Do remote employees actually work longer hours? Does that equate to higher productivity?
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Yes, and more efficient than being at work with all the distractions.
Yes and it hastens delivery
It’s important to understand if it’s the employees' perception that they're working longer and less productively, or if they’re feeling that way because culturally, the organization was micromanaged even in-office, for example. I've worked in a situation in-office where I would hear comments like, “So and so left early.” That perpetuated a culture in which if people worked from home, they felt like they needed to work an extra hour to justify working remotely.
I've worked in other situations, including my current one, where nobody cares what hours you work. We're global and most of my staff is on the east coast. The expectation is just to get the projects done. And it's also a culture where people shut off their notifications when they're done. So, I've yet to hear a single complaint like, “Since I've been remote, I feel like I have to work longer to justify that.” I heard that early on in the pandemic. I think that people generally felt that. But I would wonder what people would say today if they worked in an organization where the right expectations were set and it was clear from the top down that this is normal and these are the hours.
We went back and dug into the data to understand where this was coming from. One of my hypotheses that was validated by the data was that the respondents who said they were working more just to feel productive were from the companies that used the scientific management style or the Taylorist approach that is pathological or bureaucratic organizations. They said they were constantly on either calls, messenger or email.<br><br>There was a funny story that someone shared in a follow up interview: They had written an application that would randomly send emails at night, just so that their boss would see them and think they were working crazy hours. It’s a super talented and creative response, but it saddens me to think that there are still organizations to this day that are looking at the number of hours people work.
At the end of 2020, I conducted a survey of 230+ people in different industries and at different levels in their organizations. I asked them about factors like meeting overload, working overtime, etc., to see if working from home is reducing their stress and anxiety and if it's making them productive. One of the results was that over 62% of the people that answered that survey said that they were working at least 1.5 hours more per week.
A lot of them said that they were working at least 2-3 hours more per day just because of meeting overload and all the other things that are happening. They’d have to go back and do their actual day’s work and to meet their objective and key results and all their MBOs. They said their performance was being measured just to prove their productivity and that was extremely taxing.
On one side you hear that they want flexibility and to work from home. On the flip side, there's an argument that people have been overworked, they're exhausted and they need a change because it’s not sustainable. I find this argument very circular in nature and I think it's a different scenario that we're dealing with now.
Longer hours, yes. But higher productivity isn’t guaranteed