It is common to hear technology business or policy leaders argue that remote work has not harmed productivity. Leaving aside the issue of whether remote work productivity changes can be measured, collaboration--deemed by most to be vital for knowledge workers--might have gotten far worse because of Covid.
People like the freedom to work from home, no question.
That might have happened despite reports that suggest information, knowledge and office workers now are spending more time with electronic forms of communication. But “communication” is not necessarily “collaboration.”
If collaboration is defined as “people working in teams or with others,” then collaboration seemingly has suffered.
According to Gensler, “high-performing people at top companies tend to do individual work and collaborative work in equal measures—45 percent each, according to our research--with the remaining 10 percent made up of learning and social time.”
For better or worse, those balances were changed during the period of enforced work from home policies. “While at home during the pandemic, people reported working in individual focus mode 62 percent of the time and 27 percent in collaboration, a disparity that negatively impacts company creativity and productivity,” Gensler argues.
Before the pandemic, U.S. workers spent an average of 43 percent of their work weeks collaborating either virtually or in person. That number fell to 27 percent for workers who worked from home in 2020, for example.
So people might report--and likely actually are--spending more time on conference calls, sending or reading emails and messages. But they are collaborating--working with other people--less.
As many firms explore “hybrid” work models, mixing in-office and at-home days during the week, it might prove hard to capture the fluid collaboration that used to happen, Gensler argues. A hybrid model might capture some of the “formal and structured” collaboration that happened pre-Covid.
But it will be harder to capture the informal collaboration that is not scheduled and formalized. By design, most “focus” or “do it on your own” work will make more sense “at home.” Team work might logically make more sense “in the office.”
The problem is that not all moments when collaboration can be helpful can be scheduled in advance.
Most reports on “productivity” rely on subjective reports--what people believe has been the case--rather than on more objective metrics. The reason is simply that there exist few “hard” or “quantitative” measures for productivity output. Mostly, people are forced to rely on measuring inputs. And, by definition, inputs are not “outcomes.”
Gensler found that students are overwhelmingly of the opinion that enforced remote learning has been worse than in-person learning. Whether learning actually (objectively) has suffered is not clear. Students believe their learning has suffered.
Professional educators, on the other hand, tend to believe remote learning has worked rather well. Students do not agree.
One potential implication for business leaders is the effect of remote or even hybrid work models on the extent and quality of personal relationships that are considered important for just about any organization. Some 3,000 persons surveyed by Gensler--about 83 percent of whom were students--finds a perceived decline in every type of relationship, compared to pre-Covid and pre-remote learning modes.
As “soft” as most productivity “data” might be, the “quality of relationships” angles might be even more difficult to capture. And it is likely that future work modes will matter, as enforced remote work has mattered. As most full-time remote workers have traditionally felt they are at a disadvantage to co-workers “at the main office,” so some workers with more “remote” than “in person” experiences might also eventually see disadvantages.
Most organizations can function for a short time under duress, without compromising long-term effectiveness. It arguably is a different matter if durexx continues for a long time. The reports we all hear about worker “burn out” or “Zoom fatigue” are of that sort.
Up to this point, collaboration has been “synchronous,” bringing people together in real time. It is unclear whether “asynchronous” collaboration will work as well, or better, than synchronous modes.
Over time, enforced isolation might start to have implications for organizational effectiveness, even if emergency, “short term” performance metrics do not seem impaired.
Other business metrics, such as the ability to inculcate company culture, or create internal relationships important for young worker advancement, might also be suffering. It simply is nearly impossible to measure such processes.
Most business leaders hope that hybrid work modes will provide the best of both worlds: happier employees and sustainable productivity. We simply do not know yet whether that is possible or likely.
Always difficult to measure, we will have to make do with best guesses about long-term productivity from hybrid or remote work.
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