Yes, working from the home office has advantages. but there are also traps.
Working at home has given many people the opportunity to work more freely than usual. But has it really given us more freedom?
It may seem a bit contradicting at first glance, but increased flexibility in our working day may have given us less flexibility in the work itself.
Advantages highlighted
The daily press and emerging research literature about COVID-19 speculate about the long-term consequences of the coronavirus situation. This could change the way we think about the methods we use in our work lives, especially when it comes to home offices and digital collaboration.
Several large companies, both international and national, have announced that they will continue to work from home for anyone who wants something even after the pandemic. The arguments for this are:
- Greater flexibility in organizing work and family life appears to significantly reduce stress for many people.
- Time that was previously spent commuting or traveling between meetings can now be used for other purposes, which in turn can lead to greater productivity.
- One argument we hear is that a home office situation is less distracting and can make us more efficient.
- For their part, employers see an opportunity to reduce travel costs and require less office space.
Work from home also takes place in the academic field, and several universities have announced that the home office option will continue.
On the other hand, it was pointed out that people cannot work exclusively in physically separated environments. We need opportunities to meet with colleagues and experience the social cohesion and replenishment that this offers.
Practices change
The impact of such a distributed work situation on work practices is an important aspect that has received less attention so far. How does working from home affect collaboration and the quality of work in both smaller teams and larger work groups?
In the article “Learning from Academics in the Coronavirus Pandemic Era,” we describe how an academic’s practices have changed significantly in the conditions we have been working in since March.
While working from home or as a distributed team greatly increases the flexibility of the work situation, work can be less flexible, both in terms of meeting with colleagues and in terms of collaboration and teaching.
One of our conclusions is that if we postpone work practices, we cannot expect them to stay the same. When the conditions regarding practices change, so do the practices themselves.
Not everyone becomes more efficient
In two parallel projects, we collected data from students and academic staff. We focused on their work and study situations during the corona pandemic.
The data includes 1,600 students and 16 instructors on a course called Experts in Teamwork. The students gave feedback through questionnaires, written test reports and in-depth interviews. The lecturers represented various faculties and departments and were interviewed in detail.
The preliminary results show large differences in the consequences that the new work and study situations had on individuals and groups.
- Some groups became more effective, others less.
- Some people became more efficient in their new work environment, for example because they had fewer distractions and it was easier to prioritize work. Others became less efficient, for example, due to lower motivation and a lack of daily structure.
- Some people found it beneficial to have more peace and flexibility in their daily life, while others felt more lonely and less motivated due to the lack of social and physical contact with fellow students and colleagues.
Some of the academic staff also had a much busier schedule as they were homeschooling their children. This factor is less relevant in a non-pandemic situation.
In our study, we also found many of the positive elements of distributed teamwork and digital work mentioned at the beginning of our article.
The paradox: more flexibility and less freedom
One finding, however, is paradoxical.
While working from home or as a distributed team greatly increases the flexibility of the work situation, work can be less flexible, both in terms of meeting with colleagues and in terms of collaboration and teaching.
This flexibility problem, or paradox, is largely related to a much greater need for structure, planning and clear communication in the digital modality. Meetings and classes need to be planned in much more detail, and the digital form makes it difficult to deviate from the plan.
We lose the ability to pick up clues from space as we do when we are in physical space together. Various communication-related aspects of digital work also make it difficult to achieve a good process and to make spontaneous and necessary changes.
A higher threshold makes teamwork less flexible
We also note that the threshold for small and necessary clarifications with employees in the digital area is significantly higher. The flexibility to get a task done is therefore reduced and can affect the quality of our work.
For example, we risk working alone on a task for too long instead of assuming it is on the way. We don’t want to disturb people and we don’t know what they are doing. We found this to be the case for both students who worked synchronously and academics who worked mostly asynchronously.
Home offices may benefit many but are unlikely to benefit everyone. Even after the pandemic has subsided, more people are likely to choose to work from home than before. The opportunity to meet physically, however, is still important, not only for each of us to meet our social needs, but also for the employer and for the quality of the work.
Reference: “Learning from academics during the coronavirus pandemic” by Ela Sjølie, Susanne Francisco, Kathleen Mahon, Mervi Kaukko and Stephen Kemmis, Journal of Practice in Higher EducationVol. 2 No. 1 (2020).
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