When (And When Not) Remote Work Harms Employee Productivity: A Multilevel Perspective

While remote work intensity (RWI) enhances individual productivity through flexibility and fewer distractions, its group-level effects remain underexplored. Using data from 1,324 employees across 72 workgroups, we first replicate RWI’s positive productivity effects at the individual level. At the group level, however, a higher RWI level is found to undermine a workgroup’s psychological safety climate, which in turn constrains member productivity. This indirect effect is moderated by RWI heterogeneity: when group members differ more in how much they work remotely, the group-level costs of RWI outweigh its individual benefits. When heterogeneity is lower, RWI’s net effect on productivity remains positive.