Although the Covid vaccines, and now booster shots, are making it to homes around the world, 83 percent of respondents from a Mercer study of over 800 employers said that even after the health crisis has passed, they plan to put more flexible work policies in place.
With little research on what working from home really does to employees’ productivity, I aimed to study people’s perception of their time working remotely and hopefully help managers expect and strategize ways to keep productivity high, even during such an uncertain time.
With today’s technology, it makes it much more possible to achieve every goal and deadline within the confines of your home with applications such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Many organizations are sticking with remote work as global companies can more easily connect to those outside their time zone, while some organizations (like Goldman Sachs and J.P Morgan) are requiring a mandatory return to office.
To analyze productivity normally, you average output per period divided by the costs incurred or the resources, such as personnel, consumed in that period. White-collar workers do not have exact outputs, compared to blue collar workers (who often have a clear number of products they are making per hour.) These white-collar remote workers are who this study is looking at. Due to white-collar workers not fitting in this mold to analyze productivity, I chose to analyze productivity using worker’s perception via conducting a survey on how their productivity has changed while they are working from home.
After analyzing 133 results from a 5-question survey, productivity has stayed the same for 39% of people, decreased for 33%, and increased for 27%. The main distractions (see all the categories in figure 1) employees mentioned that occurred while working from home were technology (27 times), family members (21 times), and chores (12 times).
Out of the 36 people who said their productivity increased (in green on figure 1), 21 of those respondents said they are working longer hours due to no commute and being more easily available. So, if we were to use the business formula for productivity and divide the average output per period by the costs incurred or the resources consumed in that period, the productivity is actually not increasing much for these employees. I found people are working more hours but with more distractions.
Of the 44 respondents who reported a decrease in productivity (in red on figure 1), 6 stated they just could not get out of bed, or they had a hard time staying active. 8 people also mentioned the hardships they encountered by having family members around who were possible distracting.
The majority, or 53 respondents (in blue on figure 1) said their productivity relatively stayed the same. These mitigating factors were a mixture of positive and negative, but mostly neutral in tone. 14 people expressed that technology was a factor. A few also mentioned family members, although nice to have around, they can pull you away from work. Lastly, chores; although a distraction, most see ending the day with a clean house as a productive one.
So, what does this mean? Employers should prioritize that there is some sort of childcare service available to ensure employees feel comfortable coming back into the office. Companies should also continue to attempt to keep a good work-life balance. Providing a tech team ready to assist employees can ensure less technical problems. There are also opportunities for companies to track computer usage and time spent in meetings, which may be able to help employers strategize which areas their employees need to increase activity.
Through this study of workers perception of productivity while working from home, I found one major take away. Productivity is very hard to accurately measure due to many mitigating factors that alter it. I also found that for many, working from home is not all it’s cracked up to be. For many respondents it increased depression, caused greater financial difficulties, and decreased their feeling of pride in work.
Productivity looks different for every employee- and employers must keep adapting to stay high performing.
Abby Bruno is a Senior Studying Human Resource Management. Having worked and studied during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Abby is interested in how the pandemic has affected workers around the world. She will continue to study this relationship after she graduates in December of 2021. She would like to give a special thanks to her advisor Cheryl Hughes and Professor Baggetta, both of the Indiana University O’Neill School, for their guidance, patience, and support with this research.
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