Culture It's official. Remote work has zero negative impact on your productivity - "We need to learn this about people, we need to teach people about it."

https://interestingengineering.com/remote-work-zero-negative-impact-productivity

Woman working from her home.

There is good news for those who enjoy working from home. A research team from the Texas A&M University School of Public Health has conducted a new study that found that employee and company resiliency may be enhanced through remote work, according to a statement published by the institution on Friday.

Evaluating employee productivity during Hurricane Harvey​

This is particularly true during natural disasters and other events that lead to workplace displacement. In particular, the study evaluated employee technology data before, during, and after Hurricane Harvey.

What the researchers found was that total computer use declined during the hurricane but returned swiftly to pre-hurricane levels seven months after the event.

“In the future, there will be a greater percentage of the workforce who is involved in some sort of office-style technology work activities,” said Marx Benden, who is director of the school’s Ergonomics Center.

“Almost all of the study’s employees were right back up to the same level of output as they were doing before Hurricane Harvey. This is a huge message right now for employers because we’re having national debates about whether or not employees should be able to work remotely or in a hybrid schedule.”

Exploring workplace injuries​

The study went beyond assessing productivity to examining the causes of workplace injuries. They found that it was important for employees to take regular breaks to avoid being hurt on the job.

“The research says that if you work a certain way at a certain pace over a certain duration, you’re more likely to become injured from that work,” Benden said. “But if you work a little less or a little less often or break up the duration or have certain other character traits — like posture — then you’re less likely to develop a problem from doing your office work.”

Benden went so far as to suggest that employers nudge employees to take regular breaks and recharge before finishing their work. This, he argued, would make for a healthier and more resourceful workforce.

“The people who took the recommended breaks were more productive overall. They got more done,” he said. “We need to learn this about people, we need to teach people about it, and then we need to help people actually do it.”

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Good.

 

[Joe Swanson]

That is objectively not true, I've constantly fucked around while working at home being unproductive with impunity

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

You can't micromanage your employees and stress them about bathroom breaks.

That's a negative in my book.

 

[Disc]

This is from one company and has no control group. There's basically no telling if this is because productivity isn't harmed, or if it's because the company had effective countermeasures quickly implemented.

(or if the company's productivity sucked dick before and after),

 

[Ducks Sorted in a Row]

The difference between being in an office and WFH I find is that when I'm WFH I don't have to pretend to be busy when I can't be fucked.

 

[AirdropShitposts]

How they measured productivity from the actual paper: https://content.iospress.com/articles/work/wor210707

We analyzed five daily metrics of employee computer usage routinely collected by the RSIGuard® system: total number of hours worked per employee, total active work time, keyboard use per active minute, mouse usage per active minute, words typed per hour, and number of typographical errors per word typed. The total number of hours worked per day was estimated as the difference between the time an employee logged into their work computer and the time they logged out. The number of “active” hours worked was estimated as the total number of hours the employee spent actively engaging with the computer (i.e., actively typing, mouse scrolling or clicking)

 

[Lady Adjani]

“The research says that if you work a certain way at a certain pace over a certain duration, you’re more likely to become injured from that work,” Benden said. “But if you work a little less or a little less often or break up the duration or have certain other character traits — like posture — then you’re less likely to develop a problem from doing your office work.”

Imagine having to get up every couple of hours to stretch your legs or remind yourself to sit up straight, the absolute horror these poor office workers have to deal with, I'm surprised most of them haven't committed sudoku by now.

 

[Kramer on the phone]

haven't worked an office job in my life; but from what i hear its both boring and a waste of time, people on the books for 40 hours when they only have 10 hours of work at most.

its to the point where certain people in tech are juggling multiple jobs easily because you can "work from home" on multiple timesheets at the same time.

 

[Unpaid Emotional Labourer]

The difference between being in an office and WFH I find is that when I'm WFH I don't have to pretend to be busy when I can't be fucked.

I have a wonderful nap every single day now. My productivity has not dropped. Then again I am a garbage middle manager so my productivity is my people‘s productivity, which has not dropped, and I don’t care if they too are napping every day as long as that persists. I do expect us to all be required to return to site at some point, though.

 

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

The difference between being in an office and WFH I find is that when I'm WFH I don't have to pretend to be busy when I can't be fucked.

Pretty much. Unless you work support at a call center or something, where you are kind of required to be on the line for 8 hours a day, most office work is basically like 3 hours of productivity and 5 hours of staring at a computer screen pretending like you're doing something. You get a shitload of work done in those 3 hours while your brain is firing on all cylinders and then just sitting there counting the seconds until you get to go home the rest of the time.

 

[Death Grip]

Working from home for coming up on two years. I am the most productive worker on my team and that was recently recognised by the big boss in front of the rest of the team..
I am motivated to work hard because I hate being office based and that motivation leads to good results.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Got to love "science" that uses a single workplace who's stats aligned with whatever political goal the writers wanted to make.

 

[Uncle June]

haven't worked an office job in my life; but from what i hear its both boring and a waste of time, people on the books for 40 hours when they only have 10 hours of work at most.

its to the point where certain people in tech are juggling multiple jobs easily because you can "work from home" on multiple timesheets at the same time.

That's why, when the economy takes a shit soon, office workers and middle management will be the first to get the boot.

Most of their jobs are unnecessary, and only exist for the sake of having a job.

WFH workers will probably be the absolute first to get the boot due to the current sneeding corporate is doing over their existence.

 

[TFT-A9]

The problem with remote work is not the fucking productivity, it's the matter of turning your home (the place you used to use to recharge after working at a workplace) into a workplace. It's about fucking boundaries. I don't want to invite my fucking bosses into my house.

 

[DamnWolves!]

That is objectively not true, I've constantly fucked around while working at home being unproductive with impunity

Sometimes my computer gets confused and Teams doesn't switch to "away mode" after I've walked away for a few minutes. That's usually when I take a mid-day nap.

people on the books for 40 hours when they only have 10 hours of work at most.

Now, there are office workers, like the people who pick up the phones all day or IT guys running from boomer to boomer to fix their shit, but then there are also "office workers", like management, executives, product strategists, in house counsel, etc.

The dirty secret of that second category is that no one actually expects you to put in your full time, including the people who hired you. At that level, you're not really paid for your time, you're paid to fix problems. Take the lawyers for example: chances are good they're not going to be busy all of the time, and that's fine, because you're basically paying for them to be exclusively available to you at all times. The flip side is that they will be expected to work long and/or unusual hours without complaint should something become urgent, which is fine because you're paying them $225k a year.

Management kind of has a four-fold function:

1) make sure everything you're responsible for is working efficiently
2) put information into a form digestible for even higher management
3) make decisions
4) act as "the last line of defense" for problems that arise

This is not always a "full-time" job, but it is a job that requires you to perform on demand, so you can end up doing a lot of waiting. On the other hand, you can end up in a situation where you have 12 hours of meetings per day in an 8 hour workday, like most CEOs do. That's what management is paid for; not the 37.5 hours a week they're technically supposed to put in.

Then again I am a garbage middle manager so my productivity is my people‘s productivity, which has not dropped, and I don’t care if they too are napping every day as long as that persists.

Attaboy

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

The problem with remote work is not the fucking productivity, it's the matter of turning your home (the place you used to use to recharge after working at a workplace) into a workplace. It's about fucking boundaries. I don't want to invite my fucking bosses into my house.

It also drastically cuts back on the amount of face to face interaction you have with people, which really isn't a good thing. Based off of what I've seen, I won't be surprised if we see some studies in a few years showing that work from home is actually bad for mental health.

 

[God of Nothing]

It also drastically cuts back on the amount of face to face interaction you have with people, which really isn't a good thing. Based off of what I've seen, I won't be surprised if we see some studies in a few years showing that work from home is actually bad for mental health.

if your workplace is your only form of social interaction, your problem is something else entirely

 

[Celebrate Nite]

haven't worked an office job in my life; but from what i hear its both boring and a waste of time, people on the books for 40 hours when they only have 10 hours of work at most.

Depends on your title and what specifically you're doing.

If you're a paper pusher (like data entry), then you will have days where you're doing nothing because you're waiting for the other departments to send you shit and the worst part is that they might be backed up from having so much work they didn't get to yet, so you'll wind up having that huge clog get pushed to you around the last hour mark before everyone leaves.

If you're in IT, then you're almost always busy, so it makes the day go by quicker. Rarely have i ever had a day where it was slow, and when it actually happens, I'm doing shit like cleaning up a server in active directory by getting rid of accounts that have been on there for years that hasn't been active since they left the company.

 

[Criticallacitirc]

The difference between being in an office and WFH I find is that when I'm WFH I don't have to pretend to be busy when I can't be fucked.

This. My job is project based. When I have a project I can end up working till 9/10pm to meet deadlines, when I'm in between projects I don't really have anything to do. In the past I worked til 10 when I was busy, and then when I wasn't I still had to sit at my desk til 5 pretending I was working.

From the company's end, I'm still getting the same amount of work done.

The top pyschos want everyone to come back in though even though prepandemic the biggest buzz word was "work-life" balance.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

WFH was awesome. Middle of the day and i'm just not feeling it? While still available on call if needed, I could just drop what i'm doing to go clear my mind doing whatever (house errands, spend time with the kids, go for a walk) and take however long I was absent and just tack it on the end of the day to make it up.

Sure as fuck not gonna stay in the office longer then necessary. You get me only for that 8 hours and thats it, I already have a hour commute to deal with.