Organizational Support of Remote Work Correlates With Reported Productivity

In a recent study looking at the impact of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic found that perception of organizational support for remote work correlates with higher reported productivity and gains in productive working time. This is in contrast to those that perceive low support for remote work as having a negative impact on productive working time and indicating greater depression symptoms.

Study of Los Angeles-based participants by Duke University

See also:

• Two-thirds of remote workers want to continue to work remotely
• Zoom fatigue is real, but perhaps management support of remote work is a bigger issue
• Low psychosocial safety is associated with a threefold increase in risk of major depression

Links to this note

• Remote Teams Need to Be More Deliberate About Everything

  When the primary means of collaboration is asynchronous (as is the case of remote work), the rules and norms of a remote team need to be more deliberate. Social time for the team to bond and have impromptu conversations need to be scheduled since they don’t happen spontaneously with people in the same office (e.g. tea time). Chance encounters need to be intentional (e.g. random coffee chat pairing). Even working hours and setting norms for when people work can be necessary.

• § What Is the Market Value of Working Remote?

  We can come up with a valuation of remote work by looking at a few signals: what you would forgo, what do you gain, what others gain, and what others lose.

• Remote Jobs Rose to Nearly 15 Percent of All High-Paying Job Listings

  An analysis by Ladders found that the percentage of high-paying job listings ($80,000+) in the US and Canada that were remote increased from 3.69% in Q4 2019 to 14.67% in Q3 2021.

• Low Psychosocial Safety Is Associated With a Threefold Increase in Risk of Major Depression

  A study performed on Australian workers that looked at contributing factors to developing major depression symptoms found that low pyschosocial safety climate was associated with a threefold increase in risk of development major depression symptoms.

• Remote Workers Are Increasingly Choosing Not to Work from the Office

  A Pew Research Center Survey found that 61% of remote workers who have a company office say it’s their choice not to work from there. This is significant because the prior reason for working remotely was 38% of people said it was because their workplace was closed.

• Remote Teams Are Less Likely to Integrate Knowledge of Their Members

  A recent analysis of 20 million research articles and 4 million patent applications found that distributed teams are less likely to have a breakthrough discovery than their on-site counterparts. They found that collaboration for remote teams was more likely to happen at later stages where technical tasks are more discreet rather than earlier during the ideation stage. The authors believe that this means remote teams fail to benefit from the shared knowledge of the team and therefore have less new, disruptive ideas.

• Remote Work Resulted in a 30% Increase in Hours Worked and 20% Decrease in Productivity

  A study of 10,000 workers at an Asian IT company found that when comparing before the pandamic and during (the work from home period), the number of hours worked increased by 30% (including 18% increase outside of normal working hours, but the average output remained the same. This led the researchers to conclude that the overall productivity of remote work declined by 20%.

• Remote Work Does Not Mean Being a Digital Nomad

  There are misconceptions that companies allowing remote work means you can work move around and work from anywhere. That is not the case. Having employees move around constantly poses several challenges for the company (security, taxes, registration, insurance, HR compliance) and teammates (poor internet connection, timezone issues, focus).

• Remote Work Will Become a Political Issue

  Up to this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has been a buoy keeping many parts of the economy afloat. We’ve seen that working from home was so successful and fears of loss of productivity were unfounded. Now we are starting to see a reactionary movement that will find it’s way into political agendas—how to get workers back in the office.

• Working in Person Matters at the Beginning of a Project

  A study of a global manufacturing firm found that scientists and engineers who often walked by one another in the office were significantly more likely to end up collaborating at the beginning of projects.