Article Summary
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A couple of months ago we published a popular article on remote work where we looked through various companies’ research studies so you didn’t have to, and pulled out some of the key takeaways.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen further reports on remote work from WeWork, Qualtrics and Miro so we thought we’d do the same again.
As before, we’ve approached these studies cautiously. Although they involved 6,000 respondents (note, all in North America) and involved established research firms, some of the conclusions are, shall we say, favourable to the companies involved. You will be shocked to find that WeWork found a significant number of respondents would prefer a third working location that isn’t the home or the office. Or that Qualtrics, provider of customer employee engagement software, discovered that now was ‘a unique opportunity to listen directly to customers and employees’.
The biggest reliability red flag came in Miro’s work... apparently 38% of their respondents claimed to have ‘never spaced out during a meeting’. Sure you didn’t.
Nevertheless, if we dig behind the headline numbers, and compare the three reports with our previous article, we find some interesting conclusions on the future of work which we think are worth noting as you plan the management of your teams.
In the two months since we wrote our last article, the US has turned a corner in its battle with the pandemic and the discussion has moved onto hybrid work.
This focus makes sense.
The option to work remotely is overwhelmingly popular (Buffer found 97.6% of the 2000+ they surveyed would like to work remotely, at least some of the time, for the rest of their careers). Yet Qualtrics found 93% of their respondents wanted at least some time in an office with other people.
If you definitely want to work remotely some of the time, but also definitely want an office some of the time, hybrid work it is.
If that seems too straightforward, it is. The findings in the WeWork report suggest that although people want hybrid work, when they want it is varied, posing significant challenges for team coordination and company culture.
Beyond the ‘I love the office’ crew (34%), there are clearly significant differences in how long people want to spend with each other:
Nick Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford who’s been studying remote work, came to the same conclusion:
‘In survey data I've collected, there's incredible variation in how many days people want to work from home… it’s almost a uniform distribution’ Nick Bloom, Stanford
He says that companies therefore face a hybrid work decision between giving employees total choice in when they come in, or a more centralised process where the company stipulates the specific days that certain teams spend in the office.
Over time, he’s come round to the latter option for the following reasons:
Food for thought as you plan your own hybrid future.
The Qualtrics report echoes other studies in claiming that the majority of employees (51%) and managers (55%) believe that individuals have been more productive whilst remote working. The WeWork report is more cagey - productivity is mentioned only 6 times in the whole report. It only goes as far as saying ‘productivity has generally not declined due to remote working.’ Miro doesn’t address the question at all.
If we dig deeper, the Qualtrics survey is revealing on where employees believe those productivity gains have come from:
It’s not clear whether ‘no commuting time’ is helpful because it creates space for rest or because people are just doing more work in those hours. But the Miro report notes that 33% of its respondents were awake for less than 20 minutes before beginning work, suggesting that some pandemic productivity gains are just coming from working longer.
This is supported elsewhere in the report (and by the Buffer report we covered last time).
None of the reports really addressed the issue of potential gains in individual productivity coming at the cost of team collaboration, which we highlighted in our last article.
Given that some of the main challenges with remote work are setting boundaries, burnout and mental health, it was surprising to see relatively little attention paid to the topic by Qualtrics and WeWork. In a hilarious paragraph, WeWork basically acknowledges there are challenges but that the solution is… you guessed it… a WeWork:
Miro’s report spends more time on acknowledging the issues, with 35% of respondents claiming that their mental health has declined as they worked from home during the pandemic.
Interestingly, the report discusses the role that validation plays in employee mental health. Their research showed an increase in empoyees doubting their accomplishments whilst working remotely, which may be food for thought in how managers give credit for work, and how frequently.
We also want to highlight the role of uncertainty in employee wellbeing. At an event in January this year, we listened to the CTO of Shopify describe how he thought one of the most important things they did for their employees was provide clarity around their plans for the pandemic so they could plan the rest of their lives.
The Qualtrics report provides some data to back this up:
‘Employees at companies that have been proactive about announcing post-pandemic plans are 88% more likely (62% vs 33%) to say their overall well-being has improved than employees at companies who have not shared plans’
If you’re looking for ways you can help your team as a manager, try stability and certainty.
We noted in the last report that although the numbers of employees looking to relocate to remote work seemed reasonably low (18%), it could still be incredibly disruptive to open those discussions with that many in your company.
These numbers are echoed in the Miro report:
The reports may be different but our advice is the same. If you have any employees who you think may want to take advantage of relocating, open these discussions with them sooner rather than later.
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