The pandemic has ushered more changes in a few weeks than anything else in recent history. Norms of working have evolved over the years augmented by evolving technology, but one can’t point to any major shifts in the past decade.
As the pandemic compelled us to start working from home, organizations feared loss of productivity. Fortunately for most enterprises consistency in productivity was maintained but the ways of working changed. In the initial months of the crisis, impromptu board meetings surged as leaders and executives collaborated to action organizational changes at great speed.
“We are having many more informal board meetings to review the fast pace of changes in the world around,” – Harsh Goenka, Chairman, RPG Group.
As the weeks turned to months and the world experienced unprecedented lockdowns, few data-based studies were initiated. Researchers from New York University and Harvard Business School studied the behavior of around 3 million people working for more than 21 thousand companies in 16 cities spread across USA, Europe and Israel – that went under lockdown in March. Their findings make interesting revelations about the way work has changed during the period.
Impact on Meetings
In the “new normal” Zoom has become the universal meeting room and the average number of meetings held in a day has increased by 12.9%, while the average number of meeting attendees went up by 13.5%. Although the number of meetings has increased, and more people are attending the meetings, the meetings have become shorter. The average meeting length has dropped by 20.1% and in effect, employees are spending 11.5% less time per day in meetings.
One of the reasons for the decrease in meeting tenures is that the zoom meetings are not same as physical meetings and people get bored and worn out. While another perspective is that since the number of meetings have increased, people need more preparation time and hence the actual meeting lengths have reduced. Frequent meetings have also risen because people are no longer able exchange views in coffee breaks/water cooler chats. Also, team leaders are trying to keep the whole team well-informed with increased communication.
Impact on working hours
Judging by the time of first and last email sent out on a day, researchers concluded that the average working hours in a day increased by 48.5 minutes.
Several other findings also suggest that people are working harder when they are working from home. But there is no conclusive data that establishes this claim and primarily the matter is subjective to the circumstances of the individual workers.
Working from home definitely offers some degree of flexibility by letting the workers choose their own working hours in order to accommodate their domestic responsibilities. However, disruption in work can have negative effects as well. Often when working from home, the distinction of personal space and office space gets blurred, and many people end up overworking without any actual need.
Nature of Work is Evolving
While many discourses about the future of work were being framed, we experienced this shift in a very subtle manner. Although one might consider it too early to reach strong conclusions, we must recognize that we are in the midst of a great shift with numerous intriguing possibilities.
Larger meetings denote an increased level of inclusion and in an attempt to get “everybody on the same page” a greater level of “common knowledge” is being created. Workers of all levels can feel more connected to the general vision and purpose of the company and when this is done via the digital medium very less time is lost. Briefer meetings, on the other hand, indicate more work is being done.
The concern for overworking might seem to have a negative effect on work-life balance but since the tenets are still shifting and not quite set, the scope of a positive outcome remains vibrant.
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