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.

 

[namelesstacotruck]

We've started to see some major issues with entry level people who joined during wfh. Like critical skills gaps and also work process gaps.

Actually shadowing and seeing how a more experienced person is handling their day and consuming their tasks has value i think. The people who love work from home would hate having to stay on a call all day with a junior and showing them everything going on in a screen....

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

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

Oh definitely. I just have noticed that the people I know who did the work from home tended to shut in more and more, becoming less social overall, even outside of when they were working.

 

[Muttnik]

I have a really low social battery so WFH honestly sounds like a dream. Wish we implemented it. Sitting around acting fake and chipper all day is honestly really exhausting.

 

[RussianParasite]

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.

This is my issue with it as well. Once I went home I would maybe check my email once for an emergency but otherwise could justify not thinking about work until the next day.

Now it is constant. I’m happy with going back in a few days a week to get a change of scenery and then not feel pressure to check emails again once I go home.

 

[Cryogonal]

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.

The issue is more that gas prices keep fucking shooting up and lots of people have to drive about an hour to get to and from work. That's lot of gas and money being spent.

 

[God of Nothing]

The issue is more that gas prices keep fucking shooting up and lots of people have to drive about an hour to get to and from work.

lol, just buy a $50K+ electric car, man

 

[Hitman One]

Working from home makes me hate my employer a little less, so that means I only passively sabotage the company rather than actively sabotage the company.

 

[Unyielding Stupidity]

Makes sense that working from home wouldn't impact productivity too much, considering most office workers aren't exactly productive to begin with. The human brain usually clocks out after a few hours of focusing on the same task and your productivity plummets. Working from home just means you don't have to make yourself look busy when this happens.

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.

I don't think a lack of office conversations really qualifies as a risk to mental health. They're usually the dullest, most sanitized conversations imaginable. If missing out on some middle-aged single mother talk about her son's after-school clubs or the netflix series she was watching is detrimental to your health, I'm genuinely concerned for you.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

I don't think a lack of office conversations really qualifies as a risk to mental health. They're usually the dullest, most sanitized conversations imaginable. If missing out on some middle-aged single mother talk about her son's after-school clubs or the netflix series she was watching is detrimental to your health, I'm genuinely concerned for you.

It's not really the conversation that matters, it's the fact that you actually have to go and deal with people. Everyone I know that did work from home became more isolated overall and their people skills significantly deteriorated. They ended up doing less outside of work social activities as well.

 

[Montalbane]

Moved from a factory job to a desk job.
Ironically its one of those jobs where you can actively be doing shit for 8 hours straight so I don't get bored and actually enjoy what I do.

Used to work for a guy who would actively pretend to be working 8 hours a day.
He was miserable,angry and got caught up in all sorts of weird shit.

Ironically WFH appeals a lot to the latter because it allows people to be lazy and do whatever they want while still getting paid.

So yeah if your productivity is not impacted by people being at home its because your productivity was bullshit to begin with

 

[Screw Danlon]

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.

Yeah, this is the one thing I like about WFH. When I have a project that I know is going to require a lot of thinking about layouts or setup, I try to do it from home so that I can walk away when I need 5 or 10 mins to think.

 

[Ebonic Tutor]

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

It's great isn't it?

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.

It's totally this... Just hang out at desk watching shows instead of dragging 5 minutes of work out for 1 hour.

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.

Yep somehow despite being a slacker people seem surprised at the amount of results I send in. So I guess I'm doing it about right.

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.

I take 1.5 hour long naps in the middle of the day with shocking frequency and am only woken up by the pings of messages which probably aren't even urgent.

 

[feral cat #6385]

Oh definitely. I just have noticed that the people I know who did the work from home tended to shut in more and more, becoming less social overall, even outside of when they were working.

Because you realize what a time sink dealing with people is and how unimportant most of them are to your job.

They probably developed hobbies more fulfilling than going out to CONSOOM with a bunch of NPCs.

I have a really low social battery so WFH honestly sounds like a dream. Wish we implemented it. Sitting around acting fake and chipper all day is honestly really exhausting.

Indeed. It is draining running a normie interface layer over your native personality to interact with normies.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

Because you realize what a time sink dealing with people is and how unimportant most of them are to your job.

They probably developed hobbies more fulfilling than going out to CONSOOM with a bunch of NPCs

In my experience they don't though. They tend to just isolate more and more and just consoom at home. Cutting out face to face interactions is almost never a good thing. The longer most of the work from home people I've known did it, the less they cared about hygiene, and the harder it was to get them to do anything. They weren't even doing stuff with other people, just isolation. This is a trend I noticed even pre pandemic with people who worked from home.

 

[mensch]

When I worked from home I used to use one of those mouse moving apps which would trigger every 15 seconds to make it look like I was online. Then I set up Slack so it would send me an email ping if anyone was trying to directly contact me. What a great year that was.