We are now deep enough into the work-from-home experiment that, beyond speculation, we have data about what happens when we work remotely en masse — what we gain and what we lose when we are out of the office.
Researchers from Harvard University have conducted two studies, one tracking the emails and digital calendars of more than 3 million workers across the world, the other surveying almost 700 office workers across the U.S. The data and insights the two studies generated are significant in trying to asses how people and companies will use office space in future. Here is what they showed.
We’re working more
Quite a lot more. The average workday is 49 minutes longer, a study led by Harvard’s Evan DeFilippis showed, based around aggregating when people sent their first and last email of the day. The more qualitative survey, led by Harvard’s Ethan Bernstein, found that in the weeks immediately after lockdown, about half of those surveyed were working more than 10 hours a day, compared to just 20% before lockdown. That figure has dropped, but those surveyed still reported a workday 10% to 20% longer.
More, shorter meetings
According to the large-scale study of working practices, following lockdown, we are having more meetings, an average of one more per day per person, partly because each meeting typically has more attendees. But the average duration of those meetings dropped 17%, or 12 minutes. The result: Overall, people spent less time in meetings. The total time spent in meetings is decreasing week by week, the study found, which might be related to the responses in the survey in which the majority of respondents found that they were able to be more productive.
Not quite stress-free, but almost “
Since all-virtual work began, employee stress, negative emotions, and task-related conflict have all been steadily falling; each is down at least 10%,” Bernstein and his co-authors wrote. “At the same time, employees have experienced an approximately 10% improvement in self-efficacy and their capacity to pay attention to their work.”
Parents inevitably found life at home the hardest, given the difficulties of caring for children and working at the same time.
Who is best suited to work from home
There was a surprising finding when it came to what type of person was best suited to working from home. The expectation of the survey authors was that introverts would find it easiest. But actually, it turned the best indicator was empathy and agreeableness — thinking about the feelings of others was the best predictor of who would fare best working from home. Even when not in physical contact with other people, thinking about them is a key skill. On the flip side, those with a tendency to be neurotic found working from home most difficult, without the regular reassurance that comes from being around colleagues.