on worker performance?

In a recent paper (Aksoy et al. 2025), we contribute to this discussion by studying a large call centre in Türkiye that moved to fully remote in March 2020. The company, Tempo BPO, offers a valuable case: its entire 3,500-agent workforce transitioned within two weeks of the national lockdown, and it chose to remain fully remote even after restrictions lifted. Using detailed personnel and performance data over four years, we find that remote work had two key benefits for the firm. First, it increased productivity, primarily by allowing employees to work in quieter home conditions. Second, it enabled the firm to hire better educated and more experienced workers without raising wages by hiring more women outside metropolitan areas. We also find that fully remote workers who had three months of initial in-person training had superior long-run performance and retention.

Remote work expands recruitment

One of the clearest effects of the shift to remote work was a change in who Tempo was able to hire. Remote work significantly increased the share of women in the workforce — from around 50% to 76% by early 2023 — in a country where women’s national labour force participation remains about 35% (Figure 1). The share of married women also rose substantially, reflecting the appeal of home-based jobs in a context where social norms discourage married women from working outside the home.

At the same time, the firm saw a sharp rise in hires from smaller towns. These areas, previously excluded due to commuting constraints, became accessible to the firm. Notably, Tempo was also able to hire more university graduates and experienced workers — all while keeping wages flat, as the firm offers the national minimum wage regardless of location. Overall, remote work expanded the firm’s access to talent, enabling it to upgrade workforce quality without increasing costs.

Figure 1 Remote working brought a rising share of female agents

Notes: This figure shows changes in the workforce due to new hires and leavers. The figure presents monthly means, with the shaded area representing 95% confidence intervals around the mean for each month. Vertical red lines indicate March 2020 and September 2021, corresponding to the start and end of the COVID-19 lockdown period in Türkiye.

Quieter home settings raised productivity – without sacrificing quality

Tempo’s move to remote work also improved productivity. Agents handled 10% more calls per hour than before the pandemic, and this increase was sustained in the post-lockdown period (Figure 2). Importantly, these gains were not driven by longer hours or reduced break times. Rather, call durations fell due to quieter home environments. Conversations were clearer, fewer repetitions were needed, and agents processed calls more quickly.

Crucially, these productivity gains did not come at the expense of service quality. Customer satisfaction ratings and supervisor audit scores remained stable or improved slightly after the shift. This reinforces recent evidence that noise and office design can hinder performance, particularly in communication-intensive roles where clarity and focus are essential (Bloom et al. 2015, Battiston et al. 2021).

We also find that workers who were less productive in the office benefited most from the shift to remote work. Many of these agents struggled with noise or distractions in the office setting but performed better in quieter home environments.

Figure 2 Productivity rose after the shift to remote work with more calls processed per hour

Notes: This figure shows predictions from a regression of calls per hour on month fixed effects, omitting February 2020 as the reference month. The OLS regression controls for the composition of calls, repeat calls, and includes agent fixed effects. Standard errors are clustered at the agent level, and 95% confidence intervals are calculated from these clustered standard errors and shown as shaded bands around the point estimates. Vertical red lines depict March 2020 and September 2021, the start and end of the COVID-19 lockdown period, respectively.

In-person onboarding enhances retention and long-run performance

Despite these gains, fully remote work is not without trade-offs. A key challenge is onboarding — the process through which new employees gain the skills, knowledge, and social connections needed to succeed. In remote settings, where informal learning and peer support are limited, poor onboarding can slow integration, reduce performance, and increase attrition. As more firms adopt remote or hybrid models, getting onboarding right is essential not only for individual outcomes but also for sustaining workforce productivity and cohesion.

We examine the impact of starting a job in person versus remotely by leveraging a sharp discontinuity in onboarding experiences caused by the timing of the COVID-19 lockdown. In the weeks before the lockdown, Tempo continued to recruit agents for in-person roles. However, while all new hires applied under the same conditions, only some began working on-site before restrictions came into force. Others, due to the sudden shift, started remotely. This natural cutoff allows us to apply a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to estimate the causal effect of initial in-person onboarding on subsequent performance and retention. The two groups are otherwise highly comparable — similar in demographics, application timing, and job expectations — but differ in whether they received early face-to-face training and exposure to colleagues.

Our analysis shows that remote starters initially outperformed their peers, as they began taking more calls at an earlier stage. But over time, their productivity plateaued. After six months, the group that started in-office had caught up and eventually exceeded their performance. Attrition patterns were also different: remote starters were significantly more likely to leave the firm in the first few months.

Some implications

Our findings have implications for both firms and policymakers. For employers, fully remote work offers clear benefits in widening the hiring pool, especially in labour markets with geographic or social constraints. It also shows that productivity can improve in certain tasks, particularly those requiring focus. However, these benefits depend on the right onboarding practices. Remote work should not mean isolation, especially for new hires. For policymakers, remote work can be part of a strategy to boost inclusion — for women, older workers, and those outside major urban centres. But to fully realise its potential, complementary policies are needed: digital infrastructure, internet subsidies, and investments in remote-ready skills. Our study complements recent research on the geography of remote work (Liu and Su 2023, Luca et al. 2025) and highlights the organisational features that make it succeed. As governments and firms rethink work arrangements, understanding where and how remote work delivers its promise will remain critical.

Source: cepr.org