In his TEDx talk “Go Ahead, Tell Your Boss You Are Working From Home” Stanford economist, Nicholas Bloom presents compelling evidence that remote workers are more productive and stay with their company longer than their counterparts at the office.

Stanford University economics professor Nicholas Bloom who co-directs the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the United States’ National Bureau of Economic Research has data that shows the surprising productivity boost of working from home.

In his ground-breaking study with Stanford economics student James Liang, CEO of Ctrip, China’s largest travel agency with 16,000 employees. Bloom and Liang designed a controlled trial to put remote work to the test: work from home 4 days in a week for 9 months. More than 500 employees of Ctrip’s call center volunteered, and about half of them met the study qualifications that included having a private room at home to work from, have been a full time employee of Ctrip for at least 6 months and have decent broadband access from home.

By the end of the study, Bloom and Liang were completely stunned by the results: “It was unbelievable. Ctrip saved $1,900 (USD) per employee over the course of the study on office space, and we knew this would happen,” Bloom said. “But to our amazement, the work from home employees were far from goofing off, they increased productivity by 13.5 percent over those working in the office. That’s like getting an extra day’s work from each employee.” The people working from home also reported shorter breaks and fewer sick days and took less time off. Apart from an increase in productivity, attrition rates among those who worked from home were 50 percent lower than those who worked in the office.

Watch Professor Nicholas Bloom’s TEDx talk: