For those working remotely, meetings are shorter but the workday is longer
Specifically, meetings in the remote age are 20% shorter, but employees put in 48 extra minutes of work per day.
A new study by the Harvard Business School and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent move to remote work has led to more virtual meetings, with more participants—but that the length of those meetings has decreased. The report also found that workers are putting in longer days—as much as 48 minutes more per day—in part to keep up with email and other remote communications.
The report gathered data from more than 3 million people, from more than 21,000 companies in Europe, Israel, and the United States. The researchers looked specifically at how workers responded to lockdowns, which led many companies to greatly increase the practice of working remotely. The report noted that as of early April, 95% of Americans were required to shelter-in-place because of COVID-19. The study tracked business practices, specifically email and remote meeting data, before, during, and after mandated lockdowns.
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“The global policy response to COVID-19 represents an unprecedented natural experiment in which, for the first time, many organizations across the world find themselves with a fully physically dispersed workforce,” the report noted. “This paper provides the first large scale analysis of how digital communication patterns have changed in the early stages of the pandemic.”
More meetings—but less time spent in them
The study revealed some interesting insights. Not surprisingly, the number of remote meetings increased sharply, as did the number of people participating in those meetings. Researchers said the total count of meetings per day per employee went up 12.9%, and the average number of attendees for meetings increased by 13.5%.
However, as time went by, the study found that the length of the meetings dropped by 20%. “Organizations in the post-lockdown period appeared to have more frequent meetings with more attendees, and shorter meetings,” the report said. “The net effect of these changes was to significantly reduce the total number of hours employees spent in meetings during the post-lockdown period.” The researchers said the average time reduction for meetings was more than 18 minutes per person per day in the post-lockdown time period.
The report said the increase in the number of meetings might have played a role in shortening their length. “To coordinate many calendars, employees may find it necessary to shorten meetings in order to accommodate more frequent meetings with more attendees,” the report said. The authors speculated that it might be harder for employees to stay engaged in long virtual meetings, under circumstances where attendees may be dealing with issues at home, for example, childcare or oversight of school-age children.
The nature and purpose of remote meetings also may be changing, the report said. “The lockdown introduced a host of new problems requiring unplanned, emergent coordination, much of which could be addressed through impromptu interaction if everyone were in the same office,” the authors wrote. “With everyone working at home, however, short meetings could serve to quickly communicate new plans, share work that has been accomplished, increase accountability, calibrate priorities, provide social support, and achieve other purposes that are often handled informally in office settings.”
An increase in digital communication = longer working days
The biggest downside identified in the report is that spending more time communicating via computer or digital device translated into longer working hours.
The study found that in addition to an increased number of remote meetings, there was an explosion in the number of emails in the first weeks after a lockdown was declared, with subsequent weeks finding email volume returning to more normal levels. But the number of recipients per email remained higher.
Regardless of these variables, the changes in work habits resulted in longer workdays; the report found the length of the average workday increased by 48.5 minutes.
“Consistent with the overall pattern of more meetings and more emails, our findings also point to a spillover of virtual communication beyond normal working hours. After all, one way to achieve more communication is to work longer days,” the report said. “Even with reduced time spent in meetings, the work demands brought about by the pandemic, coupled with personal demands that are always close at hand, could make it hard to meet obligations within the bounds of normal working hours.”
The report suggests there may be a silver lining to the longer hours being reported: it may indicate that workers at home have more flexibility in responding to household demands during work hours, resulting in a longer overall workday. Or, to take less positive view, it may mean the lines between work and personal life are blurring.
The report had a focus on employees doing remote work in communities during official lockdowns and as such restrictions were lifted or modified. Those ongoing circumstances will continue to evolve. However, the report noted, the data reveals some meaningful information about how workers and companies respond to drastic and widespread disruption in normal work practices.
“Given the unprecedented nature of the changes wrought by COVID-19, it was unclear from the outset how employees would adapt their communication patterns as they transitioned to working from outside their offices,” the report concluded. “Our findings provide strong evidence that employees adjusted their internal communications in response to COVID-19 lockdowns, even prior to formal policy changes. Indeed, the fact that patterns of email and meeting activity began to change, on average, about a week prior to formal lockdown issuances, suggest that organizations can rapidly adjust their communication patterns in anticipation of formal policy requirements, or in response to local environmental conditions.”
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