case study work from home

More From Forbes

3 new studies end debate over effectiveness of hybrid and remote work.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Experts say hybrid and remote working are signs of the future, and new science-backed studies show ... [+] mental health benefits to "the new normal."

The debate over remote and hybrid work continues to grow. Some companies resisted, and iron-fisted leaders pulled the old hat trick (“It’s your job to work hard and deal with stress, so grin and bear it.”), arguing against the concept of remote work. Others cited productivity concerns and tactical problems that limited a supervisor’s ability to observe and coach employees. A handful of business leaders pushed back. Josh Feast, CEO of Cognito Corporation, argued that supervisors could find innovative ways to connect with and manage workers from afar “by ensuring their colleagues feel heard and know they are not alone. Exhibiting heightened sensitivity to emotional intelligence—particularly in a time where physical isolation has become a necessity—is vital.” Alice Hricak, managing principal of corporate interiors at Perkins and Will, said working from home showcases new approaches and debunks old ideas that it leads to low productivity, less visibility and little opportunity for collaboration.

What Does The Scientific Data Show?

To resolve the debate, it’s time to go beyond subjective opinion and look at the objective science. David Powell, president of Prodoscore said their data showed that if an employee was highly productive in-office, they’ll be productive at home; if an employee slacked off at the office, they’ll do the same a home. “After evaluating over 105 million data points from 30,000 U.S.-based Prodoscore users, we discovered a five percent increase in productivity during the pandemic work from home period,” he said. “Although, as we know, any variant of the Covid-19 virus is unpredictable, employee productivity is not.”

Two studies in early 2022 validated the views of remote/hybrid work advocates. Research from Owl Labs found that remote and hybrid employees were 22% happier than workers in an onsite office environment and stayed in their jobs longer. Plus, remote workers had less stress, more focus and were more productive than when they toiled in the office. Working from home led to better work/life balance and was more beneficial for the physical and mental well-being of employees.

A study from Ergotron sampled 1,000 full-time workers. It found that as workers become more acclimated to hybrid and remote office environments since the onset of Covid-19, the hybrid workplace model has empowered employees to reclaim physical health, and they are seeing mental health benefits, too.   A total of 56% of employees cited mental health improvements, better work-life balance and more physical activity. Key highlights from the study include:

• Job Satisfaction. Continuing to embrace flexibility is essential. Most employees (88%) agree that the flexibility to work from home or the office has increased their job satisfaction.
• Physical health. The hybrid workplace has empowered employees to reclaim physical health. Three-quarters of respondents (75%) stated that they move more frequently and have a more active work style when working remotely.
• Work-life balance . Three quarters of respondents say their work-life balance has improved as a result of hybrid or remote working. Even though some employees are dedicating more time to their work, if they’re able to fit it in and around other aspects of their lives, they say they feel the positive effects of a better work-life balance.
• Comfortable work environments. Of the workers surveyed, 62% said improved workspaces with comfortable, ergonomic furniture are important and improve company culture. 
• Wellness programs. More than three-quarters of respondents (76%) revealed that their employers implemented wellness programs to support mental and physical health, with 30% of those being brand new since the onset of the pandemic.

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024.

“Promoting health and wellness among employees can improve well-being and productivity,” said Chad Severson, CEO of Ergotron. “Over the past two years, employees have adapted to the hybrid and remote work landscape—and they now prefer it. As employers look to attract and retain talent, focusing on practices that promote well-being and help employees thrive wherever they work will be critical.”

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Here’s What We Do and Don’t Know About the Effects of Remote Work

Three years into a mass workplace experiment, we are beginning to understand more about how work from home is reshaping workers’ lives and the economy.

By Emma Goldberg

When workplaces are remade by a tectonic shift — women flooding into the work force, the rise of computing — it typically takes some time for economists, psychologists, sociologists and other scholars to gather data on its effects.

So when employers moved suddenly to adopt remote work during the pandemic, with the share of employed Americans working exclusively from home rising to 54 percent in 2020 from 4 percent in 2019, researchers leaped to examine the effects of remote work on employees and the economy at large. Now the early results are emerging. They reveal a mixed economic picture, in which many workers and businesses have made real gains under remote work arrangements, and many have also had to bear costs.

Broadly, the portrait that emerges is this: Brick-and-mortar businesses suffered in urban downtowns, as many people stopped commuting. Still, some kinds of businesses, like grocery stores, have been able to gain a foothold in the suburbs. At the same time, rents rose in affordable markets as remote and hybrid workers left expensive urban housing.

Working mothers have generally benefited from the flexibility of being able to work remotely — more of them were able to stay in the work force. But remote work also seems to bring some steep penalties when it comes to career advancement for women.

Studies of productivity in work-from-home arrangements are all over the map. Some papers have linked remote work with productivity declines of between 8 and 19 percent , while others find drops of 4 percent for individual workers; still other research has found productivity gains of 13 percent or even 24 percent .

Nick Bloom, an economist at Stanford and a prolific scholar on remote work, said the new set of studies showed that productivity differed among remote workplaces depending on an employer’s approach — how well trained managers are to support remote employees and whether those employees have opportunities for occasional meet-ups.

Researchers tend to agree that many workplaces have settled into a new hybrid phase, in which offices are at about half their prepandemic occupancy levels and about a quarter of American workdays are done from home. That suggests some of the effects of remote work may stick.

As Mr. Bloom put it: “This is the new normal.”

Urban Downtowns

Photos of urban downtowns in their Covid lockdowns are eerie, with silent streets, wilted office plants and dusty cubicles.

When some 50 million Americans started working from home in the early days of the pandemic, brick-and-mortar retailers clustered in urban downtowns were hurting. The number of downtown clothing stores fell 8 percent from late 2019 to late 2021, according to a study using transaction data from 70 million Chase Bank customers. General goods stores in downtowns — including anything from department stores to florists to booksellers — fell 7 percent, and grocery stores declined 2 percent.

Some of those businesses followed remote workers to the suburbs. During that period, the number of suburban grocery stores increased roughly 3 percent, slightly outpacing the urban decline , particularly in suburbs where remote work levels were high.

In the coming years, the movement of retailers from downtowns to suburbs is likely to prove difficult for low-income workers who cannot afford to live in these areas, some of them affluent, where retailers may be hiring.

This problem is already visible in the Bay Area. Take the case of Maria Cerros-Mercado , who used to work at a salad shop in San Francisco, a 20-minute walk from her home. Now she commutes by Uber to the shop’s new location in Mill Valley, a wealthy suburb in Marin County.

But some economists argue that many Americans stand to gain from the effects of remote work because rents in rural and suburban areas are likely to begin dropping. One recent study used data from postal address changes, rent changes on Zillow and the construction industry to project the potential rent effects of remote and hybrid work. The pandemic saw a temporary rent spike in previously affordable areas — think Dallas; Manchester, N.H.; and upstate New York — because many remote workers left the priciest housing markets once they gave up daily commutes. As construction catches up with that new demand, economists say, rents will fall back down.

“If you zoom out, one of the big problems in housing in the last 10 years has been affordability,” said Jack Liebersohn, an economist at the University of California, Irvine. “This could help simply because people can live in more affordable areas, where we can afford to build.”

And there could be an unexpected bonus: A study in Britain showed that burglaries declined nearly 30 percent in areas with high rates of working from home, which the researchers attributed to the increase of “eyes on the street” in those neighborhoods.

Working Women

For decades, a working mother’s schedule has felt like an equation that won’t balance. Many women are expected to still be at their desks at 5 p.m., and simultaneously at school pickup. They’re supposed to be in an office, and also available at home when their children are coughing and turned away from day care. (Ample data shows that this bind tends to constrict mothers more than fathers.)

Remote work slightly eases that conundrum, according to research using prepandemic data from economists at the University of Virginia and the University of Southern California. In fields like computer science, marketing and communications, which welcomed remote work from 2009 to 2019, working mothers’ employment rates increased. There was an almost one-to-one correlation: When remote work rose 2 percent, there was a 2 percent rise in mothers’ employment. Even so, the employment rates for working mothers lagged those of women without children, though remote work diminished that gap.

Claudia Goldin , who this week was awarded a Nobel Prize in economics, has shown that women tend to seek jobs with more flexibility so they can take care of household responsibilities. That has contributed to the gender pay gap.

While some working women, particularly mothers, may gain from being remote, women tend to see greater penalties when they do so. In a study of engineers at a Fortune 500 company, remote work had a negative effect on the amount of feedback junior employees got on their work — with the penalties more pronounced for women.

“Proximity has a bigger impact on women’s comfort with asking follow-up questions,” said Emma Harrington, an economist at the University of Virginia, who conducted both the study on remote work’s effect on feedback and the one on mothers’ work force participation.

Men appeared more comfortable asking clarifying questions even if they weren’t physically near colleagues.

Women may also face more undeserved questions about their productivity, wherever they work. In a series of studies with more than 2,000 participants, researchers in Wisconsin and Canada found that both men and women were more likely to suspect women than men of shirking work. Some of these employees worked from home, and some did not.

When study participants saw through video footage that a female employee wasn’t at her desk, this was attributed to something nonwork-related 47 percent of the time; for men, it was attributed to nonwork activities just 34 percent of the time.

“It’s possible that the study participants might be responding to the realities of the world in which women sometimes do bear more household responsibilities,” added Ms. Harrington, who wasn’t involved in this study.

Remote Productivity

Whether work-from-anywhere setups hurt productivity or help it has been a burning question for executives.

Early evidence came in a 2013 paper from Mr. Bloom and others about a call center in China that allowed some employees to be mostly remote for nine months; it found that productivity rose 13 percent. Just under 10 percent of this boost was attributed to people taking fewer breaks, and 4 percent to them doing more calls per minute because their working environments were quieter.

But during the pandemic, when millions of workers suddenly shifted to being remote, the effects were more complex. The arrangements hadn’t been figured out in advance. The move to remote work wasn’t voluntary. So the results were more scattered.

A study of an Asian information technology company’s remote employees during the pandemic showed a decline in productivity of 8 to 19 percent. Another, looking at an American call center, found that when workers went remote, they made 12 percent fewer calls. On the other hand, a study of the productivity of economic researchers in the United States during the pandemic found a roughly 24 percent increase in their output.

These disparate findings leave some questions unanswered. “How on earth can you get a more than 30 point spread between them?” Mr. Bloom asked. “It all comes down to how workers are managed. If you set up fully remote with good management and incentives, and people are meeting in person, it can work. What doesn’t seem to work is sending people home with no face time at all.”

Emma Goldberg is a business reporter covering workplace culture and the ways work is evolving in a time of social and technological change. More about Emma Goldberg

Reimagining the postpandemic workforce

As the pandemic begins to ease, many companies are planning a new combination of remote and on-site working, a hybrid virtual model in which some employees are on premises, while others work from home. The new model promises greater access to talent, increased productivity for individuals and small teams , lower costs, more individual flexibility, and improved employee experiences .

While these potential benefits are substantial, history shows that mixing virtual and on-site working might be a lot harder than it looks—despite its success during the pandemic. Consider how Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer ended that company’s remote-working experiment in 2013, observing that the company needed to become “one Yahoo!” again, or how HP Inc. did the same that year. Specific reasons may have varied. But in each case, the downsides of remote working at scale came to outweigh the positives.

These downsides arise from the organizational norms that underpin culture and performance— ways of working , as well as standards of behavior and interaction—that help create a common culture, generate social cohesion, and build shared trust. To lose sight of them during a significant shift to virtual-working arrangements is to risk an erosion over the long term of the very trust, cohesion, and shared culture that often helps remote working and virtual collaboration to be effective in the short term.

It also risks letting two organizational cultures emerge, dominated by the in-person workers and managers who continue to benefit from the positive elements of co-location and in-person collaboration, while culture and social cohesion for the virtual workforce languish. When this occurs, remote workers can soon feel isolated, disenfranchised, and unhappy, the victims of unintentional behavior in an organization that failed to build a coherent model of, and capabilities for, virtual and in-person work. The sense of belonging, common purpose, and shared identity that inspires all of us to do our best work gets lost. Organizational performance deteriorates accordingly.

Now is the time, as you reimagine the postpandemic organization , to pay careful attention to the effect of your choices on organizational norms and culture. Focus on the ties that bind your people together. Pay heed to core aspects of your own leadership and that of your broader group of leaders and managers. Your opportunity is to fashion the hybrid virtual model that best fits your company, and let it give birth to a new shared culture for all your employees that provides stability, social cohesion, identity, and belonging, whether your employees are working remotely, on premises, or in some combination of both.

Avoiding the pitfalls of remote working requires thinking carefully about leadership and management in a hybrid virtual world. Interactions between leaders and teams provide an essential locus for creating the social cohesion and the unified hybrid virtual culture that organizations need in the next normal.

Cutting the ties that bind

If you happen to believe that remote work is no threat to social ties, consider the experience of Skygear.io, a company that provides an open-source platform for app development. Several years ago, Skygear was looking to accommodate several new hires by shifting to a hybrid remote-work model for their 40-plus-person team. The company soon abandoned the idea. Team members who didn’t come to the office missed out on chances to strengthen their social ties through ad hoc team meals and discussions around interesting new tech launches. The wine and coffee tastings that built cohesion and trust had been lost. Similarly, GoNoodle employees found themselves at Zoom happy hour longing for the freshly remodeled offices they had left behind at lockdown. “We had this killer sound system,” one employee, an extrovert who yearns for time with her colleagues, told the New York Times . “You know—we’re drinking coffee, or maybe, ‘Hey, want to take a walk?’ I miss that.” 1 Clive Thompson, “What if working from home goes on … forever?,” New York Times , June 9, 2020, nytimes.com. Successful workplace cultures rely on these kinds of social interactions. That’s something Yahoo!’s Mayer recognized in 2013 when she said, “We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together,” having the “interactions and experiences that are only possible” face-to-face, such as “hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings.” 2 Kara Swisher, “‘Physically together’: Here’s the internal Yahoo no-work-from-home memo for remote workers and maybe more,” All Things Digital, February 22, 2013, allthingsd.com.

Or consider how quickly two cultures emerged recently in one of the business units of a company we know. Within this business unit, one smaller group was widely distributed in Cape Town, Los Angeles, Mumbai, Paris, and other big cities. The larger group was concentrated in Chicago, with a shared office in the downtown area. When a new global leader arrived just prior to the pandemic, the leader based herself in Chicago and quickly bonded with the in-person group that worked alongside her in the office. As the pandemic began, but before everyone was sent home to work remotely, the new leader abruptly centralized operations into a crisis nerve center made up of everyone in the on-site group. The new arrangement persisted as remote working began. Meanwhile, the smaller group, which had already been remote working in other cities, quickly lost visibility into, and participation in, the new workflows and resources that had been centralized among the on-site group, even though that on-site group was now working virtually too. Newly created and highly sought-after assignments (which were part of the business unit’s crisis response) went to members of the formerly on-site group, while those in the distributed group found many of their areas of responsibility reduced or taken away entirely. Within a matter of months, key employees in the smaller, distributed group were unhappy and underperforming.

The new global leader, in her understandable rush to address the crisis, had failed to create a level playing field and instead (perhaps unintentionally) favored one set of employees over the other. For us, it was stunning to observe how quickly, in the right circumstances, everything could go wrong. Avoiding these pitfalls requires thinking carefully about leadership and management in a hybrid virtual world, and about how smaller teams respond to new arrangements for work. Interactions between leaders and teams provide an essential locus for creating the social cohesion and the unified hybrid virtual culture that organizations need in the next normal.

Choose your model

Addressing working norms, and their effect on culture and performance, requires making a basic decision: Which part of the hybrid virtual continuum (exhibit) is right for your organization? The decision rests on the factors for which you’re optimizing. Is it real-estate cost? Employee productivity? Access to talent? The employee experience? All of these are worthy goals, but in practice it can be difficult to optimize one without considering its effect on the others. Ultimately, you’re left with a difficult problem to solve—one with a number of simultaneous factors and that defies simple formulas.

That said, we can make general points that apply across the board. These observations, which keep a careful eye on the organizational norms and ways of working that inform culture and performance, address two primary factors: the type of work your employees tend to do and the physical spaces you need to support that work.

First let’s eliminate the extremes. We’d recommend a fully virtual model to very few companies, and those that choose this model would likely operate in specific industries such as outsourced call centers, customer service, contact telesales, publishing, PR, marketing, research and information services, IT, and software development, and under specific circumstances. Be cautious if you think better access to talent or lower real-estate cost—which the all-virtual model would seem to optimize—outweigh all other considerations. On the other hand, few companies would be better off choosing an entirely on-premises model, given that at least some of their workers need flexibility because of work–life or health constraints. That leaves most companies somewhere in the middle, with a hybrid mix of remote and on-site working.

The physical spaces needed for work—or not

Being in the middle means sorting out the percentage of your employees who are working remotely and how often they are doing so. Let’s say 80 percent of your employees work remotely but do so only one day per week. In the four days they are on premises, they are likely getting all the social interaction and connection needed for collaboration, serendipitous idea generation, innovation, and social cohesiveness. In this case, you might be fine with the partially remote, large headquarters (HQ) model in the exhibit.

If, instead, a third of your employees are working remotely but doing so 90 percent of the time, the challenges to social cohesion are more pronounced. The one-third of your workforce will miss out on social interaction with the two-thirds working on-premises—and the cohesion, coherence, and cultural belonging that comes with it. One solution would be to bring those remote workers into the office more frequently, in which case multiple hubs, or multiple microhubs (as seen in the exhibit), might be the better choice. Not only is it easier to travel to regional hubs than to a central HQ, at least for employees who don’t happen to live near that HQ, but more dispersed hubs make the in-person culture less monolithic. Moreover, microhubs can often be energizing, fun, and innovative places in which to collaborate and connect with colleagues, which further benefits organizational culture.

Productivity and speed

Now let’s begin to factor in other priorities, such as employee productivity. Here the question becomes less straightforward, and the answer will be unique to your circumstances. When tackling the question, be sure to go beyond the impulse to monitor inputs and activity as a proxy for productivity. Metrics focused on inputs or volume of activity have always been a poor substitute for the true productivity that boosts outcomes and results, no matter how soothing it might be to look at the company parking lot to see all the employees who have arrived early in the day, and all those who are leaving late. Applied to a hybrid model, counting inputs might leave you grasping at the number of hours that employees are spending in front of their computers and logged into your servers. Yet the small teams  that are the lifeblood of today’s organizational success thrive with empowering, less-controlling management styles. Better to define the outcomes you expect from your small teams rather than the specific activities or the time spent on them.

Would you like to learn more about our People & Organizational Performance Practice ?

In addition to giving teams clear objectives, and both the accountability and autonomy for delivering them, leaders need to guide, inspire, and enable small teams, helping them overcome bureaucratic challenges that bog them down, such as organizational silos and resource inertia—all while helping to direct teams to the best opportunities, arming them with the right expertise, and giving them the tools they need to move fast. Once teams and individuals understand what they are responsible for delivering, in terms of results, leaders should focus on monitoring the outcome-based measurements. When leaders focus on outcomes and outputs, virtual workers deliver higher-quality work.

In this regard, you can take comfort in Netflix (which at the time of this writing is the 32nd largest company in the world by market capitalization), which thrives without limiting paid time off or specifying how much “face time” workers must spend in the office. Netflix measures productivity by outcomes, not inputs—and you should do the same.

No matter which model you choose for hybrid virtual work, your essential task will be to carefully manage the organizational norms that matter most when adopting any of these models. Let’s dive more deeply into those now.

Managing the transition

Organizations thrive through a sense of belonging and shared purpose that can easily get lost when two cultures emerge. When this happens, our experience—and the experience at HP, IBM, and Yahoo!—is that the in-person culture comes to dominate, disenfranchising those who are working remotely. The difficulty arises through a thousand small occurrences: when teams mishandle conference calls such that remote workers feel overlooked, and when collaborators use on-site white boards rather than online collaboration tools such as Miro. But culture can split apart in bigger ways too, as when the pattern of promotions favors on-site employees or when on-premises workers get the more highly sought-after assignments.

Some things simply become more difficult when you are working remotely. Among them are acculturating new joiners; learning via hands-on coaching and apprenticeship; undertaking ambiguous, complex, and collaborative innovations; and fostering the creative collisions through which new ideas can emerge. Addressing these boils down to leadership and management styles, and how those styles and approaches support small teams. Team experience is a critical driver of hybrid virtual culture—and managers and team leaders have an outsize impact on their teams’ experiences.

Managers and leaders

As a rule, the more geographically dispersed the team, the less effective the leadership becomes. Moreover, leaders who were effective in primarily on-site working arrangements may not necessarily prove so in a hybrid virtual approach. Many leaders will now need to “show up” differently when they are interacting with some employees face-to-face and others virtually. By defining and embracing new behaviors that are observable to all, and by deliberately making space for virtual employees to engage in informal interactions, leaders can facilitate social cohesion and trust-building in their teams.

More inspirational. There’s a reason why military commanders tour the troops rather than send emails from headquarters—hierarchical leadership thrives in person. Tom Peters  used to call the in-person approach “management by walking around”: “Looking someone in the eye, shaking their hand, laughing with them when in their physical presence creates a very different kind of bond than can be achieved [virtually].” 3 See Tom Peters blog , “The heart of MBWA,” blog entry by Shelley Dolley, February 27, 2013, tompeters.com.

But when the workforce is hybrid virtual, leaders need to rely less on hierarchical and more on inspirational forms of leadership . The dispersed employees working remotely require new leadership behaviors to compensate for the reduced socioemotional cues characteristic of digital channels.

Cultivate informal interactions. Have you ever run into a colleague in the hallway and, by doing so, learned something you didn’t know? Informal interactions and unplanned encounters foster the unexpected cross-pollination of ideas—the exchange of tacit knowledge—that are essential to healthy, innovative organizations. Informal interactions provide a starting point for collegial relationships in which people collaborate on areas of shared interest, thereby bridging organizational silos and strengthening social networks and shared trust within your company.

Informal interactions, which occur more naturally among co-located employees, don’t come about as easily in a virtual environment. Leaders need new approaches to creating them as people work both remotely and on-site. One approach is to leave a part of the meeting agenda free, as a time for employees to discuss any topic. Leaders can also establish an open-door policy and hold virtual “fireside chats,” without any structured content at all, to create a forum for less formal interactions. The goal is for employees, those working remotely and in-person, to feel like they have access to leaders and to the kind of informal interactions that happen on the way to the company cafeteria.

Many leaders will now need to “show up” differently when they are interacting with some employees face-to-face and others virtually. By defining and embracing new behaviors that are observable to all, and by deliberately making space for virtual employees to engage in informal interactions—leaders can facilitate social cohesion and trust-building in their teams.

Further approaches include virtual coffee rooms and social events, as well as virtual conferences in which group and private chat rooms and sessions complement plenary presentations. In between time, make sure you and all your team members are sending text messages to one another and that you are texting your team regularly for informal check-ins. These norms cultivate the habit of connecting informally.

Role model the right stance. It might seem obvious, but research shows that leaders consistently fail to recognize how their actions affect and will be interpreted by others. 4 Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, “How to work for a boss who lacks self-awareness,” Harvard Business Review , April 3, 2018, hbr.org. Consider the location from which you choose to work. If you want to signal that you tolerate virtual work, come into the office every day and join meetings in-person with those who happen to be in the building. This will result in a cultural belief that the HQ or physical offices are the real centers of gravity, and that face time is what’s important.

Come into the office every day, though, and your remote-working employees may soon feel that their choice to work virtually leaves them fewer career opportunities, and that their capabilities and contributions are secondary. By working from home (or a non-office location) a couple days a week, leaders signal that people don’t need to be in the office to be productive or to get ahead. In a hybrid virtual world, seemingly trivial leadership decisions can have outsize effect on the rest of the organization.

Don’t rely solely on virtual interactions. By the same token, despite big technological advancements over the years, nothing can entirely replace face-to-face interactions. Why? In part because so much of communication is nonverbal (even if it’s not the 93 percent that some would assert), but also because so much communication involves equivocal, potentially contentious, or difficult-to-convey subject matter. Face-to-face interactions create significantly more opportunities for rich, informal interactions, emotional connection, and emergent “creative collision” that can be the lifeblood of trust, collaboration, innovation, and culture.

Media richness theory helps us understand the need to match the “richness” of the message with the capabilities of the medium. You wouldn’t let your nephew know of the death of his father by fax, for instance—you would do it in person, if at all possible, and, failing that, by the next richest medium, probably video call. Some communication simply proceeds better face-to-face, and it is up to the leader to match the mode of communication to the equivocality of the message they are delivering.

Reimagining the post-pandemic organization

In other cases, asynchronous communication—such as email and text—are sufficient, and even better, because it allows time for individuals to process information and compose responses after some reflection and thought. However, when developing trust (especially early on in a relationship) or discussing sensitive work-related issues, such as promotions, pay, and performance, face-to-face is preferred, followed by videoconferencing, which, compared with audio, improves the ability for participants to show understanding, anticipate responses, provide nonverbal information, enhance verbal descriptions, manage pauses, and express attitudes. However, compared with face-to-face interaction, it can be difficult in video interactions to notice peripheral cues, control the floor, have side conversations, and point to or manipulate real-world objects.

Whatever the exact mix of communication you choose in a given moment, you will want to convene everyone in person at least one or two times a year, even if the work a particular team is doing can technically be done entirely virtually. In person is where trust-based relationships develop and deepen, and where serendipitous conversations and connections can occur.

Track your informal networks. Corporate organizations consist of multiple, overlapping, and intersecting social networks. As these informal networks widen and deepen, they mobilize talent and knowledge across the enterprise, facilitating and informing cultural cohesiveness while helping to support cross-silo collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Because the hybrid virtual model reduces face-to-face interaction and the serendipitous encounters that occur between people with weak ties , social networks can lose their strength. To counter that risk, leaders should map and monitor the informal networks  in their organization with semiannual refreshes of social-network maps. Approaches include identifying the functions or activities where connectivity seems most relevant and then mapping relationships within those priority areas—and then tracking the changes in those relationships over time. Options for obtaining the necessary information include tracking email, observing employees, using existing data (such as time cards and project charge codes), and administering short (five- to 20-minute) questionnaires. It is likely that leaders will need to intervene and create connections between groups that do not naturally interact or that now interact less frequently as a result of the hybrid virtual model.

Hybrid virtual teams

Leadership is crucial, but in the hybrid virtual model, teams (and networks of teams ) also need to adopt new norms and change the way they work if they are to maintain—and improve—productivity, collaboration, and innovation. This means gathering information, devising solutions, putting new approaches into practice, and refining outcomes—and doing it all fast. The difficulty rises when the team is part virtual and part on-site. What follows are specific areas on which to focus.

Create ‘safe’ spaces to learn from mistakes and voice requests

Psychological safety matters in the workplace, obviously, and in a hybrid virtual model it requires more attention. First, because a feeling of safety can be harder to create with some people working on-site and others working remotely. And, second, because it’s often less obvious when safety erodes. Safety arises as organizations purposefully create a culture in which employees feel comfortable making mistakes, speaking up, and generating innovative ideas. Safety also requires helping employees feel supported when they request flexible operating approaches to accommodate personal needs.

Mind the time-zone gaps

The experience of a hybrid virtual team in the same time zone varies significantly from a hybrid virtual team with members in multiple time zones. Among other ills, unmanaged time-zone differences make sequencing workflows more difficult. When people work in different time zones, the default tends toward asynchronous communications (email) and a loss of real-time connectivity. Equally dysfunctional is asking or expecting team members to wake up early or stay up late for team meetings. It can work for a short period of time, but in the medium and longer run it reduces the cohesion that develops through real-time collaboration. (It also forces some team members to work when they’re tired and not at their best.) Moreover, if there is a smaller subgroup on the team in, say, Asia, while the rest are in North America, a two-culture problem can emerge, with the virtual group feeling lesser than. Better to simply build teams with at least four hours of overlap during the traditional workday to ensure time for collaboration.

Keep teams together, when possible, and hone the art of team kickoffs

Established teams, those that have been working together for longer periods of time, are more productive than newer teams that are still forming and storming. The productivity they enjoy arises from clear norms and trust-based relationships—not to mention familiarity with workflows and routines. That said, new blood often energizes a team.

In an entirely on-premises model, chances are you would swap people in and out of your small teams more frequently. The pace at which you do so will likely decline in a hybrid virtual model, in which working norms and team cohesion are more at risk. But don’t take it to an extreme. Teams need members with the appropriate expertise and backgrounds, and the right mix of those tends to evolve over time.

Meanwhile, pay close attention to team kickoffs as you add new people to teams or stand up new ones. Kickoffs should include an opportunity to align the overall goals of the team with those of team members while clarifying personal working preferences.

Keeping track

Once you have your transition to a hybrid virtual model underway, how will you know if it’s working, and whether you maintained or enhanced your organization’s performance culture? Did your access to talent increase, and are you attracting and inspiring top talent? Are you developing and deploying strong leaders? To what extent are all your employees engaged in driving performance and innovation, gathering insights, and sharing knowledge?

The right metrics will depend on your goals, of course. Be wary of trying to achieve across all parameters, though. McKinsey research  shows that winning performance cultures emerge from carefully selecting the right combinations of practices (or “recipes”) that, when applied together, create superior organizational performance. Tracking results against these combinations of practices can help indicate, over time, if you’ve managed to keep your unified performance culture intact in the transition to a new hybrid virtual model.

We’ll close by saying you don’t have to make all the decisions about your hybrid virtual model up front and in advance. See what happens. See where your best talent emerges. If you end up finding, say, 30 (or 300) employees clustered around Jakarta, and other groups in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, ask them what might help them feel a socially supported sense of belonging. To the extent that in-person interactions are important—as we guess they will be—perhaps consider a microhub in one of those cities, if you don’t have one already.

Approached in the right way, the new hybrid model can help you make the most of talent wherever it resides, while lowering costs and making your organization’s performance culture even stronger than before.

Andrea Alexander is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Houston office, where Aaron De Smet is a senior partner and Mihir Mysore is a partner.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Communications get personal: How leaders can engage employees during a return to work

Reimagining the postpandemic organization

Adapting workplace learning in the time of coronavirus

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here .

Loading metrics

Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Researchers working from home: Benefits and challenges

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary, Doctoral School of Psychology, ELTE Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Sociology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

• Balazs Aczel, 
• Marton Kovacs, 
• Tanja van der Lippe, 
• Barnabas Szaszi

• Published: March 25, 2021
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249127
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

The flexibility allowed by the mobilization of technology disintegrated the traditional work-life boundary for most professionals. Whether working from home is the key or impediment to academics’ efficiency and work-life balance became a daunting question for both scientists and their employers. The recent pandemic brought into focus the merits and challenges of working from home on a level of personal experience. Using a convenient sampling, we surveyed 704 academics while working from home and found that the pandemic lockdown decreased the work efficiency for almost half of the researchers but around a quarter of them were more efficient during this time compared to the time before. Based on the gathered personal experience, 70% of the researchers think that in the future they would be similarly or more efficient than before if they could spend more of their work-time at home. They indicated that in the office they are better at sharing thoughts with colleagues, keeping in touch with their team, and collecting data, whereas at home they are better at working on their manuscript, reading the literature, and analyzing their data. Taking well-being also into account, 66% of them would find it ideal to work more from home in the future than they did before the lockdown. These results draw attention to how working from home is becoming a major element of researchers’ life and that we have to learn more about its influencer factors and coping tactics in order to optimize its arrangements.

Citation: Aczel B, Kovacs M, van der Lippe T, Szaszi B (2021) Researchers working from home: Benefits and challenges. PLoS ONE 16(3): e0249127. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249127

Editor: Johnson Chun-Sing Cheung, The University of Hong Kong, HONG KONG

Received: September 24, 2020; Accepted: March 11, 2021; Published: March 25, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Aczel et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All research materials, the collected raw and processed anonymous data, just as well the code for data management and statistical analyses are publicly shared on the OSF page of the project: OSF: https://osf.io/v97fy/ .

Funding: TVL's contribution is part of the research program Sustainable Cooperation – Roadmaps to Resilient Societies (SCOOP). She is grateful to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) for their support in the context of its 2017 Gravitation Program (grant number 024.003.025).

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Fleeing from the Great Plague that reached Cambridge in 1665, Newton retreated to his countryside home where he continued working for the next year and a half. During this time, he developed his theories on calculus, optics, and the law of gravitation—fundamentally changing the path of science for centuries. Newton himself described this period as the most productive time of his life [ 1 ]. Is working from home indeed the key to efficiency for scientists also in modern times? A solution for working without disturbance by colleagues and being able to manage a work-life balance? What personal and professional factors influence the relation between productivity and working from home? These are the main questions that the present paper aims to tackle. The Covid-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to analyze the implications of working from home in great detail.

Working away from the traditional office is increasingly an option in today’s world. The phenomenon has been studied under numerous, partially overlapping terms, such as telecommuting, telework, virtual office, remote work, location independent working, home office. In this paper, we will use ‘working from home’ (WFH), a term that typically covers working from any location other than the dedicated area provided by the employer.

The practice of WFH and its effect on job efficiency and well-being are reasonably well explored outside of academia [ 2 , 3 ]. Internet access and the increase of personal IT infrastructure made WFH a growing trend throughout the last decades [ 4 ]. In 2015, over 12% of EU workers [ 5 ] and near one-quarter of US employees [ 6 ] worked at least partly from home. A recent survey conducted among 27,500 millennials and Gen Z-s indicated that their majority would like to work remotely more frequently [ 7 ]. The literature suggests that people working from home need flexibility for different reasons. Home-working is a typical solution for those who need to look after dependent children [ 8 ] but many employees just seek a better work-life balance [ 7 ] and the comfort of an alternative work environment [ 9 ].

Non-academic areas report work-efficiency benefits for WFH but they also show some downsides of this arrangement. A good example is the broad-scale experiment in which call center employees were randomly assigned to work from home or in the office for nine months [ 10 ]. A 13% work performance increase was found in the working from home group. These workers also reported improved work satisfaction. Still, after the experiment, 50% of them preferred to go back to the office mainly because of feeling isolated at home.

Home-working has several straightforward positive aspects, such as not having to commute, easier management of household responsibilities [ 11 ] and family demands [ 12 ], along with increased autonomy over time use [ 13 , 14 ], and fewer interruptions [ 15 , 16 ]. Personal comfort is often listed as an advantage of the home environment [e.g., 15 ], though setting up a home office comes with physical and infrastructural demands [ 17 ]. People working from home consistently report greater job motivation and satisfaction [ 4 , 11 , 18 , 19 ] which is probably due to the greater work-related control and work-life flexibility [ 20 ]. A longitudinal nationally representative sample of 30,000 households in the UK revealed that homeworking is positively related with leisure time satisfaction [ 21 ], suggesting that people working from home can allocate more time for leisure activities.

Often-mentioned negative aspects of WFH include being disconnected from co-workers, experiencing isolation due to the physical and social distance to team members [ 22 , 23 ]. Also, home-working employees reported more difficulties with switching off and they worked beyond their formal working hours [ 4 ]. Working from home is especially difficult for those with small children [ 24 ], but intrusion from other family members, neighbours, and friends were also found to be major challenges of WFH [e.g., 17 ]. Moreover, being away from the office may also create a lack of visibility and increases teleworkers’ fear that being out of sight limits opportunities for promotion, rewards, and positive performance reviews [ 25 ].

Importantly, increased freedom imposes higher demands on workers to control not just the environment, but themselves too. WFH comes with the need to develop work-life boundary control tactics [ 26 ] and to be skilled at self-discipline, self-motivation, and good time management [ 27 ]. Increased flexibility can easily lead to multitasking and work-family role blurring [ 28 ]. Table 1 provides non-comprehensive lists of mostly positive and mostly negative consequences of WFH, based on the literature reviewed here.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249127.t001

Compared to the private sector, our knowledge is scarce about how academics experience working from home. Researchers in higher education institutes work in very similar arrangements. Typically, they are expected to personally attend their workplace, if not for teaching or supervision, then for meetings or to confer with colleagues. In the remaining worktime, they work in their lab or, if allowed, they may choose to do some of their tasks remotely. Along with the benefits on productivity when working from home, academics have already experienced some of its drawbacks at the start of the popularity of personal computers. As Snizek observed in the ‘80s, “(f)aculty who work long hours at home using their microcomputers indicate feelings of isolation and often lament the loss of collegial feedback and reinforcement” [page 622, 29 ].

Until now, the academics whose WFH experience had been given attention were mostly those participating in online distance education [e.g., 30 , 31 ]. They experienced increased autonomy, flexibility in workday schedule, the elimination of unwanted distractions [ 32 ], along with high levels of work productivity and satisfaction [ 33 ], but they also observed inadequate communication and the lack of opportunities for skill development [ 34 ]. The Covid-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to study the WFH experience of a greater spectrum of academics, since at one point most of them had to do all their work from home.

We have only fragmented knowledge about the moderators of WFH success. We know that control over time is limited by the domestic tasks one has while working from home. The view that women’s work is more influenced by family obligations than men’s is consistently shown in the literature [e.g., 35 – 37 ]. Sullivan and Lewis [ 38 ] argued that women who work from home are able to fulfil their domestic role better and manage their family duties more to their satisfaction, but that comes at the expense of higher perceived work–family conflict [see also 39 ]. Not surprisingly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, female scientists suffered a greater disruption than men in their academic productivity and time spent on research, most likely due to demands of childcare [ 40 , 41 ].

In summary, until recently, the effect of WFH on academics’ life and productivity received limited attention. However, during the recent pandemic lockdown, scientists, on an unprecedented scale, had to find solutions to continue their research from home. The situation unavoidably brought into focus the merits and challenges of WFH on a level of personal experience. Institutions were compelled to support WFH arrangements by adequate regulations, services, and infrastructure. Some researchers and institutions might have found benefits in the new arrangements and may wish to continue WFH in some form; for others WFH brought disproportionately larger challenges. The present study aims to facilitate the systematic exploration and support of researchers’ efficiency and work-life balance when working from home.

Materials and methods

Our study procedure and analysis plan were preregistered at https://osf.io/jg5bz (all deviations from the plan are listed in S1 File ). The survey included questions on research work efficiency, work-life balance, demographics, professional and personal background information. The study protocol has been approved by the Institutional Review Board from Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary (approval number: 2020/131). The Transparency Report of the study, the complete text of the questionnaire items and the instructions are shared at our OSF repository: https://osf.io/v97fy/ .

As the objective of this study was to gain insight about researchers’ experience of WFH, we aimed to increase the size and diversity of our sample rather than ascertaining the representativeness of our sample. Therefore, we distributed our online survey link among researchers in professional newsletters, university mailing lists, on social media, and by sending group-emails to authors (additional details about sampling are in S1 File ). As a result of the nature of our sampling strategy, it is not known how many researchers have seen our participation request. Additionally, we did not collect the country of residence of the respondents. Responses analyzed in this study were collected between 2020-04-24 and 2020-07-13. Overall, 858 individuals started the survey and 154 were excluded because they did not continue the survey beyond the first question. As a result, 704 respondents were included in the analysis.

We sent the questionnaire individually to each of the respondents through the Qualtrics Mailer service. Written informed consent and access to the preregistration of the research was provided to every respondent before starting the survey. Then, respondents who agreed to participate in the study could fill out the questionnaire. To encourage participation, we offered that upon completion they can enter a lottery to win a 100 USD voucher.

This is a general description of the survey items. The full survey with the display logic and exact phrasing of the items is transported from Qualtrics and uploaded to the projects’ OSF page: https://osf.io/8ze2g/ .

Efficiency of research work.

The respondents were asked to compare the efficiency of their research work during the lockdown to their work before the lockdown. They were also asked to use their present and previous experience to indicate whether working more from home in the future would change the efficiency of their research work compared to the time before the lockdown. For both questions, they could choose among three options: “less efficient”; “more efficient”, and “similarly efficient”.

Comparing working from home to working in the office.

Participants were asked to compare working from home to working from the office. For this question they could indicate their preference on a 7-point dimension (1: At home; 7: In the office), along 15 efficiency or well-being related aspects of research work (e.g., working on the manuscript, maintaining work-life balance). These aspects were collected in a pilot study conducted with 55 researchers who were asked to indicate in free text responses the areas in which their work benefits/suffers when working from home. More details of the pilot study are provided in S1 File .

Actual and ideal time spent working from home.

To study the actual and ideal time spent working from home, researcher were asked to indicate on a 0–100% scale (1) what percentage of their work time they spent working from home before the pandemic and (2) how much would be ideal for them working from home in the future concerning both research efficiency and work-life balance.

Feasibility of working more from home.

With simple Yes/No options, we asked the respondents to indicate whether they think that working more from home would be feasible considering all their other duties (education, administration, etc.) and the given circumstances at home (infrastructure, level of disturbance).

Background information.

Background questions were asked by providing preset lists concerning their academic position (e.g., full professor), area of research (e.g., social sciences), type of workplace (e.g., purely research institute), gender, age group, living situation (e.g., single-parent with non-adult child(ren)), and the age and the number of their children.

The respondents were also asked to select one of the offered options to indicate: whether or not they worked more from home during the coronavirus lockdown than before; whether it is possible for them to collect data remotely; whether they have education duties at work; if their research requires intensive team-work; whether their home office is fully equipped; whether their partner was also working from home during the pandemic; how far their office is from home; whether they had to do home-schooling during the pandemic; whether there was someone else looking after their child(ren) during their work from home in lockdown. When the question did not apply to them, they could select the ‘NA’ option as well.

Data preprocessing and analyses

All the data preprocessing and analyses were conducted in R [ 42 ], with the use of the tidyverse packages [ 43 ]. Before the analysis of the survey responses, we read all the free-text comments to ascertain that they do not contain personal information and they are in line with the respondent’s answers. We found that for 5 items the respondents’ comments contradicted their survey choices (e.g., whether they have children), therefore, we excluded the responses of the corresponding items from further analyses (see S1 File ). Following the preregistration, we only conducted descriptive statistics of the survey results.

Background information

The summary of the key demographic information of the 704 complete responses is presented in Table 2 . A full summary of all the collected background information of the respondents are available in S1 File .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249127.t002

Efficiency of research work

The results showed that 94% (n = 662) of the surveyed researchers worked more from home during the COVID-19 lockdown compared to the time before. Of these researchers, 47% found that due to working more from home their research became, in general, less efficient, 23% found it more efficient, and 30% found no difference compared to working before the lockdown. Within this database, we also explored the effect of the lockdown on the efficiency of people living with children (n = 290). Here, we found that 58% of them experienced that due to working more from home their research became, in general, less efficient, 20% found it more efficient, and 22% found no difference compared to working before the lockdown. Of those researchers who live with children, we found that 71% of the 21 single parents and 57% of the 269 partnered parents found working less efficient when working from home compared to the time before the lockdown.

When asking about how working more from home would affect the efficiency of their research after the lockdown, of those who have not already been working from home full time (n = 684), 29% assumed that it could make their research, in general, less efficient, 29% said that it would be more efficient, and 41% assumed no difference compared to the time before the lockdown ( Fig 1 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249127.g001

Focusing on the efficiency of the subgroup of people who live with children (n = 295), we found that for 32% their research work would be less efficient, for 30% it would be no different, and for 38% it would be more efficient to work from home after the lockdown, compared to the time before the lockdown.

Comparing working from home to working in the office

When comparing working from home to working in the office in general, people found that they can better achieve certain aspects of the research in one place than the other. They indicated that in the office they are better at sharing thoughts with colleagues, keeping in touch with their team, and collecting data, whereas at home they are better at working on their manuscript, reading the literature, and analyzing their data ( Fig 2 ).

The bars represent response averages of the given aspects.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249127.g002

Actual and ideal time spent working from home

We also asked the researchers how much of their work time they spent working from home in the past, and how much it would be ideal for them to work from home in the future concerning both research efficiency and well-being. Fig 3 shows the distribution of percentages of time working from home in the past and in an ideal future. Comparing these values for each researcher, we found that 66% of them want to work more from home in the future than they did before the lockdown, whereas 16% of them want to work less from home, and 18% of them want to spend the same percentage of their work time at home in the future as before. (These latter calculations were not preregistered).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249127.g003

Feasibility of working more from home

Taken all their other duties (education, administration, etc.) and provided circumstances at home (infrastructure, level of disturbance), of researchers who would like to work more from home in the future (n = 461), 86% think that it would be possible to do so. Even among those who have teaching duties at work (n = 376), 84% think that more working from home would be ideal and possible.

Researchers’ work and life have radically changed in recent times. The flexibility allowed by the mobilization of technology and the continuous access to the internet disintegrated the traditional work-life boundary. Where, when, and how we work depends more and more on our own arrangements. The recent pandemic only highlighted an already existing task: researchers’ worklife has to be redefined. The key challenge in a new work-life model is to find strategies to balance the demands of work and personal life. As a first step, the present paper explored how working from home affects researchers’ efficiency and well-being.

Our results showed that while the pandemic-related lockdown decreased the work efficiency for almost half of the researchers (47%), around a quarter (23%) of them experienced that they were more efficient during this time compared to the time before. Based on personal experience, 70% of the researchers think that after the lockdown they would be similarly (41%) or more efficient (29%) than before if they could spend more of their work-time at home. The remaining 30% thought that after the lockdown their work efficiency would decrease if they worked from home, which is noticeably lower than the 47% who claimed the same for the lockdown period. From these values we speculate that some of the obstacles of their work efficiency were specific to the pandemic lockdown. Such obstacles could have been the need to learn new methods to teach online [ 44 ] or the trouble adapting to the new lifestyle [ 45 ]. Furthermore, we found that working from the office and working from home support different aspects of research. Not surprisingly, activities that involve colleagues or team members are better bound to the office, but tasks that need focused attention, such as working on the manuscript or analyzing the data are better achieved from home.

A central motivation of our study was to explore what proportion of their worktime researchers would find ideal to work from home, concerning both research efficiency and work-life balance. Two thirds of the researchers indicated that it would be better to work more from home in the future. It seemed that sharing work somewhat equally between the two venues is the most preferred arrangement. A great majority (86%) of those who would like to work more from home in the future, think that it would be possible to do so. As a conclusion, both the work and non-work life of researchers would take benefits should more WFH be allowed and neither workplace duties, nor their domestic circumstances are limits of such a change. That researchers have a preference to work more from home, might be due to the fact that they are more and more pressured by their work. Finishing manuscripts, and reading literature is easier to find time for when working from home.

A main message of the results of our present survey is that although almost half of the respondents reported reduced work efficiency during the lockdown, the majority of them would prefer the current remote work setting to some extent in the future. It is important to stress, however, that working from home is not equally advantageous for researchers. Several external and personal factors must play a role in researchers’ work efficiency and work-life balance. In this analysis, we concentrated only on family status, but further dedicated studies will be required to gain a deeper understanding of the complex interaction of professional, institutional, personal, and domestic factors in this matter. While our study could only initiate the exploration of academics’ WFH benefits and challenges, we can already discuss a few relevant aspects regarding the work-life interface.

Our data show that researchers who live with dependent children can exploit the advantages of working from home less than those who do not have childcare duties, irrespective of the pandemic lockdown. Looking after children is clearly a main source of people’s task overload and, as a result, work-family conflict [ 46 , 47 ]. As an implication, employers should pay special respect to employees’ childcare situations when defining work arrangements. It should be clear, however, that other caring responsibilities should also be respected such as looking after elderly or disabled relatives [ 48 ]. Furthermore, to avoid equating non-work life with family-life, a broader diversity of life circumstances, such as those who live alone, should be taken into consideration [ 49 ].

It seems likely that after the pandemic significantly more work will be supplied from home [ 50 ]. The more of the researchers’ work will be done from home in the future, the greater the challenge will grow to integrate their work and non-work life. The extensive research on work-life conflict, should help us examine the issue and to develop coping strategies applicable for academics’ life. The Boundary Theory [ 26 , 51 , 52 ] proved to be a useful framework to understand the work-home interface. According to this theory, individuals utilize different tactics to create and maintain an ideal level of work-home segmentation. These boundaries often serve as “mental fences” to simplify the environment into domains, such as work or home, to help us attend our roles, such as being an employee or a parent. These boundaries are more or less permeable, depending on how much the individual attending one role can be influenced by another role. Individuals differ in the degree to which they prefer and are able to segment their roles, but each boundary crossing requires a cognitive “leap” between these categories [ 53 ]. The source of conflict is the demands of the different roles and responsibilities competing for one’s physical and mental resources. Working from home can easily blur the boundary between work and non-work domains. The conflict caused by the intrusion of the home world to one’s work time, just as well the intrusion of work tasks to one’s personal life are definite sources of weakened ability to concentrate on one’s tasks [ 54 ], exhaustion [ 55 ], and negative job satisfaction [ 56 ].

What can researchers do to mitigate this challenge? Various tactics have been identified for controlling one’s borders between work and non-work. One can separate the two domains by temporal, physical, behavioral, and communicative segmentation [ 26 ]. Professionals often have preferences and self-developed tactics for boundary management. People who prefer tighter boundary management apply strong segmentation between work and home [ 57 , 58 ]. For instance, they don’t do domestic tasks in worktime (temporal segmentation), close their door when working from home (physical segmentation), don’t read work emails at weekends (behavioral segmentation), or negotiate strict boundary rules with family members (communicative segmentation). People on the other on one side of the segmentation-integration continuum, might not mind, or cannot avoid, ad-hoc boundary-crossings and integrate the two domains by letting private space and time be mixed with their work.

Researchers, just like other workers, need to develop new arrangements and skills to cope with the disintegration of the traditional work-life boundaries. To know how research and education institutes could best support this change would require a comprehensive exploration of the factors in researchers’ WFH life. There is probably no one-size-fits-all approach to promote employees’ efficiency and well-being. Life circumstances often limit how much control people can have over their work-life boundaries when working from home [ 59 ]. Our results strongly indicate that some can boost work efficiency and wellbeing when working from home, others need external solutions, such as the office, to provide boundaries between their life domains. Until we gain comprehensive insight about the topic, individuals are probably the best judges of their own situation and of what arrangements may be beneficial for them in different times [ 60 ]. The more autonomy the employers provide to researchers in distributing their work between the office and home (while not lowering their expectations), the more they let them optimize this arrangement to their circumstances.

Our study has several limitations: to investigate how factors such as research domain, seniority, or geographic location contribute to WFH efficiency and well-being would have needed a much greater sample. Moreover, the country of residence of the respondents was not collected in our survey and this factor could potentially alter the perception of WFH due to differing social and infrastructural factors. Whereas the world-wide lockdown has provided a general experience to WFH to academics, the special circumstances just as well biased their judgment of the arrangement. With this exploratory research, we could only scratch the surface of the topic, the reader can probably generate a number of testable hypotheses that would be relevant to the topic but we could not analyze in this exploration.

Newton working in lockdown became the idealized image of the home-working scientist. Unquestionably, he was a genius, but his success probably needed a fortunate work-life boundary. Should he had noisy neighbours, or taunting domestic duties, he might have achieved much less while working from home. With this paper, we aim to draw attention to how WFH is becoming a major element of researchers’ life and that we have to be prepared for this change. We hope that personal experience or the topic’s relevance to the future of science will invite researchers to continue this work.

Supporting information

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249127.s001

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Szonja Horvath, Matyas Sarudi, and Zsuzsa Szekely for their help with reviewing the free text responses.

• View Article
• Google Scholar
• 5. Parent-Thirion A, Biletta I, Cabrita J, Vargas O, Vermeylen G, Wilczynska A, et al. Sixth European working conditions survey: Overview report. Eurofound (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working …; 2016.
• 6. US Department of Labor B of LS. American time use survey—2015 results. 2016;
• 7. Deloitte. The Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2020: Millennials and Gen Zs hold the key to creating a “better normal” [Internet]. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; 2020 [cited 2020 Jul 5]. https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/millennialsurvey.html
• PubMed/NCBI
• 23. Pinsonneault A, Boisvert M. The impacts of telecommuting on organizations and individuals: A review of the literature. In: Telecommuting and virtual offices: Issues and opportunities. IGI Global; 2001. p. 163–85.
• 40. Frederickson M. COVID-19’s gendered impact on academic productivity [Internet]. GitHub. 2020 [cited 2020 Jul 15]. https://github.com/drfreder/pandemic-pub-bias
• 50. Barrero JM, Bloom N, Davis SJ. Why Working From Home Will Stick. Univ Chic Becker Friedman Inst Econ Work Pap. 2020;(2020–174).
• 53. Zerubavel E. The fine line. University of Chicago Press; 1993.
• 58. Nippert-Eng C. Calendars and keys: The classification of “home” and “work”. In: Sociological Forum. Springer; 1996. p. 563–82.

How working from home works out

Key takeaways.

• Forty-two percent of U.S. workers are now working from home full time, accounting for more than two-thirds of economic activity.
• Policymakers should ensure that broadband service is expanded so more workers can do their jobs away from a traditional office.
• As companies consider relocating from densely populated urban centers in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, cities may suffer while suburbs and rural areas benefit.
• Working from home is here to stay, but post-pandemic will be optimal at about two days a week.

Working from home (WFH) is dominating our lives. If you haven’t experienced the phenomenon directly, you’ve undoubtedly heard all about it, as U.S. media coverage of working from home jumped 12,000 percent since January 1 .

But the trend toward working from home is nothing new. In 2014 I published  a study  of a Chinese travel company, Ctrip, that looked at the benefits of its WFH policies (Bloom et al. 2014). And in the past several months as the coronavirus pandemic has forced millions of workers to set up home offices, I have been advising dozens of firms and analyzing four large surveys covering working from home. 2

The recent work has highlighted several recurring themes, each of which carries policy questions — either for businesses or public officials. But the bottom line is clear: Working from home will be very much a part of our post-COVID economy. So the sooner policymakers and business leaders think of the implications of a home-based workforce, the better our firms and communities will be positioned when the pandemic subsides.

The US economy is now a working-from-home economy

Figure 1 shows the work status of 2,500 Americans my colleagues Jose Barrero (ITAM) and Steve Davis (Chicago) and I surveyed between May 21-25. The responders were between 20 and 64, had worked full time in 2019, and earned more than $20,000. The participants were weighted to represent the U.S. by state, industry, and income.

We find that 42 percent of the U.S. labor force are now working from home full time, while another 33 percent are not working — a testament to the savage impact of the lockdown recession. The remaining 26 percent are working on their business’s premises, primarily as essential service workers. Almost twice as many employees are working from home as at a workplace.

If we weight these employees by their earnings in 2019 as an indicator of their contribution to the country’s GDP, we see that these at-home workers now account for more than two-thirds of economic activity. In a matter of weeks, we have transformed into a working-from-home economy.

Although the pandemic has battered the economy to a point where we likely won’t see a return to trend until 2022 (Baker et al. 2020), things would have been far worse without the ability to work from home. Remote working has allowed us to maintain social distancing in our fight against COVID-19. So, working from home is a not only economically essential, it is a critical weapon in combating the pandemic.

Figure 1: WFH now accounts for over 60% of US economic activity

Source:  Response to the question  “Currently (this week) what is your work status?”  Response options were  “Working on my business premises“ ,  “Working from home” ,  “Still employed and paid, but not working“ ,  “Unemployed, but expect to be recalled to my previous job“ ,  “Unemployed, and do not expect to be recalled to my previous job“ ,  and  “Not working, and not looking for work“

Data from a survey of 2,500 US residents aged 20 to 64, earning more than $20,000 per year in 2019 carried out between May 21-29, by QuestionPro on behalf of Stanford University. Sample reweighted to match current CPS.

Shares shown weighted by earnings and unweighted (share of workers)

The inequality time bomb

But it is important to understand the potential downsides of a WFH economy and take steps to mitigate them.

Figure 2 shows not everyone can work from home. Only 51 percent of our survey reported being able to WFH at an efficiency rate of 80 percent or more. These are mostly managers, professionals, and financial workers who can easily carry out their jobs on their computers by videoconference, phone, and email.

The remaining half of Americans don’t benefit from those technological workarounds — many employees in retail, health care, transportation, and business services cannot do their jobs anywhere other than a traditional workplace. They need to see customers or work with products or equipment. As such they face a nasty choice between enduring greater health risks by going to work or forgoing earnings and experience by staying at home.

Figure 2: Not all jobs can be carried out WFH

Source:  Data from a survey of 2,500 US residents aged 20 to 64, earning more than $20,000 per year in 2019 carried out between May 21-25 2020, by QuestionPro on behalf of Stanford University. Sample reweighted to match the Current Population Survey.

In Figure 3 we see that many Americans also lack the facilities to effectively work from home. Only 49 percent of responders can work privately in a room other than their bedroom. The figure displays another big challenge — online connectivity. Internet connectivity for video calls has to be 90 percent or greater, which only two-thirds of those surveyed reported having. The remaining third have such poor internet service that it prevents them effectively working from home.

Figure 3: WFH under COVID-19 is challenging for many employees

Source:   Pre-COVID data from the BLS ATUS . During COVID data from a survey of 2,500 US residents aged 20 to 64, earning more than $20,000 per year in 2019 carried out between May 21-25 2020, by QuestionPro on behalf of Stanford University. Sample reweighted to match the Current Population Survey.

In Figure 4, we see that more educated, higher-earning employees are far more likely to work from home. These employees continue to earn, develop skills, and advance careers. Those unable to work from home — either because of the nature of their jobs or because they lack suitable space or internet connections — are being left behind. They face bleak prospects if their skills erode during the shutdown.

Taken together, these findings point to a ticking inequality time bomb.

So as we move forward to restart the U.S. economy, investing in broadband expansion should be a major priority. During the last Great Depression, the U.S. government launched one of the great infrastructure projects in American history when it approved the Rural Electrification Act in 1936. Over the following 25 years, access to electricity by rural Americans increased from just 10 percent to nearly 100 percent. The long-term benefits included higher rates of growth in employment, population, income, and property values.

Today, as policymakers consider how to focus stimulus spending to revive growth, a significant increase in broadband spending is crucial to ensuring that all of the United States has a fair chance to bounce back from COVID-19.

Figure 4: WFH is much more common among educated higher-income employees

Source:  Pre-COVID data from the BLS ATUS . During COVID data from a survey of 2,500 US residents aged 20 to 64, earning more than $20,000 per year in 2019 carried out between May 21-25 2020, by QuestionPro on behalf of Stanford University. Sample reweighted to match the Current Population Survey. We code a respondent as working from home pre-COVID if they report working from home one day per week or more.

Trouble for the cities?

Understanding the lasting impacts of working from home in a post-COVID world requires taking a look back at the pre-pandemic work world. Back when people  went  to work, they typically commuted to offices in the center of cities. Our survey showed 58 percent of those who are now working from home had worked in a city before the coronavirus shutdown. And 61 percent of respondents said they worked in an office.

Since these employees also tend to be well paid, I estimate this could remove from city centers up to 50 percent of total daily spending in bars, restaurants, and shops. This is already having a depressing impact on the vitality of the downtowns of our major cities. And, as I argue below, this upsurge in working from home is largely here to stay. So I see a longer-run decline in city centers.

The largest American cities have seen incredible growth since the 1980s as younger, educated Americans have flocked into revitalized downtowns (Glaeser 2011). But it looks like 2020 will reverse that trend, with a flight of economic activity from city centers.

Of course, the upside is this will be a boom for suburbs and rural areas.

Working from home is here to stay

Working from home is a play in three parts, each totally different from the other. The first part is  pre -COVID. This was an era in which working from home was both rare and stigmatized.

A  survey of 10,000  salaried workers conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed only 15 percent of employees ever had a full day working from home. 3

Indeed, only 2 percent of workers ever worked from home full time. From talking to dozens of remote employees for my research projects over the years, I found these are mostly either lower-skilled data entry or tele-sales workers or higher-skilled employees who were able to do their jobs largely online and had often been able to keep a job despite locating to a new area.

Working from home before the pandemic was also hugely stigmatized — often mocked and ridiculed as “shirking from home” or “working remotely, remotely working.”

In a 2017  TEDx Talk , I showed the result from an online image search for the words “working from home” which pulled up hundreds of negative images of cartoons, semi-naked people or parents holding a laptop in one hand and a baby in the other.

Working from home  during the pandemic is very different. It is now extremely common, without the stigma, but under  challenging conditions . Many workers have kids at home with them. There’s a lack of quiet space, a lack of choice over having to work from home, and no option other than to do this full time. Having four kids myself I have definitely experienced this.

COVID has forced many of us to work from home under the worst circumstances.

But working from home  post- COVID should be what we look forward to. Of the dozens of firms I have talked to, the typical plan is that employees will work from home between one and three days a week and come into the office the rest of the time. This is supported by our evidence on about 1,000 firms from the  Survey of Business Uncertainty  I run with the Atlanta Fed and the University of Chicago. 4

Before COVID, 5 percent of working days were spent at home. During the pandemic, this increased eightfold to 40 percent a day. And post-pandemic, the number will likely drop to 20 percent.

But that 20 percent still represents a fourfold increase of the pre-COVID level, highlighting that working from home is here to stay. While few firms are planning to continue full time WFH after the pandemic ends, nearly every firm I have talked to about this has been positively surprised by how well it has worked.

The office will survive but it may look different

“Should we get rid of our office?” I get that question a lot.

The answer is “No. But you might want to move it.”

Although firms plan to reduce the time their employees spend at work, this will not reduce the demand for total office space given the need for social distancing. The firms I talk to are typically thinking about halving the density of offices, which is leading to an increase in the overall demand for office space. That is, the 15 percent drop in working days in the office is more than offset by the 50 percent increase in demand for space per employee.

What is happening, however, is offices are moving from skyscrapers to industrial parks. Another dominant theme of the last 40 years of American cities was the shift of office space into high-rise buildings in city centers. COVID is dramatically reversing this trend as high rises face two massive problems in a post-COVID world.

Just consider mass transit and elevators in a time of mandatory social distancing. How can you get several million workers in and out of major cities like New York, London, or Tokyo every day keeping everyone six feet apart? And think of the last elevator you were in. If we strictly enforce six feet of social distancing, the maximum capacity of elevators could fall by 90 percent 5 , making it impossible for employees working in a skyscraper to expediently reach their desks.

Of course, if social distancing disappears post-COVID, this may not matter. But given all the uncertainty, my prediction is that when a vaccine eventually comes out in a year or so, society will have become accustomed to social distancing. And given recent nearly missed pandemics like SARS, Ebola, MERS, and avian flu, many firms and employees may be preparing for another outbreak and another need for social distancing. So my guess is many firms will be reluctant to return to dense offices.

So what is the solution? Firms may be wise to turn their attention from downtown buildings to industrial park offices, or “campuses,” as hi-tech companies in Silicon Valley like to call them. These have the huge benefits of ample parking for all employees and spacious low-rise buildings that are accessible by stairs.

Two types of policies can be explored to address this challenge. First, towns and cities should be flexible on zoning, allowing struggling shopping malls, cinemas, gyms, and hotels to be converted into offices. These are almost all low-rise structures with ample parking, perfect for office development.

Second, we need to think more like economists by introducing airline-style pricing for mass transit and elevators. The challenges with social distancing arise during peak capacity, so we need to cut peak loads.

For public transportation this means steeply increasing peak-time fares and cutting off-peak fares to encourage riders to spread out through the day.

For elevator rides we need to think more radically. For example, office rents per square foot could be cut by 50 percent, but elevator use could be charged heavily during the morning and evening rush hours. Charging firms, say $10 per elevator ride between 8:45 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. and 4:45 p.m. and 5:15 p.m., would encourage firms to stagger their working days. This would move elevator traffic to off-peak periods with excess capacity. We are moving from a world where office space is in short supply to one where elevator space is in short supply, and commercial landlords should consider charging their clients accordingly.

Making a smooth transition

From all my conversations and research, I have three pieces of advice for anyone crafting WFH policies.

First, working from home should be part time.

Full-time working from home is problematic for three reasons: It is hard to be creative at a distance, it is hard to be inspired and motivated at home, and employee loyalty is strained without social interaction.

My experiment at Ctrip in China followed 250 employees working from home for four days a week for nine months and saw the challenges of isolation and loneliness this created.

For the first three months employees were happy — it was the euphoric honeymoon period. But by the time the experiment had run its full length, two-thirds of the employees requested to return to the office. They needed human company.

Currently, we are in a similar honeymoon phase of full-time WFH. But as with any relationship, things can get rocky and I see increasing numbers of firms and employees turning against this practice.

So the best advice is plan to work from home about 1 to 3 days a week. It’ll ease the stress of commuting, allow for employees to use their at-home days for quiet, thoughtful work, and let them use their in-office days for meetings and collaborations.

Second, working from home should be optional.

Figure 5 shows the choice of how many days per week our survey of 2,500 American workers preferred. While the median responder wants to work from home two days a week, there is a striking range of views. A full 20 percent of workers never want to do it while another 25 percent want to do it full time.

The remaining 55 percent all want some mix of office and home time. I saw similarly large variations in views in my China experiment, which often changed over time. Employees would try WFH and then discover after a few months it was too lonely or fell victim to one of the three enemies of the practice — the fridge, the bed, and the television — and would decide to return to the office.

So the simple advice is to let employees choose, within limits. Nobody should be forced to work from home full time, and nobody should be forced to work in the office full time. Choice is key — let employees pick their schedules and let them change as their views evolve. The two exceptions are new hires, for whom maybe one or two years full time in the office makes sense, and under-performers, who are the subject of my final tip.

Third, working from home is a privilege, not an entitlement.

For WFH to succeed, it is essential to have an effective performance review system. If you can evaluate employees based on output — what they accomplish — they can easily work from home. If they are effective and productive, great; if not, warn them, and if they continue to underperform, haul them back to the office.

This of course requires effective performance management. In firms that do not have effective employee appraisal systems management, I would caution against working from home. This was the lesson of  Yahoo in 2013 . When Marissa Mayer took over, she found there was an ineffective employee evaluation system and working from home was hard to manage. So WFH was paused while Mayer revamped Yahoo’s employee performance evaluation.

The COVID pandemic has challenged and changed our relationships with work and how many of us do our jobs. There’s no real going back, and that means policymakers and business leaders need to plan and prepare so workers and firms are not sidelined by otherwise avoidable problems. With a thoughtful approach to a post-pandemic world, working from home can be a change for good.

Figure 5: There is wide variation in employee demand for WFH post-COVID

Source:  Response to the questions: “In 2021+ (after COVID) how often would you like to have paid work days at home?“

Data from a survey of 2,500 US residents aged 20 to 64, earning more than $20,000 per year in 2019 carried out between May 21-25, by QuestionPro on behalf of Stanford University. 

Sample reweighted to match the Current Population Survey. 

1 Newsbank Access World News collection of approximately 2,000 national and local daily U.S. newspapers showing the percentage of articles mentioning “working from home” or “WFH.”

2 These are the  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics American Time Use Survey ; the  Survey of Business Uncertainty ; the  Bank of England Decision Maker Panel ; and the survey I conducted of 2,500 U.S. employees.

3   U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Flexibilities and Work Schedules News Release. Sept. 24, 2019 .

4   Firms Expect Working from Home to Triple.  May 28, 2020. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta .

5  In a packed elevator each person requires about four square feet. With six-foot spacing we need a circle of radius six-feet around each person, which is over 100 square feet. If an elevator is large enough to fit more than one person, experts have advised riders to stand in your corner, face the walls and carry toothpicks (for pushing the buttons), as explained in this  NPR report .

Baker, S.R., Bloom, N., Davis, S.J., Terry, S.J. (2020). COVID-Induced Economic Uncertainty (No. 26983). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bloom, N., Liang, J., Roberts, J., Zhichun, J.Y. (2014). Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment. Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Glaeser, E. (2011). Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier. Penguin Books.

Related Topics

• Policy Brief

More Publications

Economic policy in a biden administration, a taste of their own medicine: guideline adherence and access to expertise, private capital flows and default risk.

How does working from home affect developer productivity? — A case study of Baidu during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Research Paper
• Published: 14 March 2022
• Volume 65 , article number  142102 , ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Lingfeng Bao 1 ,
• Xin Xia 3 ,
• Kaiyu Zhu 2 ,
• Hui Li 2 &
• Xiaohu Yang 1  

8313 Accesses

28 Citations

2 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Nowadays, working from home (WFH) has become a popular work arrangement due to its many potential benefits for both companies and employees (e.g., increasing job satisfaction and retention of employees). Many previous studies have investigated the impact of WFH on the productivity of employees. However, most of these studies usually use a qualitative analysis method such as surveys and interviews, and the studied participants do not work from home for a long continuing time. Due to the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a large number of companies asked their employees to work from home, which provides us an opportunity to investigate whether WFH affects their productivity. In this study, to investigate the difference in developer productivity between WFH and working onsite, we conduct a quantitative analysis based on a dataset of developers’ daily activities from Baidu Inc., one of the largest IT companies in China. In total, we collected approximately four thousand records of 139 developers’ activities of 138 working days. Out of these records, 1103 records are submitted when developers work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that WFH has both positive and negative impacts on developer productivity in terms of different metrics, e.g., the number of builds/commits/code reviews. We also notice that WFH has different impacts on projects with different characteristics including programming language, project type/age/size. For example, WFH has a negative impact on developer productivity for large projects. Additionally, we find that productivity varies for different developers. Based on these findings, we get some feedback from developers of Baidu and understand some reasons why WFH has different impacts on developer productivity. We also conclude several implications for both companies and developers.

Article PDF

Download to read the full article text

Similar content being viewed by others

Satisfaction and performance of software developers during enforced work from home in the COVID-19 pandemic

Daniel Russo, Paul H. P. Hanel, … Niels van Berkel

To Work from Home (WFH) or Not to Work from Home? Lessons Learned by Software Engineers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Working Conditions for Software Developers in Colombia: An Effort-Reward-Imbalance-Based Study

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Shin B, El Sawy O A, Sheng O R L, et al. Telework: existing research and future directions. J Organ Comput Electron Commer, 2000, 10: 85–101

Article   Google Scholar  

Spark R. Accessibility to work from home for the disabled: the need for a shift in management style. In: Proceedings of the 14th Web for All Conference on the Future of Accessible Work, 2017. 1–4

Hill E J, Ferris M, Märtinson V. Does it matter where you work? A comparison of how three work venues (traditional office, virtual office, and home office) influence aspects of work and personal/family life. J Vocat Behav, 2003, 63: 220–241

Meyer A N, Barton L E, Murphy G C, et al. The work life of developers: activities, switches and perceived productivity. IIEEE Trans Softw Eng, 2017, 43: 1178–1193

Wolf T, Schroter A, Damian D, et al. Predicting build failures using social network analysis on developer communication. In: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Software Engineering, 2009. 1–11

Neufeld D J, Fang Y. Predicting telecommuter productivity. In: Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2004

Neufeld D J, Fang Y. Individual, social and situational determinants of telecommuter productivity. Inf Manage, 2005, 42: 1037–1049

Baker E, Avery G C, Crawford J. Satisfaction and perceived productivity when professionals work from home. Res Practice Human Resour Manag, 2007, 15: 37–62

Google Scholar  

Laihonen H, Jääskeläinen A, Lönnqvist A, et al. Measuring the productivity impacts of new ways of working. J Facil Manage, 2012, 10: 102–113

Campbell K M. Flexible work schedules, virtual work programs, and employee productivity. Dissertation for Ph.D. Degree. Minneapolis: Walden University, 2015

Kamei Y, Shihab E, Adams B, et al. A large-scale empirical study of just-in-time quality assurance. IEEE Trans Softw Eng, 2013, 39: 757–773

Walston C E, Felix C P. A method of programming measurement and estimation. IBM Syst J, 1977, 16: 54–73

Devanbu P, Karstu S, Melo W, et al. Analytical and empirical evaluation of software reuse metrics. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software Engineering, 1996. 189–199

Nguyen V, Huang L, Boehm B. An analysis of trends in productivity and cost drivers over years. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Predictive Models in Software Engineering, 2011. 1–10

Xia X, Bao L F, Lo D, et al. Measuring program comprehension: a large-scale field study with professionals. IEEE Trans Softw Eng, 2018, 44: 951–976

von Krogh G, Spaeth S, Lakhani K R. Community, joining, and specialization in open source software innovation: a case study. Res Policy, 2003, 32: 1217–1241

Bao L F, Xia X, Lo D, et al. A large scale study of long-time contributor prediction for GitHub projects. IEEE Trans Softw Eng, 2021, 47: 1277–1298

Melo C, Cruzes D S, Kon F, et al. Agile team perceptions of productivity factors. In: Proceedings of AGILE Conference, 2011. 57–66

Meyer A N, Fritz T, Murphy G C, et al. Software developers’ perceptions of productivity. In: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, 2014. 19–29

Paiva E, Barbosa D, Lima R, et al. Factors that influence the productivity of software developers in a developer view. In: Proceedings of Innovations in Computing Sciences and Software Engineering, 2010. 99–104

Zhou Y M, Leung H, Xu B W. Examining the potentially confounding effect of class size on the associations between object-oriented metrics and change-proneness. IEEE Trans Softw Eng, 2009, 35: 607–623

Wilcoxon F. Individual comparisons by ranking methods. Biometrics Bull, 1945, 1: 80–83

Cliff N. Ordinal Methods for Behavioral Data Analysis. London: Psychology Press, 2014

Book   Google Scholar  

Coenen M, Kok R A W. Workplace flexibility and new product development performance: the role of telework and flexible work schedules. Eur Manage J, 2014, 32: 564–576

Kazekami S. Mechanisms to improve labor productivity by performing telework. TeleCommun Policy, 2020, 44: 101868

Yan M, Xia X, Lo D, et al. Characterizing and identifying reverted commits. Empir Softw Eng, 2019, 24: 2171–2208

Nilles J M. Making Telecommuting Happen: A Guide for Telemanagers and Telecommuters. New York: van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994

Kurkland N B, Bailey D E. The advantages and challenges of working here, there anywhere, and anytime. Organ Dyn, 1999, 28: 53–68

Pérez M P, Sánchez A M, de Luis Carnicer M P. Benefits and barriers of telework: perception differences of human resources managers according to company’s operations strategy. Technovation, 2002, 22: 775–783

Felstead A, Henseke G. Assessing the growth of remote working and its consequences for effort, well-being and work-life balance. New Tech Work Employ, 2017, 32: 195–212

Aguilera A, Lethiais V, Rallet A, et al. Home-based telework in France: characteristics, barriers and perspectives. Transpation Res Part A-Policy Practice, 2016, 92: 1–11

Ford D, Milewicz R, Serebrenik A. How remote work can foster a more inclusive environment for transgender developers. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Gender Equality in Software Engineering (GE), 2019. 9–12

Perry D E, Staudenmayer N A, Votta L G. People, organizations, and process improvement. IEEE Softw, 1994, 11: 36–45

Bailey B P, Konstan J A, Carlis J V. The effects of interruptions on task performance, annoyance, and anxiety in the user interface. In: Proceedings of INTERACT, 2001. 593–601

Chong J, Siino R. Interruptions on software teams: a comparison of paired and solo programmers. In: Proceedings of the 20th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2006. 29–38

Czerwinski M, Horvitz E, Wilhite S. A diary study of task switching and interruptions. In: Proceedings of SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2004. 175–182

Horvitz E C M C E. Notification, disruption, and memory: effects of messaging interruptions on memory and performance. In: Proceedings of Human-Computer Interaction: INTERACT, 2001

Parnin C, DeLine R. Evaluating cues for resuming interrupted programming tasks. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2010. 93–102

van Solingen R, Berghout E, van Latum F. Interrupts: just a minute never is. IEEE Softw, 1998, 15: 97–103

Sanchez H, Robbes R, Gonzalez V M. An empirical study of work fragmentation in software evolution tasks. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER), 2015. 251–260

Albrecht A J. Measuring application development productivity. In: Proceedings of IBM Applications Development Joint SHARE/GUIDE Symposium, 1979

Minelli R, Mocci A, Lanza M. I know what you did last summer-an investigation of how developers spend their time. In: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Program Comprehension, 2015. 25–35

Cataldo M, Herbsleb J D, Carley K M. Socio-technical congruence: a framework for assessing the impact of technical and work dependencies on software development productivity. In: Proceedings of the 2nd ACM-IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, 2008. 2–11

DeMarco T, Lister T. Programmer performance and the effects of the workplace. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Software Engineering, 1985. 268–272

Boehm B W. Improving software productivity. Computer, 1987, 20: 43–57

Vasilescu B, Blincoe K, Xuan Q, et al. The sky is not the limit: multitasking across github projects. In: Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2016. 994–1005

Khan I A, Brinkman W P, Hierons R M. Do moods affect programmers’ debug performance? Cogn Technol Work, 2011, 13: 245–258

Meyer A N, Zimmermann T, Fritz T. Characterizing software developers by perceptions of productivity. In: Proceedings of ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), 2017. 105–110

Ralph P, Baltes S, Adisaputri G, et al. Pandemic programming: how COVID-19 affects software developers and how their organizations can help. 2020. ArXiv:2005.01127

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFB1003904), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. U20A20173, 61902344), and Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Grant No. LY21F020011).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

Lingfeng Bao & Xiaohu Yang

Baidu Inc., Beijing, 100085, China

Tao Li, Kaiyu Zhu & Hui Li

Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, 3800, Australia

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xin Xia .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Bao, L., Li, T., Xia, X. et al. How does working from home affect developer productivity? — A case study of Baidu during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 65 , 142102 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-020-3278-4

Download citation

Received : 18 December 2020

Revised : 10 March 2021

Accepted : 19 May 2021

Published : 14 March 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-020-3278-4

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• developer productivity
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Remote work

• Business management
• Work environments
• Hybrid work
• Office politics
• Workplace health and safety

In a Hybrid World, Your Tech Defines Employee Experience

• Brad Anderson
• Seth Patton
• February 18, 2022

Why Remote Workers Are More (Yes, More) Engaged

• Scott Edinger
• August 24, 2012

Designing Learning Programs for a Hybrid Workplace

• Heidi Grant
• Tal Goldhamer
• July 06, 2022

"Remote Work Isn't a Perk to Toss into the Mix"

• Gretchen Gavett
• September 28, 2021

Remote Workers Need Small Talk, Too

• Jessica R. Methot
• Allison S. Gabriel
• Patrick Downes
• Emily Rosado-Solomon
• March 25, 2021

Research: Flexible Work Is Having a Mixed Impact on Employee Well-Being and Productivity

• Jeremie Brecheisen
• October 16, 2023

Research: Can You Tell How You Come Across on Zoom?

• Hasagani Tissera
• Marie Catherine Mignault
• October 05, 2023

How I Hired an Entirely Remote Workforce

• Kuty Shalev
• April 14, 2016

Forget Flexibility. Your Employees Want Autonomy.

• Holger Reisinger
• Dane Fetterer
• October 29, 2021

Don't Underestimate the Power of Lateral Career Moves for Professional Growth

• Kirsten Helvey
• May 10, 2016

Need a Favor? Research Suggests It's Best to Ask In Person.

• Mahdi Roghanizad
• Vanessa Bohns
• December 20, 2021

Research: How Coworking Spaces Impact Employee Well-Being

• Constance Noonan Hadley
• Sarah Wright
• February 09, 2023

The Rise of the Meta City

• Richard Florida
• Vladislav Boutenko
• Antoine Vetrano
• November 29, 2023

Revitalizing Culture in the World of Hybrid Work

• Harvard Business Review
• From the November–December 2022 Issue

What to Do If Your Team Doesn't Want to Go Back to the Office

• January 18, 2021

What's Your Company's Emergency Remote-Work Plan?

• Cali Williams Yost
• February 28, 2020

Research: Cameras On or Off?

• Daron Robertson
• Kristen Shockley
• October 26, 2021

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella on Flexible Work, the Metaverse, and the Power of Empathy

• October 28, 2021

We Work Harder When We Know Someone's Watching

• Janina Steinmetz
• Ayelet Fishbach
• May 18, 2020

4 Strategies for Building a Hybrid Workplace that Works

• Todd Heiser
• July 22, 2021

MD Solutions: Working from Home

• Atri Sengupta
• Pankaj Singh
• December 13, 2016

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Talent (with bonus article "Building a Game-Changing Talent Strategy" by Douglas A. Ready, Linda A. Hill, and Robert J. Thomas)

• Marcus Buckingham
• Linda A. Hill
• Laura Morgan Roberts
• November 22, 2022

GitLab: Can "All Remote" Scale?

• Phanish Puranam
• Marco Minervini
• August 11, 2020

HBR's 10 Must Reads 2023: The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review (with bonus article "Persuading the Unpersuadable" By Adam Grant)

• Adam M. Grant
• Francesca Gino
• Fred Reichheld
• October 18, 2022

5 Years of Must Reads from HBR: 2022 Edition (5 Books)

• Michael E. Porter
• Joan C. Williams
• Frances X. Frei
• May 10, 2022

Italtel: An LBO Solution? (B)

• Robert Crawford
• Oliver Gottschalg
• Maurizio Zollo
• January 01, 2004

Hybrid Workplace: Tools for Preparing Your Team for the Future

• Amy C. Edmondson
• Liane Davey
• June 01, 2022

The Year in Tech, 2025: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

• October 08, 2024

TCS: From Physical Offices to Borderless Work

• Prithwiraj Choudhury
• January 07, 2021

eXp Realty and the Virbela platform

• David Rowat
• Emma Salomon
• December 02, 2020

People Skills for a Virtual World Collection (6 Books) (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)

• Daniel Goleman
• Annie McKee
• November 16, 2022

The Future of Work: Tools for Preparing Your Team for the Future

• Deborah Grayson Riegel
• Brian Kropp
• Ranjay Gulati
• Joseph B. Fuller
• August 17, 2021

Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language

• Ashley V. Whillans
• Alpana Thapar
• January 13, 2020

Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

• Martin Reeves
• Nancy F. Koehn
• Tsedal Neeley
• Scott Berinato
• July 28, 2020

Psychological Safety (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series)

• September 03, 2024

HBR Guide to Managing Flexible Work Toolkit

• August 31, 2023

Italtel: Partnering with Cisco Systems (C)

Employment is dead: how disruptive technologies are revolutionizing the way we work.

• Deborah Perry Piscione
• January 28, 2025

HBR's 10 Must Reads 2023 (Paperback + Ebook)

Gbs india: should remote working continue after the lockdown.

• Manoj Kalra
• Dinesh K Murugesan
• May 20, 2021

Is Remote Work Right for You?

• Kristi DePaul
• March 09, 2023

I Have Mixed Feelings About Working Remotely Full Time

• Nicole D Smith
• November 02, 2021

How Hybrid Work Is (And Isn’t) Reshaping Cities

• December 12, 2023

Digital Nomad Visa Programs

• Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury
• May 27, 2022

LinkedIn's CEO on Hiring Strategies and the Skills That Matter Most (from The New World of Work)

• Adi Ignatius
• Alison Beard
• Ryan Roslansky
• December 27, 2022

Popular Topics

Partner center.

Two court cases about working from home. Two startling decisions

It's not just one room that's the workplace.

Technology has eroded the separation between work and, well, life.

ZDNET Recommends

The best video conferencing software.

Which video conferencing platform is right for your business? We've gathered details about 10 leading services.

Working from home has, for many, created a situation where, thanks to computers, wifi and Zoom, work has entirely taken over life.

Many employers, of course, haven't minded this at all. Think of all the money they've saved on office space. Think of the long hours people are now working  as they toil in the confines of their bedrooms, living rooms, or tiny home offices.

But have you ever thought about what happens when, say, an accident occurs? At home. While you're working at home.

I've been moved by two recent legal cases that have mined the realities of your home being your office.

In Germany, a man got out of bed and walked down a spiral staircase toward his home office. He slipped and broke his back.

His employer's insurance company declined to honor his claim for compensation.

Yet, as the Guardian reported , a court declared that the man was technically commuting, so he could claim workplace accident insurance. This, it concluded, was his first trip that day from the "home" of his bed to his office. Ergo, a commute.

The court added: "If the insured activity is carried out in the household of the insured person or at another location, insurance cover is provided to the same extent as when the activity is carried out at the company premises."

You might think this would make one or two employers around the world take notice and not, perhaps, consider themselves so very lucky to have their employees in their own homes, with their own insurance policies.

But then, another court case.

An Air Canada employee worked her call center job from home, as so many call center employees have been forced to over the last two years.

While at home, and during office hours, she, too, slipped down the stairs and sustained injuries.

The airline didn't believe she qualified for workers' compensation.

The Vancouver Sun related the judge's words like this: "Air Canada argues that this fall on the stairs did not occur during work, since Ms. Gentile-Patti was no longer in her professional sphere, but rather in her personal sphere, because the fall occurs as she heads out to eat."

That hurts. Yes, you're working from home. But if you're going downstairs to get lunch, you're off the clock and not at work?

The judge wasn't moved by the airline's attempt to suggest that only the home office counts as a place of work. He added that the only reason Gentile-Patti was going down the stairs at the time she did was to take the lunchtime designated by her employer.

In the judge's words: "Ms. Gentile-Patti's fall, which occurred moments after disconnecting from her workstation to go to dinner, is an unforeseen and sudden event that occurs during work. She therefore suffered an occupational injury."

I'm sure lawyers all over the world will pore over the nuances and debate the legalities and limitations with verve.

I prefer to focus on a more human notion. At least some courts are beginning to recognize that employers can't take all the advantages of having their employees work from home, without accepting responsibility for some of the disadvantages.

I can only wonder how many more cases will be brought, in which the blurring of workplace and home will be tested.

Surely one or two might just cover employers' new remote surveillance software .

6 ways to protect yourself from getting scammed online, by phone, or IRL

Everything you need to build out a smart home, the best travel vpns: expert tested.

• Client Services
• Small Business

WFH Case Study: A Closer Look At Working Remote

By: amanda young.

Work From Home Case Study:  50% of the US workforce is employed with a job that is compatible with at least partial telework. 

80% to 90% of the US workforce says they would like to work remotely at least part time (2-3 days a week).

Fortune 1000 companies around the globe are entirely reinventing their workspace around the fact that employees are already working remotely. studies have shown that these employees are not at their desk 50-60% of the time..

Moving a company to work completely remote is financially and mentally unburdening. Here are the pros and cons of ditching an HQ:

Pros: Work From Home

• Increased productivity
• Flexible hours
• Time saving
• Money saving
• Increased talent pool

Con: Work From Home

• Less collaboration
• Harder to climb the company ladder
• Cyber security  
• Possible communication difficulties
• Lack of discipline

Some amazing companies at scale with no HQ: 

Automattic .

At Automattic employees get to pick their place of work.  In fact, the company is spread out across 70 countries.  To give employees a chance to meet in person, Automattic holds an event for a whole week for employees to meet up. This meeting lets employees meet in their teams to brainstorm and bond. Automattic provides employees parental leave, career coaching, an open vacation policy, paid-for home office setup, wellness opportunities, and other perks. 

GitLab in San Francisco 

GitLab hires employees all over the world rather than hire employees to work all from one location. 

For the past 10 years, Clevertech has been allowing employees to work from anywhere in the world. Clevertech works to make their employees feel like they have a purpose while also encouraging employees to meet one unifying goal. Clevertech believes in flexible work spaces; flexible work time; not judging employees on how long it takes to do something, but rather the actual results; and building a strong international community.

43% of remote workers feel that it is important to work for a company where all employees are remote

38% of remote workers saw lack of commute as a top benefit, with that time instead spent with family (43%), working (35%), resting (36%), and exercising (34%)

86% of respondents believe remote work is the future

52% of remote workers believed they have increased their productivity and 48% believe that they have increased efficiency. 

Chris has led brand campaigns across creative and technical landscapes for British Telecommunications & Toni & Guy.

He’s helped build creative agencies from the ground up with to his universal design acumen and ability to manage creative talent!

At J. Arthur & Co, he is a key pillar to our team due to his innate ability to connect brand vision with user interface/experience concepts, finished with stellar execution.

When things need to happen behind the scenes — He’s our guy.

Having started his career in finance, Tom has been working in Ecom going on 5 years now.

Although he changed industries, he really values his time in finance picking up a lot of valuable and transferable skills.

Tom’s passion is the customers and the relationships he’s built with them over the years.

He’s been extremely effective for us in balancing many tasks, strategic planning, logistics management and always coming up with ways to thrill customers.

Having studied Music Production & Music Business at Point Blank Music School in London, when he’s not working hard, Tom runs a small record label with a group friends.

“Be it expediting orders, overseeing our ambassadors program, or assisting with marketing needs, I’m a jack of all trades (master of none).

My ethos has always been to keep things fun & light hearted, but professional at the heart of it.

You’ll even sometimes catch me in the gym…

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

What’s up guys, I’m Jeff and I started this shop in 2014 out of my bedroom.

I had moved into an apt with a buddy, lived on $200/mo rent and got going.

You had to walk through my room to get to the kitchen and that room became sort of a hybrid br/office.

It took me a couple failed ideas before gaining traction with J. Arthur and for a period of almost two years I slept on a couch to get the company off the ground.

First in that room and then the back of our first (real) office. Both times a couch.

I love delivering results for clients, working with our team here and growing this co (obviously), which now has a humble but global base of both team and customers.

We have just barely started and I know the sky is the limit.

Admittedly I don’t have that many hobbies, But I enjoy all types of physical training and you can usually catch me doing things like: expounding on the pitfalls of fractional reserve banking, discussing the standards of American liberty, or eating unreasonable quantities of food.

I also like to read.

Love spending time with family.

Thanks to Lensa for tightening up my hairline in exchange for my facial dna in some Orwellian database 🙂

Jo has worked in the advertising and design industry since 2015 and has over 8 years of experience with visual communication and design.

Product is her passion with a deep focus in sportswear design and creative direction.

Her key expertise combines many years in both retail and manufacturing with a proactive vision of creating new products and driving them successfully to market.

“I believe in keeping things simple, having honest intentions, and making things fun. Working in an ego-less manner, I bring my whole self to every project, always aiming to exceed expectations and create work that is well thought through and commercially compelling.”

And exceeding expectations she does. We’re very lucky to have Jo’s rare combination of marketing creative, outstanding product design, ambitious strategy and true dedication to her craft.

In Joanna’s free time her hobbies include yoga & aerial fitness, functional training at the gym and occasionally snowboarding.

You can catch much more of her branding magic at @physiqapparel 💪

Aish graduated with a bachelor of engineering in computer science, freelancing for several years before joining J. Arthur as a Junior Web Developer. She’s now been with the company for 3 years.

Aish has the intangible qualities that make a fantastic developer: the desire for continual learning, a “whatever it takes” mentality, and an intense focus on the (ever-changing) task at hand.

She meets every obstacle with optimism and has grown to become a core member of our team who we’re all grateful to work alongside everyday.

In her off time she likes to get outside and go for a much needed walk. She also loves reading books + daily news to learn something new every day. And of course, watching movies 🍿

Shortly after getting a marketing degree from Clemson University, Denton amassed a large following on Twitter after creating several viral, funny tweets that touched on everything from pop culture to music and sports 📲

Realizing he had a knack for creative writing and social media, he decided to continue developing his talents even further.

As a content manager at J. Arthur, he’s has been able to show off his creativity and bring unique ideas to the table.

He’s currently based in Raleigh, NC with his fiancé and their two cats (Nova & Bean).

In his free time you’ll find him playing tennis, listening to music, or knee deep in a good book.

We appreciate his creative adaptability, consistency & steadfast commitment to deliver success on every account.

Dhan is a multidisciplinary solution architect who helps people translate ideas from words and visuals into prototypes and applications, using code that helps organizations address business challenges.

He motivates people to think positively through the power of technology by helping solve a large number of critical situations quickly.

Having been involved in both collaborative and independently-driven roles, he is a forward-thinking leader with refined analytical and critical thinking skills, with deep experience in translating business priorities to IT roadmaps and fine-tuned IT Operating models.

In his spare time, he enjoys traveling playing (and building) video games, watching movies and listening to music.

Dhan is responsible for making our critical IT and technology decisions and has been with J. Arthur for 5 years and we greatly value his leadership.

He’s a grandmaster in complex problem solving, rapid analysis and delivery, high level infrastructure planning, and full stack engineering.

His character is proven time and again by always working in our clients best interests and never failing to deliver a solution to even the most brain busting and urgent issues, with a coolness and poise to be admired 🙌

He studied Computer Science in Brazil before coming to the States four years ago and now works out of our Newport office.

If you’re a J. Arthur client you’ve probably been in contact before, as he works directly with the team and clients to bring projects to completion.

But if you’re within his close friends, you probably know him for playing (very loud) guitar!

Paulo is responsible for tracking an often high paced workflow between project management, design, development and vendors to ensure successful delivery to customers.

We admire his patience, agile ability to learn new skills, and laser focused commitment to problem solving 👏

Based in Chicago, she loves work from home days alongside her furry co-workers. Ralphie likes his personal space, but Murray prefers to sit on mom’s keyboard to help with important emails – and he never misses a team meeting.

What keeps her motivated throughout the day? A combination of matcha lattes, espresso, and Liquid IV (often consuming all of them at the same time).

Outside of work, Hannah likes to unwind with yoga, check out local coffee shops, and spend time outside in the sunshine.

We value her outstanding communication, marketing savvy, ability to bring positivity to every situation and too many other traits to list 🙌

• We'll send you examples of some full stack solutions we're delivering for clients.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Int J Environ Res Public Health

Remote Working and Work Effectiveness: A Leader Perspective

Associated data.

All necessary data samples are provided in the paper.

Currently, job duties are massively transferred from in-person to remote working. Existing knowledge on remote working is mainly based on employees’ assessment. However, the manager’s perspective is crucial in organizations that turned into remote work for the first time facing sudden circumstances, i.e., SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The main aim of our study was to analyze remote work effectiveness perceived by managers (N = 141) referring to three crucial aspects, i.e., manager, team, and external cooperation. We assumed the perceived benefits, limitations, and online working frequency as predictors of remote work effectiveness. Further, we analyzed the possible differences in remote work perception referring to different management levels (i.e., middle-level and lower-level). Our findings revealed a significant relationship between the benefits and effectiveness of managers and external cooperation, specifically among lower-level managers. Limitations, particularly technical and communication issues, predicted team and external cooperation effectiveness. The results showed remote work assessment as being socially diverse at the management level.

1. Introduction

Currently, remote work has become a crucial organizational tool that enables effective performance in the increasingly competitive global market. Although working outside of the office has already been available, this form of performing job duties seems mainstream in modern organizations. Due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, 14.2% of employees in Poland changed their current way of performing professional duties to a remote mode. Almost every sixth employee in the public sector and every twelfth in the private sector worked remotely [ 1 ]. 85.6% worked remotely for five days a week, and 64% were likely to perform their professional duties remotely even after returning to the work office, especially since 44% of employees declared that their efficiency at home did not decrease [ 2 ]. Half of them indicated that sufficient work outside of the office was performed mainly for two days, and every seventh employee pointed out three remote working days.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many studies have been conducted on various aspects of remote working from the employees’ perspectives [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Generally, employees find working from home productive, albeit managers are often concerned about maintaining job performance at least on the same level as office work [ 8 , 9 ]. Thus, it seems crucial to look at how managers at different levels of management perceive the introduction of remote working on an unprecedented scale since they are responsible for organizing and controlling the employees’ work [ 10 ]. We decided to use managerial perception as previous research has proved the usefulness of subjective performance measures and their similarity with objective internal performance [ 11 , 12 , 13 ]. This study aimed to determine how managers rated the effectiveness of their own work and how they assessed the effectiveness of their team and external collaboration while performing their job duties remotely.

Literature Review and Hypotheses Development

Managers’ effectiveness has been defined as the impact of managers on the fluent functioning of an organization [ 14 ]. They can manage effective performance by using optimal acquisition and utilization of internal and external resources, i.e., human, financial, and instrumental resources. Since the managerial role is crucial in obtaining effective workflow and outcomes, this study was focused on managers’ perspectives.

Managers have different needs depending on their status [ 15 ]. Most often, the structure of managers in an organization consists of three levels [ 16 , 17 ]. The first one is top management which assumes top managers with most power, authority, and responsibility. The managers at this level define the company’s strategy, vision, and mission. They represent the company externally and visualize and define the company’s future. Top management is also responsible for dealing with the groups or individuals who may have different interests or intentions that do not have to align with the company’s interests. Their role is to unite or convince them that the interest of the organization stands above everything and is not in conflict with their actions [ 18 ]. The second level, namely middle management, is the one that sets the goals to achieve the organization’s strategy. Middle managers are tasked with communicating and implementing the plan received from top management [ 19 ]. They indicate organizational roles, and they work mainly with the low management. Thus, they rarely have contact with first-line workers. [ 20 ]. At the lowest level of the managerial hierarchy, lower-level managers usually have the most direct and frequent contact with front-line employees. As a result, low managers can significantly impact work effectiveness [ 21 ] since they operate and plan in the short term. They usually do not have the power to implement their own initiatives that can change the strategic goals [ 19 , 22 ]. Nevertheless, to ensure the stable functioning of the organization in unstable circumstances (e.g., at the time of the pandemic), they play a crucial role as first-line leaders. Therefore, the main objective of our study was the assessment of how managers with direct contact with subordinates (i.e., low- and middle-level managers) perceived work effectiveness.

The environment in which an organization finds itself is volatile, and managers at all levels should be open to change. Increased performance and job satisfaction from the perspective of individual employees are reported in trade journals [ 23 ] and academic sources [ 24 ]. However, the relationship between remote working and performance has not been well established from the managers’ perspective [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 25 , 26 ]. Virtual working, including working from home, comprises different benefits, e.g., saving time and other expenses, integrating the work of specialized employees, and expanding external co-operation. There is abundant research on the benefits and limitations of remote working [ 27 ]. The most common benefits include no commuting, reduced distraction, work–life balance and increased work flexibility, creativity, and motivation [ 28 , 29 ]. In addition, many studies have shown increased productivity [ 30 , 31 ]. Research indicates that proximity to co-workers often leads to wasted time and decreased productivity. The increased efficiency of employees in remote working is due to the lack of distractions present in the office [ 32 ]. On the other hand, employees indicate that the most significant disadvantage of remote work is the lack of non-work-related contacts [ 33 ], even though they can contact others via information and communication technologies (ICTs) [ 34 ]. Although Gibbs, Mengel, and Siemroth [ 27 ] emphasized that productivity depended on the worker’s characteristics, and measured employee productivity, the employees were able to maintain similar or slightly lower levels of output during work from home. Besides its positive aspects [ 30 , 35 ], existing research indicated a number of challenges generated by remote work, such as work–home interference, ineffective communication, procrastination, and loneliness.

As mentioned above, there are many advantages of remote forms of performing job duties, and several limitations that result in work outcomes and collaboration [ 31 ]. The responsibility of managing the remote work of employees rests with managers, particularly first-line managers and team leaders. Therefore, we assumed that the perceived effectiveness of remote work was connected with the experienced benefits and limitations ( cf. Hypothesis 1). Moreover, different management levels, i.e., middle- and lower-level managers, might perceive remote work differently ( cf. Hypothesis 2).

The perceived benefits, limitations, and frequency of remote work are related to the remote work effectiveness perceived by lower-level and middle-level managers.

The perceived remote working conditions differ between lower-level and middle-level managers.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. participants and procedure.

To evaluate the effectiveness of remote work, we recruited employees from one of the largest enterprises in Poland. The companies that provided data belong to one of Poland’s largest capital groups in the energy sector. The survey covered the executive staff of three companies employing 234 middle- and lower-level managers (68 women and 166 men). A total of 29% were middle-level managers. The survey mainly addressed managers who had worked remotely/hybrid since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two of the three companies surveyed previously could use remote working, but no more than two days per month. One company did not have remote working in operation. A vast majority of the managers were college-educated employees. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, all companies included in the survey had started remote working with the possibility of hybrid working. In the interests of employees, it was recommended that all individuals who were able to perform their duties (i.e., had the appropriate equipment) and agreed to work remotely took advantage of this opportunity.

We focused explicitly on the management staff during recruitment, i.e., department executives. Overall, the sample comprised 141 participants, including 18.7% middle management and 81.3% lower management. A total of 71% of participants were male, which reflects a male predominance in the real structure of the labor market and the share of males in the total number of employed managers in Poland [ 36 ]. All respondents were highly skilled and educated, mainly in the engineering field.

This cross-sectional study was based on anonymized employee data selected from the organizational resources. No person-related data were collected to ensure the anonymity of the study. The respondents received a link that directed them to the survey located on the company intranet. Participation was voluntary and free of charge. The participants were informed of the voluntary nature of participation in the study and the anonymity of data collection, i.e., their data would be analyzed collectively, and no personal information would be shared. They were assured that there were no wrong answers and that all of their opinions were important. Prior to participation, the respondents provided oral consent to participate in the study and were informed about the possibility of withdrawing from the study. All employees were aged 18 or older and completed their duties remotely from home.

2.2. Measures

Work effectiveness was assessed with three items related to different remote work effectiveness dimensions, i.e., the respondents were asked to assess the effectiveness of their own work, of the team, and of the co-operation with other business areas. All items required the participants to rate the extent to which they perceived work effectiveness (sample question: “Taking everything into consideration, how do you rate your work effectiveness as a whole?”) in all dimensions using a 5-point scale from 1 (ineffective) to 5 (very effective). Each dimension contained one-item measures. Using single-item measures is effective and more favorable in some respects than using multiple-item measures [ 37 ]; e.g., single-item measures are easier to understand by management, are completed more quickly, and require less effort. Higher scores indicated a higher level of perceived effectiveness in each dimension. The reliability of the scale comprising all three items in the current study was considered good, with Cronbach’s α = 0.8.

Benefits were measured using the one-item scale to assess perceived advantages of remote work with multiple-choice answers (sample categories: possibility to gain technical skills, on-task concentration, organized home life, and work economy). The list of chosen benefits was evaluated in terms of subjective fulfillment of criteria for remote working benefits by using competent judges. Benefits were defined as positive aspects, advantages, or profits gained from remote work. We asked five professionals, who were psychologists and managers, to evaluate the set of benefits on a 5-point scale (1 = does not refer to the dimension; 5 = fully refers to the dimension) and inspected the judges’ congruency concerning individual ratings (congruency index = 0.95). The ten benefits of remote work were positively verified by all five judges and were included in the study. The respondents reported the perceived benefits by checking them on a prepared list. The sum of selected benefits indicated the level of perceived benefits gained from remote work. In other words, a higher score indicated a larger number of benefits of remote work.

Limitations were measured with multiple-choice answers using a three-item scale assessing three dimensions of perceived disadvantages of remote work (i.e., organizational, technical, and social limitations). Limitations were defined as work aspects that limit the quality or achievement during remote work. The given limitations were verified by competent judges (congruency index = 0.93) and were introduced to the study. The overall-limitations measure was obtained by summing reported limitations from the possible ten statements which tap the various remote job facet (e.g., organizational, technical, and social issues). Higher scores indicated a higher level of limitations of remote work. The reliability of the scale comprising all three items in the current study was satisfying, Cronbach’s α = 0.7.

The respondents indicated the number of days of remote work per week to gain satisfactory team effectiveness, and the number of days of remote work per week to gain satisfactory management effectiveness. They rated on a scale between one to five working days.

Table 1 displays means, standard deviations, and correlations for the study variables.

Means ( M) , standard deviations ( SD ), and correlations between study variables.

Notes. Limit_org—limitations in the organizational dimension; Limit_tech—limitations in the technical dimension; Limit_soc—limitations in the social dimension; Online_leader—number of days of remote work to maintain high management effectiveness (per week); Online_team—number of days of remote work to maintain high team effectiveness (per week); Effect_leader—leader effectiveness; Effect_team—team effectiveness; Effect_co—external co-operation effectiveness; a Position is dummy-coded (1 = middle-level manager, 0 = lower-level manager); * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

The management position (i.e., lower-level and middle-level management) was negatively related to the perceived benefits ( p ≤ 0.05) and work effectiveness ( p ≤ 0.05), and positively associated with social limitations ( p ≤ 0.05).

In the first step, a regression analytical procedure was conducted to test the interaction between remote work conditions, i.e., benefits, limitations, online working frequency, and remote work effectiveness ( cf. , hypothesis 1). The regression model explained 37% of the variance in managers’ effectiveness (F(2, 134) = 17.94, p < 0.001), 31% of the variance in team effectiveness (F(2, 134) = 15.89, p < 0.001), and 37% of the variance in external co-operation efficacy (F(2, 134) = 13.45, p < 0.001). The managers’ position was dummy-coded and contrasted with “lower-level managers” and “middle-level managers”. The results are given in Table 2 .

Hierarchical linear regression of three aspects of remote work effectiveness.

Notes. Limit_org—limitations in the organizational dimension; Limit_tech—limitations in the technical dimension; Limit_soc—limitations in the social dimension; Online_leader—number of days of remote work to maintain high management effectiveness (per week); Online_team—number of days of remote work to maintain high team effectiveness (per week); a Position is dummy-coded (1 = middle-level manager, 0 = middle-level manager); * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

Table 2 shows the regression analysis of the relationship between dependent variables, i.e., manager effectiveness, team effectiveness, co-operation effectiveness, and predictors. Leader effectiveness was negatively related to a managerial position. The managers’ position was dummy-coded (0 = lower-level management; 1 = middle-level management). As shown in Table 2 , middle-level managers perceived the effectiveness of their work as lower ( β = −0.15, p < 0.05). Positive relationships were observed between the perceived benefits of remote work ( β = 0.14; p < 0.05), online working days ( β = 0.34; p < 0.01), and managers’ effectiveness. The same regression analyses were conducted for team effectiveness and relations with the external environment. Team effectiveness perceived by managers was negatively related to the experienced technological limits during remote working ( β = −0.20; p < 0.05) and positively related to the number of online working days ( β = 0.33; p < 0.05). The results showed that co-operation effectiveness was negatively related to the perceived technological limitations ( β = −0.18, p < 0.01), positively associated with the perceived benefits ( β = 0.22, p < 0.01), and positively associated with the frequency of remote work of managers ( β = 0.09, p < 0.05) and the team ( β = 0.32, p < 0.05).

Secondly, we assessed the significance of mean differences in remote work conditions perceived by lower-level and middle-level managers ( cf. hypothesis 2). The scores were normalized to a 0 to 1 range. We applied a Mann-Whitney U test that showed significant differences in the level of the perceived benefits of remote work between these groups (U = 642.50, p = 0.04). Middle-level managers perceived lower benefits ( M = 0.29) compared to lower-level managers ( M = 0.38). Analyzing the online work limitations, we found significant differences in the level of social limits (U = 1138, p = 0.02) and work effectiveness, (U = 519, p = 0.02) between the groups. Middle-level managers reported a higher level of social limits ( M = 0.30) compared to the lower-level managers ( M = 0.22). However, lower-level managers assumed themselves as more effective ( M = 4.37) compared to middle-level managers ( M = 3.95).

Based on the Mann-Whitney U test results, Figure 1 and Figure 2 present the benefits and limitations perceived by the analyzed groups in more detail. The p -value demonstrates significant means differences between the low- and middle-level management.

Remote work benefits perceived by lower- and middle-level managers. Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01.

Remote work limitations, perceived by lower- and middle-level managers. Notes. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001; + p < 0.10.

We further tested the relation between the specified benefits (i.e., on-task concentration), limitations (i.e., lack of rules, decreased work productivity, poor communication), and perceived work effectiveness that significantly differentiated managers on different management levels. A Mann-Whitney U test showed that the communication issue and perceived own work effectiveness revealed a differential pattern (U = 1993.50, p = 0.02). In other words, managers who reported poorer communication as a limitation of remote working had a lower level of the perceived own work effectiveness than those who indicated no communication issues. A significant difference was observed in work effectiveness referring to perceived productivity (U = 1882.50, p = 0.001). A lower level of managers’ effectiveness was shown in managers who experienced lower productivity.

Although the lack of rules did not significantly differentiate own work effectiveness, the perceived effectiveness of co-operation with the environment was significantly different for managers who “suffered” more from a lack of rules than those who did not complain (U = 1099, p = 0.03).

On-task concentration reported by managers was significant in differentiating their work effectiveness (U = 1475, p = 0.001) indicating that managers who reported on-task concentration as a remote work benefit perceived better work effectiveness.

4. Discussion

The COVID-19 virus outbreak has made many people work from home on an unprecedented scale, especially in business sectors where employees had not had an opportunity to work remotely before. Consequently, we argued the necessity of conducting research to confirm the effectiveness of remote work in this unique context, particularly from the managers’ perspective.

First, we examined the role of the perceived benefits, limitations, and online working frequency in maintaining high work effectiveness in three dimensions (i.e., manager, team, and external collaboration levels). Our findings showed benefits as significant predictors of perceived manager and co-operation effectiveness. The more benefits managers reported, the more effective they felt at work. Therefore, activating the available strengths of remote work empowers organizational resources and work effectiveness. Available communication devices allow quicker performance of the tasks e.g., organizing and attending work meetings online is faster and easier compared to organizing face-to-face contacts [ 38 ]. This relationship mainly concerns lower-level managers. From the managers’ perspective, the benefits were not as important in predicting the team’s effectiveness. The results indicated significant relationships between technical limitations and effective remote work in team and external collaboration. Technical issues were perceived as lowering work effectiveness, independently of the manager’s management level (i.e., middle-level and lower-level).

Further analysis demonstrated the differences in the perception of work effectiveness among managers at different levels of management (i.e., lower-level and middle-level management). In the context of remote working introduced on such a large scale during the COVID-19 pandemic, our findings highlight that, on the one hand, increased effectiveness and perceived benefits can be observed. On the other hand, they are not at the same level depending on the management role connected with social interactions.

Our findings offer managers a new lens to view the advantages/disadvantages of working from home. Generally, employees’ lack of social interactions is perceived as a disadvantage [ 34 ]. Nevertheless, this study proposes an alternative view of telecommuting that can boost performance as a result of improving technical support and minimalizing unnecessary distractions. Although, Allen, Golden, and Shockley [ 9 ] emphasized that social relationships at work can suffer as a result of excessive remote work, and care should be taken to properly manage the negative effects of weakened relationships between employees. We cannot lead to workplace loneliness which can result in lower job performance [ 39 ] as a result of informal interactions and a team cohesion decrease [ 7 ]. The results showed that the possibility of concentration on the task was evaluated higher by lower-level managers. Work that requires more on-task concentration and problem-solving is done more preferably at home, with significantly fewer distractions [ 29 , 40 ]. As mentioned before, lower-level managers have more frequent contact with employees than higher-level managers, and recent research suggests that calls between remote workers are more task-focused and less distracted [ 32 , 34 ]. Consequently, referring to perceived remote work limitations, organizational issues (e.g., lack of rules), and social issues (i.e., lower productivity and ineffective communication with employees) significantly differentiated the managers at different managerial levels. The middle-level managers suffered more from the specific remote work limitations.

By identifying differences in the managerial levels in the perceived benefits and limitations, our findings shed light on a specific explanation as to why remote working is perceived more favorably by lower-level managers. Therefore, our empirical studies on how social implications of remote working can affect work effectiveness [ 32 ] indicated that a lack of distractions can increase workers’ effectiveness while working from home. We do not argue that the effectiveness of the remote mode is only due to employees’ lack of distraction in the home office. The perceived benefits and technological issues are also related to work effectiveness. An understanding of how managers perceive remote work and its effectiveness at different managerial levels and the discrepancy in the perception of benefits and limitations is crucial for understanding remote work effectiveness, especially since remote working offers indisputable convenience, which will contribute to its expansiveness in the organizational setting compared to the pre-COVID-19 level.

4.1. Limitations and Direction for Further Research

Despite the contributions we make, this study is not without limitations. First, our research did not explore the employees’ perspective or objective internal performance or work characteristics. Nonetheless, the managerial perspective is relatively rarely analyzed. Future research could explore how employee attributes and other factors such as personality or stress may shape the effectiveness of working online. Second, the sample size was comparatively small, with a male predominance, which limits the generalizability of the findings and the opportunity to explore other moderating mechanisms. Nevertheless, the sample provided sufficient statistical power to test the hypothesized relations. Next, our study was designed as cross-sectional. Considering the specificity of the sample and contextual conditions (i.e., pandemic), the cross-sectional design seemed reasonable and indicated the most significant relations. Finally, we used self-reported measures that are often the only possible way to examine one’s own perspective, such as self-perceived effectiveness in a specific context [ 34 ]. Nonetheless, there is still the need to use objective methods and include the employees’ perspective in the study. Using objective information (e.g., Key Performance Indicators or Return on Investment) could help solve this potential bias in the data in a future study.

Remote working in Poland is relatively new and introducing it on a such significant scale might provide unique experiences. Little is known about both direct and ripple effects that can bring us a widespread shift to remote work. Additionally, it would be useful to analyze the further relationship between social interactions and effectiveness by using objective measures. Further research requires more information concerning working online from a leader’s perspective. Longitudinal research would be necessary to demonstrate the development and changes of home office effects. Although the consideration of a leader’s perspective has given us new insights, avoiding a biased managerial perception of remote working as less effective is helpful. A more specific analysis of job characteristics and effectiveness can reveal conditions that are advantageous for employers and employees. Further interaction effects between remote work and HRM policies, as well as between social interactions, should be studied.

This study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic for the first time. In order to rule out the impact of pandemic stress and its effect on effectiveness, it is necessary to repeat the study after the epidemiological threat has ceased. If home-office information on a management level is available, and if a comparison during and after the coronavirus crisis is possible, we can learn whether COVID-19 has contributed to a substantial structural change.

Other constraints that can affect leaders and managers are those that also can be connected with the issues that are familiar from the perspective of employees. One such constraint, for instance, might be the low turnover and the intensity of hiring, which was limited. In the case of employees, a decline in efficiency can be observed, which could be partly traced to having less experience, lower tenure, or being in the process of onboarding [ 27 ].

4.2. Practical Implications

This study provides meaningful implications for practitioners. First, our research suggests that effectiveness can be increased by managing remote work effectively and implementing HR policies to strengthen the benefits of remote work and minimalize shortcomings, mainly in technical dimensions (e.g., poor quality of internet connections, multiple communication channels), while organizations can set hybrid working from home and observe changes in the managerial perception. However, organizations may influence the supportive practices that come to managers of all levels. Employers can offer training on improving their managing skills in remote environments. Some researchers suggest that consideration should be given to the individual adjustment of work conditions (e.g., less disciplined employees might experience more challenges during remote working). Therefore, offering them online work would be unsuccessful [ 34 ].

Researchers emphasize the great role of managers and leaders in practicing working from home. They are ought to provide adequate support in response to the needs of employees with different challenges [ 7 , 34 ]. Otherwise, remote working might turn out to be ineffective causing problems such as a longer time spent on projects, difficulties with training, onboarding issues, etc. We can observe that, from a management point of view, working from home reached the highest level of productivity in COVID-19 and stabilized, but this situation might not be sustainable [ 40 ].

The main concern, from a managerial perspective, often suggested about working from home is a decrease in effectiveness [ 8 ]. Thus, it can have a negative effect on how they operate at different levels of management. This study contributes to clarifying this issue and gaining a better understanding of the sources of perceived effectiveness from the perspective of managers and leaders. It can have a positive impact on the level of employees’ commitment and dedication to their companies, resulting in higher effectiveness [ 8 ].

Without a doubt, remote work has become an inherent work system, and the challenge today is to maintain or indicate maximum efficiency. Undoubtedly, the best solution is to introduce hybrid work and combine remote work with office work [ 23 ]. It is necessary to take a closer look at the characteristics of the job in question and put in place solutions to perform tasks at their best, depending on whether it is more efficient to do them at home or in the office. So far, we know that some work is done effectively at home, while other work is better done at the office.

5. Conclusions

This study contributes to understanding how remote working influences effectiveness from the managers’ perspective. While previous research has recognized that working online may be more effective, the role of managers has received less attention, both theoretically and empirically. Generally, managers view remote working as resulting in decreased performance and lower managerial control [ 8 ]. Our study suggests that the more benefits managers perceive, the more effective their work is assessed in different dimensions (i.e., manager, team, external co-operation). Moreover, the results indicated the difference in remote work perception depending on the management level (i.e., lower-level and middle-level management). Managers who have more contact with employees are more aware of the benefits of working remotely. Accordingly, the perceived benefits are related to a higher level of reported work effectiveness.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, G.K. and K.Ś.; Formal analysis, K.Ś.; Investigation, G.K.; Methodology, G.K. and K.Ś.; Project administration, G.K.; Resources, G.K. and K.Ś.; Software, G.K.; Supervision, K.Ś.; Visualization, G.K. and K.Ś.; Writing–original draft, G.K. and K.Ś.; Writing–review and editing, K.Ś. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The current study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee, decision no. KEUS.67/11.2020.

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

10 Undeniable Benefits Of Working From Home, According To Science

Senior Lifestyle Reporter, HuffPost

Four years since the COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to shut down office spaces around the world, remote and hybrid work seems here to stay.

About a third of U.S. workers who can work from home now do so all the time, according to a Pew Research Center survey from March 2023 . (The majority of U.S. workers ― 61% ― do not have jobs that can be done from home, Pew notes.)

Still, there are a lot of work-from-home skeptics out there ― most of them C-level business executives . Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has remarked that engineers “get more done” in-office, and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said that remote work “doesn’t work for those who want to hustle” while calling all U.S.-based employees back into the offices in May 2021.

Companies that insist on mandatory full-time attendance at the office do so at their own peril; today’s employees value the autonomy that comes with remote or hybrid work and are increasingly leaving workplaces that forget they have lives outside their 9-to-5 .

In March 2022, Microsoft’s second annual Worker Trend Index found that 53% of respondents prioritize their health and well-being over work, “and if unhappy, more than half of Gen Z and millennial respondents said [they’d] seriously consider switching employers over the next year.”

Of course, working from home is not without its drawbacks. Many working women say they feel greater conflicts between their job and family roles while teleworking, and studies have shown increased rates of depression and anxiety during remote work . (Though it’s worth noting, most of the research was conducted while respondents were living through an active pandemic ― stressful in its own right.)

Still, with increased social support and systems put in place by managers and organizations trained in managing hybrid teams, research also suggests there’s plenty of benefits to working from home. Below, 10 studies and surveys that quantify just how game-changing remote work can be for employees and companies.

Remote workers experience a better work-life balance.

Prior to the remote work era, a healthy work-life balance often felt like a pie-in-the-sky goal for workers: nice to idly dream about but never quite attainable. Now, it’s more in reach: Among hybrid workers who are not self-employed, 71% say working for home at least partially helps them balance their work and personal lives, according to the Pew Research survey.

They don’t feel micromanaged, either, despite being out of the office and outside the eyeline of their bosses. The same Pew survey found that employees who work from home at least some of the time (71%) say their manager or supervisor trusts them a “great deal” to get their work done when they’re out of the office.

Working remotely can halve an office worker’s carbon footprint.

Working from home isn’t just good for your morale, it’s also pretty good for the planet. According to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year, people who work remotely all the time produce less than half the greenhouse gas emissions of on-site employees.

Hybrid work arrangements help some, too. Working remotely two or four days a week reduced an individual’s emissions by up to 29% compared with office workers.

In 2015, Xerox reported that its teleworkers drove 92 million fewer miles, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 41,000 metric tons.

Remote workers tend to eat more healthy ― up to a point.

Research on remote work can be a little contradictory ― is it good for your mental health or does it lead to depression? ― so in December 2023, British researchers set out to interpret over 1,930 academic papers on teleworking and hybrid work arrangements.

What they found was that people working from home tend to feel lower rates of stress, eat healthier meals and have lower blood pressure.

The study, funded in part by the British National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, pointed out some negatives, too. One of the studies reviewed found that 46.9% of employees working from home had put on weight. Another study put that number around 41%. Remote workers also tended to drink and smoke more.

A downside for workers: Remote employees work longer hours.

Though working from home is often equated with laziness and low productivity, the aforementioned British study found that remote workers tend to work longer hours and that their work is more likely to bleed into evenings and weekends. Regrettably, they’re also less likely to take sick time.

Another study ― this one tracking more than 60,000 Microsoft employees over the first half of 2020 ― found that remote work led to a 10% boost in weekly hours.

One drawback was less collaboration. The Microsoft study, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, found that cross-group collaboration dropped by about 25% of the pre-pandemic level.

Less commuting time means more time for work.

Remote employees are working more because they’re spending less time stuck in traffic. One 2023 University of Chicago study looked at data from 27 countries and found that remote workers saved 72 minutes in daily commuting time. On average, employees spent about half an hour of that extra time engaged in daily work, which comes out to more than two hours a week.

Since the pandemic, some social scientists have highlighted the downside to eliminating the daily commute: In one 2022 study published in the Organizational Psychology Review, researchers argued that commutes are a source of healthy “liminal space” — a time free of constraints from work and home that gives people a chance to recover from the workday and mentally prepare for reentering the home.

“Without the ability to mentally shift gears, people experience role blurring, which can lead to stress,” the study’s co-authors wrote in The Conversation . “Without mentally disengaging from work, people can experience burnout.”

Remote or hybrid work options may help with employee retention.

Worried about losing your employees to more enticing offers? Give them the chance to work from home. In 2019, video conferencing company Owl Labs surveyed 1,200 U.S. workers between the ages of 22 and 65 and found that remote workers were 13% more likely to stay in their current job for the next five years than on-site workers .

When asked if the opportunity to work remotely would make them happier, 83% of the survey respondents agreed, while 80% agreed that working remotely would make them feel like their employer cares.

People of color say they’re able to manage stress better working from home.

More Black professionals want flexible work policies than their white, Asian and Latino colleagues, according to a 2021 study conducted by The Future Forum, a research consortium organized by Slack.

Black workers reported a 50% increase in their sense of workplace belonging and a 64% increase in their ability to manage stress when they began working from home.

In the wake of the pandemic and office closures, many Black Americans spoke of how draining microaggressions in their office environments can be.

“Most of my interactions with my co-workers are very focused on the work that we’re doing, and for me, I appreciate that,” Christina, a Black software engineer, told HuffPost in 2021 after switching to remote work. “Sometimes hearing your co-worker’s opinions on current events are not really the most inclusive opinion. It’s nice that I don’t have to delve into that with them.“

Mothers and caregivers report higher rates of well-being with hybrid work.

A March 2023 study out of the University of Melbourne found that women ― especially mothers and caregivers ― reported improved well-being when they’re given the option to work from home. The researchers posited that such flexibility helps women balance paid employment with unpaid caregiving and household duties, which women disproportionately bear the brunt of .

Remote work has been a benefit for people with disabilities, too.

Workers with disabilities appreciate the option to work from home because it reduces transportation and accessibility challenges they face going into the office every day. It also allows them to better manage chronic health conditions.

“Before COVID-19, work from home was generally not popular, and disabled people had to try hard to get these accommodations,” Meenakshi Das, a software engineer focused on accessibility, told HuffPost in 2021 . “It took a pandemic for people to realize how accommodations are low-cost and totally doable, and I hope it stays that way.”

There’s benefits for employers, too. Almost two-thirds of disabled employees believe they were more productive when working from home than at an office or external workplace, according to a 2023 study out of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Employees with flexible schedules tend to have better mental health.

Employees at workplaces that prioritize flexibility and higher job security are less likely to experience serious psychological distress or anxiety, according to a March 2024 study published in JAMA Network Open. The study, which polled more than 18,000 U.S. workers, defined “job flexibility” as the ability to adjust their own work schedule to meet personal demands.

Workers with flexible schedules were 13% less likely to experience daily anxiety, 11% less likely to experience weekly anxiety and 9% less likely to experience anxiety several times a year. The researchers also found that increased flexibility and job security led to reduced absenteeism ― a win for everyone involved.

Before You Go

From our partner, huffpost shopping’s best finds, more in life.

This is the ultimate work from home accessory — and I love it

The Logitech Casa Pop-Up Desk can replace my entire set-up

The other day, I got an ad for the Logitech Casa Pop-Up Desk . This work from home accessory promised to deliver an entire work from home setup in one convenient, book-like design.

As someone who works from home, that had me very intrigued. 

I work from home in my office using a setup that includes a mechanical keyboard, gaming mouse, docking station and a 4K monitor. I knew that this probably wouldn't replace all of that, but if it allowed me a similar level of productivity from the kitchen table to the coffee shop, I'd be sold.

So I reached out to Logitech and after having used the Casa Pop-Up Desk for a week now, I'm definitely sold. No, I never made it to the coffee shop, but I did make it to the kitchen table and the coffee table. And while — as expected — it couldn't quite replicate my (expensive) office setup, I never felt like I was missing something I needed.

Logitech Casa Pop-Up Desk: <a href="https://shop-links.co/link?skuId=6571659&publisher_slug=future&exclusive=1&u1=hawk-custom-tracking&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestbuy.com%2Fsite%2F6571659.p%3FskuId%3D6571659&article_name=hawk-article-name&article_url=hawk-article-url" data-link-merchant="bestbuy.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> $179.99 @ Best Buy The Logitech Casa Pop-Up Desk looks like a book at first glance, but when you open it up you get an entire work from home setup. The book opens up into a laptop stand and houses a tenkeyless Bluetooth keyboard and Bluetooth trackpad. There's even a space to store the charging cords. Price Check: <a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=45724&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.com%2F%2Fdp%2FB0B6GSVF4Y%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-20%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-20" data-link-merchant="Amazon US"" data-link-merchant="bestbuy.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> $179.99 @ Amazon .

This laptop accessory is so simple it's genius

The first thing I noticed when using the Pop-Up Desk might actually surprise you. It wasn't the simplicity of the design, though I definitely appreciated that. Nor was it that it was super simple to set up, which it is.

Includes: Book-like pop-up laptop stand, Casa Keys Bluetooth tenkeyless keyboard, Casa Touch Bluetooth trackpad, USB-C to USC-C charging cable Weight: 2.65 lbs (1.2 kg) Supported laptop sizes: 10-17 inches (up to 16.5 lbs) OS compatibility: Windows, macOS, iPadOS, ChromeOS Casa Keys battery life: 5 months Casa Touch battery life: 3 weeks Color options: Nordic Calm (lilac/off-white), Bohemian Blush (rose), Classic Chic (deep green/graphite)

No, it was that the Casa Book laptop stand really is ergonomically better. As someone who does plenty of work from the couch while watching the latest TV shows and movies, I spend more time than I should be hunched over a laptop. But with the Casa Book stand, I was able to put my gaming laptop on the stand and it improved my posture instantly.

The second thing I noticed is that I really love trackpads. I've extolled their virtues before — particularly the Apple Magic Trackpad — and the Casa Touch trackpad was definitely a hit with me from the moment I started using it. 

The more I think about it, it's also the perfect solution for an accessory designed to be as versatile as possible. Mice can require space and the right surface. With the Casa Touch trackpad, I just set the trackpad wherever and I'm good to go.

Now, as much as I love this portable work from home setup it's not without its flaws. While the tenkeyless keyboard is convenient, and understandably small to make this compact design work, I much prefer the spaciousness of my Keychron K2 wireless mechanical keyboard. The Casa Keys board isn't a deal -breaker, but it's a bit cramped and I found myself struggling to find some much-needed keys.

Also, this accessory isn't cheap. When you account for a laptop stand, Bluetooth keyboard and Bluetooth trackpad, all from a reputable brand, the price isn't so bad. But $179.99 still isn't chump change. Heck, you can sometimes find a laptop for the price of this laptop stand (albeit, probably not a good laptop).

Overall though, if you have the money for the Logitech Casa Pop-Up Desk and you're someone who is constantly working from home or on the go like me, I highly recommend this work from home accessory. I'm glad I got to test it out, because it delivers exactly what it promised.

More from Tom's Guide

• Microsoft Surface Pro 10 vs Surface Pro 9 — these are the biggest upgrades
• Google is testing the ultimate dark mode for Chrome — here’s how to turn it on
• Unpatchable vulnerability discovered in Apple M1, M2 and M3 chips

Sign up to get the BEST of Tom’s Guide direct to your inbox.

Upgrade your life with a daily dose of the biggest tech news, lifestyle hacks and our curated analysis. Be the first to know about cutting-edge gadgets and the hottest deals.

Malcolm McMillan is a senior writer for Tom's Guide, covering all the latest in streaming TV shows and movies. That means news, analysis, recommendations, reviews and more for just about anything you can watch, including sports! If it can be seen on a screen, he can write about it. Previously, Malcolm had been a staff writer for Tom's Guide for over a year, with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI), A/V tech and VR headsets.

Before writing for Tom's Guide, Malcolm worked as a fantasy football analyst writing for several sites and also had a brief stint working for Microsoft selling laptops, Xbox products and even the ill-fated Windows phone. He is passionate about video games and sports, though both cause him to yell at the TV frequently. He proudly sports many tattoos, including an Arsenal tattoo, in honor of the team that causes him to yell at the TV the most.

I added a trackpad to my desk setup even though I already use a mouse — here’s why

We asked Tom’s Guide editors about their favorite keyboards — here’s their top picks

You can connect to ChatGPT without an account — here's how it works

Most Popular

By Mark Spoonauer April 04, 2024

By Frances Daniels April 03, 2024

By Dan Bracaglia April 03, 2024

By Ryan Epps April 03, 2024

By Michael Sawh April 03, 2024

By Mark Spoonauer April 03, 2024

By Tony Polanco April 03, 2024

By Tom Pritchard April 03, 2024

By Philip Michaels April 02, 2024

By Anthony Spadafora April 02, 2024

By Gemma Harris April 02, 2024

• 2 I read manga on a Kindle Paperwhite vs. iPad mini 6 for a week — there’s a clear winner
• 3 OLED vs Mini-LED: What’s the difference and is one actually better?
• 4 Thinking of buying an EV? Here’s the one question you need to answer first
• 5 I'm a personal trainer — this one-minute stretch opens your hips and builds lower body flexibility