Working from Home: What are we seeing in the data?
Over the last few months we have been helping numerous of our global clients understand the answers of company-wide survey questions on their employees’ experiences and challenges associated with working from home (WFH).
At OrganizationView, we specialise in making sense of very large volumes of multi-language text-based employee feedback. This data is far richer than traditional quantitive survey data and also, because employees are given an opportunity to express exactly what is most important to them, tends to identify topics that wouldn’t normally be added to structured questions.
Employees frequently provide two pieces of information in their text feedback; what is their experience and why this matters to them and / or their employer. Whilst the former may be identified by other data sources the latter typically requires a qualitative research approach.
After working with almost one hundred thousand comments, from multiple sectors and in a large number of geographies discussing home working over the last few months we are seeing some key generalisable themes emerging. These are the basis of this article.
In addition to these general trends we are also seeing that most organizations have company-specific themes. Employees in companies which have been assisting people cope with their lives during this crisis (healthcare, some services) have seen a jump in topics around pride in the company and shared values. Other organizations see themes around policy responses - both positive and negative (and often both in the same organization depending on the population).
What we have found
“Working from home was not recommended in my area. Now, because we were forced due to the circumstances, we’ve seen that telework can be associated with performance, better management of priorities, comfort in the actions to be carried out on a daily basis and a more pleasant family life.. It’s a big step forward in the way we work.”
Working from home as a topic has always been a theme present in employee feedback, but until COVID it typically fell under a broader ‘flexible working’ grouping. COVID changed that because for most employees who had to work from home it wasn’t a personal choice.
Productivity
Many organizations historically had resisted working from home due to concerns over a drop in productivity. What we find reported in our data suggest that in the majority of cases this is not warranted. This matches earlier academic research.
Analysing data where employees mention productivity, efficiency or effectiveness shows about 80% believing that they are at least, or more productive when working from home.
At first we were cautious that some of these employees felt they had to justify that they were still working to their bosses. However reading into the comments - especially why they felt more productive identified a few key themes and suggests that the productivity improvement mentioned by employees is real.
More time to work
“The hours that I save from my commute I would happily use to work more hours for my job and be more productive.” “I gain a couple hours a day working from home”
For many employees commuting was mentioned as taking several hours of time every day. Home working removed this burden from employees’ daily activities.
Employees are splitting this reclaimed time between work and leisure. This results in more time being allocated to working resulting in higher productivity.
From the comments it’s clear that employees are using this reclaimed time flexibly. Some talk about how when there is a deadline they have more time to complete the task (which reduces stress) and at other times they are using it for personal activities such as doing exercise.
We also see evidence that employees are allocating their time across throughout the day to more accurately meet the job demands. For example comments mention that it is easier to work across time-zones when doing so at home.
There may be pressure to work longer hours
“Working from home should not mean working more hours leading to burnout”
Whilst many employees are obviously welcoming the opportunity to work in a more flexible manner the flip-side is that in some instances it is resulting in work encroaching into personal life.
It is worth noting that these comments are relatively infrequent. We see more mention of employees being able to work in several sessions throughout the day, taking time in between to look after children or for leisure. However organizations need to consider how to discourage work taking over.
Less distractions
“I have been more efficient since I work from home 4 days out of 5.”
Many of the comments describe how employees feel that they are more productive when working from home. A key reason is that distractions are reduced. There is discussion about the types of work that they prefer to do at home - report preparation, analysis - tasks which require focus.
Engagement and commitment
“I would never leave COMPANY if we are able to continue working from home.”
There is huge appreciation from employees that they have been able to work from home. Some of this of course could link to the rise in COVID-related job insecurity that we’ve seen. If their employee was unique in offering WFH it’s likely to become sticky, if everyone does then it’s less of a differentiator.
We see a large number of mentions of people mentioning that they’ve ‘never been happier at work’. Again it would be worth looking at this via longitudinal panel data and of course watching whether engagement scores remain high.
Careers
Career opportunities are one of the most common topics when reviewing employee feedback. When combined with employees working from home we see employees mentioning how they believe that an increase in WFH has shown that more jobs can be location-independent and that this increases opportunities for employees in smaller locations.
Those not able to WFH
Of course not every role can be performed remotely. Some of the roles that we’ve analysed include sales, manufacturing and hospitality.
Even in these roles we’ve seen feedback that WFH is useful for some tasks even in jobs that predominately can’t be performed remotely. For example in production roles we see that employees feel that tasks such as planning can be performed more effectively outside the office.
With sales we’ve seen a mixed set of messages. On one side we’ve seen employees mentioning that their ‘numbers have gone through the roof’. On other side we see mention that it’s much harder to visit clients due to distancing rules. The latter is obviously COVID rather than WFH related - it is a good example of the difficulty of separating the two topics
I would strongly recommend those with large field sales teams to run an experiment to identify the effect on productivity of WFH.
Some resentment between groups
We some comments from those unable to work from home being resentful about those who can, or those who are able.
Some of these comments are about ‘carrying’ WFH colleagues. Others are from those in offices complaining that the offices are getting busier as time passes and that more people who could be working from home and increasing COVID related risks.
Appreciating those who WFH
“Remove the stigma of working at home”
It seems that some employees who are working remotely can feel these pressures.
For organizations who are extending WFH, or those considering offering WFH permanently it’s worth planning for how they persuade colleagues, especially more ‘traditional’ managers that remote employees aren’t less effective employees. Given our previous work with clients looking at performance management, especially performance management when the manager and employee are based in different locations, HR teams will need to adapt performance processes, or at least adapt performance management training, to ensure that remote employees aren’t disadvantaged.
Shifting costs for employees
Mention of cost in the data is mixed. On one side many employees mention how they’re saving money by not having to commute, spend money for lunch etc. However on the other we see mention of increased costs on office related expenses.
Technology challenges
One of the key factors that determine WFH success is how good the technology support is.
There are two factors here. The first is the speed of employees home network access. Many employees talk about how their employers should pay for fast home network access. On a global basis as well employers need to consider the availability of high-speed internet for employees.
The second is company-specific technology. We see mentions that the speed of connecting into company networks can be slow and clunky. It’s interesting that many of the technologies that people mention as helpful are SaaS technologies and those which they complain about are sitting behind company firewalls.
What is clear is that WFH should help advance organizations digitalisation initiatives.
Help with the environment
“I would like to work from home more often; however, I did not get my 1 bedroom apartment with this in mind”
There are two linked environmental related issues being mentioned.
The first is a number of employees looking for support (mainly financial) from their firms with ergonomic work equipment and furniture.
The second is that we see some mentions about how the physical environment, and the fact that families are all together makes WFH difficult.
With regards to children the picture is mixed and mostly positive. We see more mentions of the flexibility that WFH provides being a stress-reducer when having to look after children than we do of children getting in the way of work, though the latter is certainly present.
Unfortunately we don’t have deep-enough background data on employees to identify which groups are able to work at home most effectively. This is an area which firms monitoring WFH experiences should be exploring. (seniority, location and gender analyses come to mind).
Communication
“Connecting with colleagues via video is fun and helps me feel part of a work family. Seeing leadership at home is awesome, fascinating and exciting! We are all real people.”
We expected to see issues around communication, but mentions of communication in comments related to WFH has been overwhelmingly positive.
Video communication has certainly been the facilitator here, and not just for formal meetings. We see plenty of mentions of ‘virtual coffees’ and other short social activities. On meetings there are comments that they tend to be more likely to start on time as colleagues don’t have to physically move across locations, and employees appreciate the removal of expenses relating to these virtual meetings. On the flip-side there is a belief that there are too many virtual meetings.
Overall it seems that firms have made a conscious effort to increase communication during this time. Some may be risking over-doing it though.
Adapting to new ways of working
“I wish we had received tips on how to organize a home office day or how to maintain the work-life balance.”
As is often the case changes within organizations aren’t accompanied with the appropriate level of change-management support. Certainly we see this coming through in the data, though arguably most organizations didn’t have time to plan (and hadn’t made plans).
For ongoing WFH HR teams should consider carefully how to provide support for employees making the shift. The desire to work remotely is certainly present though not everyone is able to make the change themselves.
Training
One relatively recent change in organizations has been an increasing delivery of training content via video and other electronic means. Much of this content is bite-sized and available on demand.
We see mentions of employees taking advantage of this and employers promoting it. There is some evidence that employees are using part of their time recovered from commuting to complete more training. If companies are concerned about developing their employees to cope with shifting skill requirements from automation this can only be a good thing.
Work life balance
“Without a doubt working from home has greatly improved my quality of life. I can work longer hours without the stress. I am sleeping better, exercising more, eating better (no vending machine temptations - healthy food!)”
As mentioned at the beginning, working from home was a topic we’d typically add to ‘work-life balance’ or ‘flexible working’. Covid brought compulsory WFH which meant that we adapted our models.
It’s clear that for most employees WFH has contributed a significant improvement to employees’ work-life balance. However it’s not right for everyone and going from 0% to 100% WFH has also been difficult for some.
Stress
“I am less stressed and calmer. I can even see my resting heart rate is lower on my apple watch.”
On the co-occurrence network below we see stress linked to work-life balance and productivity (via comments about ‘doing our best’). In employee feedback stress is almost exclusively mentioned as a negative factor. In this dataset, however, the vast majority of employees mention it as something that has been reduced. The community which stress is part of is the most positive about working from home (and is one of the biggest groups).
Topics that people mention together. Each segment can be mapped to demographic data to create personas to help develop solutions.
WFH is popular, but not every day
Finally we come to the biggest message across all the datasets that we’ve seen. Employees strongly value working from home but don’t want to do it every day.
We analysed the number of days per week mentioned by employees. Almost all suggested somewhere between 1 and 4 days a week with 2 being the most frequently mentioned, followed by 3. Almost nobody wanted to avoid working from home nor did they want to continue with full-time WFH.
Employees strongly felt that partial WFH made big improvements to their quality of life and improved their productivity. From these thousands of comments it would seem a win-win opportunity for firms and their employees. We think it will be difficult for firms to remove WFH completely without causing workforce-related issues.
Recommendations
The Working From Home data that we’ve seen provides some of the clearest and consistent insight for executives. Looking at external, historic data about how often employees have been able to work from home it would seem that COVID has accelerated a trend that has been happening for some time in many economies.
It should be noted that the analysis here, and the themes it reveals has occurred relatively shortly after firms made a rapid switch to working from home. It’s quite possible that some of the feelings can be associated with a ‘honeymoon period’ or the reactions to a novel situation where the alternative was often not available.
As mentioned above we’ve seen notable differences between firms and across geographies. This analysis should therefore be seen as ‘background-reading’ and the messages updated with your own data. I would also recommend revisiting this type of research / analysis on a regular basis.
Previous research has suggested productivity improvements of between 10–20% from Working From Home. Whilst the feedback that we’ve seen can’t provide an absolute number the employees’ views suggest that this is possible. WFH has been a key topic for many executives during the last few months. We believe that this focus should be maintained.
Whilst WFH offers significant benefits for those firms where it is possible executives shouldn’t assume that the optimal result will happen automatically. Text-based feedback like we use provides numerous opportunities for improvement, identifies firm-based blockages and reveals what is most valuable, to firms and their employees.
Given the commercial benefits we believe that many firms will profit from creating a WFH task-force who can manage this transition proactively, listening to employees, developing improvements and monitoring performance. Firms will need to allocate some budget to the task but the payoff - from productivity and reduced work-place related costs should provide a strong ROI.
Finally we’d recommend letting employees self-select to working from home. It’s not right for all employees nor is there a perfect split between working from home and in the office. Letting employees and their teams allocate their work is likely to add to firm-wide productivity and work-life balance.