The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have clearly led to a huge spike in remote working. However, it is perhaps portrayed incorrectly as the root cause of WFH (work from home) culture when it is but a component of the overall picture. In short, remote working was on the rise long before coronavirus forced many companies to do it: the pandemic has acted as a catalyst for a trend that already existed.
One study put the number of full-time (5+ days a week) remote workers in the United States at 17% in 2019, and 34% overall had employees doing at least one day per week remotely. That’s not insignificant, although there was admittedly a huge surge in April 2020 (44% of companies with employees working 5+ days from) when global lockdowns caused companies to act.
But perhaps more significantly, the debate on the benefits of remote working was taking place many years before the events of spring 2020, and many experts were banging the drum for employers to reap the benefits. Those benefits are said to include better productivity, employee retention and loyalty, and the general well-being and happiness of staff.
Much WFH analysis relies on one study
But there is a problem with the merits of the debate, and it could have an impact when vaccine roll-outs – hopefully – give businesses the option to return to normal working patterns. Namely, there hasn’t been enough widescale studies completed to demonstrate the benefits of WFH culture for business.
Most of the debate, pre-pandemic, centered on evidence from China in the early 2010s, where a NASDAQ-listed company randomly assigned employees to remote working for nine months. The employees performed call center duties, and they took more calls, fewer breaks and less time off sick. Overall, productivity increased by about 13%.
However, there needs to be more tangible evidence coming from other studies to make employers really take notice. Some studies have been completed, but not on the scale of the Chinese experiment. Even in the summer of 2020, organizations like the BBC continued to report on WFH productivity using the same case study from that Chinese business in 2013.
The market will act, of course. It will benefit companies like Zoom, Citrix and Slack to highlight the benefits of working from home. And, we expect more evidence to come to light as reports are published.
Pandemic effects can taint current studies
However, we should also sound a note of caution. Studies looking at productivity for remote working must take into account the impacts of the pandemic, lest we get tainted data. How can we, for example, talk about productivity from WFH employees when they were faced with challenges like their kids being around due to school closures throughout the year?
Indeed, one of the common themes earlier in the pandemic was of employees struggling to access the tools they needed to perform their duties remotely. The fabled rush to get Zoom (and other video conferencing software) was just one aspect of it. Many businesses wrestled with the decision of how much access remote workers should get to their systems, given, for example, the cyber-security threat.
If the case is to be made for remote working and its links to increased productivity, then it is necessary for employees to have the right tools such as software for tracking remote workers to carry out their tasks. Spike is one such company that puts increased productivity at the heart of its business philosophy. A popular email application, Spike allows users to sync multiple calendars from various applications, access chat and email on an integrated platform, as well as various other tools for smarter, more productive work. It’s exactly the type of tool a WFH employee should use, rather than perform the unproductive back and forth of entering and exiting different applications.
And that, perhaps, is the point: Increased productivity is certainly possible when working remotely, but only when employees have been furnished with the right tools. The rush during the pandemic to equip staff with what they need has not been easy – as of February 2021, for instance, the New York Times was still reporting on laptop shortages. It’s another example of how the pandemic might taint any analysis of productivity and remote working tracking remote workers.
Trust issues remain with employers
Finally, we should focus on one of the more unquantifiable aspects here – trust. Not all productivity can be measured as easily as the calls per hour taken by a remote Chinese call center operator. It’s understandable that many employers will feel uneasy at having remote-working employees over the last year.
Some may think that this need for vigilance is an archaic approach, but we should bear in mind that remote working might not work for everyone. For instance, evidence is emerging that experienced professionals thrive in a home-office environment, whereas younger workers are more likely to struggle.
An October article from The Atlantic put it more bluntly, claiming: “Working From Home Hurts Young People”. The logic is that the experienced professional is more likely to have the equipment and the space to carry out tasks just as well as, if not better than, if they were in the office. Younger workers are more likely to have shared accommodation, working out of bedrooms, or needing to use libraries or other public spaces. That all feeds into the employer’s trust issues: Are the employees using public Wi-Fi, for example? Which could potentially be a security risk to the business.
In the end, all of this will take time. We need evidence – evidence untainted by the struggles of the pandemic – to convince employers that remote working can be beneficial. But there is also time required for a shift in attitudes, a new way of thinking. You can be sure that many employers will demand their employees come back to the office the moment it is feasible, and that others will have seen the light around remote working. Some, however, will wrestle with the issue for a while yet, and perhaps they will only be convinced when we finally get some hard, irrefutable evidence.