The coronavirus-induced pandemic compelled the world to adapt to a brand new regular and organisations throughout the globe transitioned to a work-from-home setup. While this allowed for folks to work from the security and comforts of their properties, a research revealed that distant work has its fair proportion of pitfalls too. To decide its results and long-term penalties, a considerable research was performed that concerned information from 61,182 Microsoft staff within the US. It was discovered that the tech big’s staff noticed a notable enhance in common of size of workweek throughout the pandemic.

The study, printed within the Nature Human Behaviour journal, was pushed by the truth that earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic, solely shut to five % of Americans labored from house, whereas the quantity jumped to 37 % by April 2020.

The outcomes of the research confirmed that the firm-wide distant work at Microsoft “caused the collaboration network of workers to become more static and siloed.” Remote setups have resulted in “fewer bridges between disparate parts,” the research added, explaining that there was a lower in synchronous communication amongst staff.

“Together, these effects may make it harder for employees to acquire and share new information across the network,” the research defined.

However, the research additionally famous that the ten % rise within the common workweek size as a result of transition to distant work doesn’t essentially imply that staff are working longer hours. It may additionally level to much less productiveness, researchers stated.

“The increase in workweek hours could be an indication that employees were less productive and required more time to complete their work, or that they replaced some of their commuting time with work time,” the research stated, including that they had been solely capable of measure the time between the primary and final work exercise in a day. “It could also be that the same amount of working time is spread across a greater share of the calendar day due to breaks or interruptions for non-work activities,” the research stated.

As per a blog post by Microsoft, the research additionally confirmed that distant work led the collaboration time staff spent with cross-group connections to drop by about 25 %. It additionally induced the organisational construction at Microsoft to develop into “less dynamic.”

To arrive on the aforementioned conclusions, the research examined information from the primary six months of 2020 that included emails, calendars, prompt messages, video/ audio calls, and workweek hours of Microsoft staff.