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Home working brings longer hours, fewer phone calls

Data on more than 60,000 workers at Microsoft show that remote working led to more ‘siloed’ work groups and the sending of more e-mails.
A woman is seen through a glass door working on her laptop in the dark

The pandemic-driven shift towards remote working led to an increase in working hours at one large US firm. Credit: Getty

The COVID-19 pandemic forced legions of workers to move from centralized offices to kitchen tables. An analysis of the activities of employees at one major technology firm suggests that widespread remote working can curb real-time communication and reduce collaboration between groups1.

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Nature 597, 450 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02496-5

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 15 September 2021: Clarification 15 September 2021: The headline of this article has been revised to clarify that even in the absence of a pandemic, a shift to remote working will change work patterns.

References

  1. Yang, L. et al. Nature Hum. Behav. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01196-4 (2021).

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