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Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

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Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#21

Post by gnicholas »

_jal wrote: post #11
taneq wrote: post #8

> Employees with children living at home increased hours workedmore than those without children at home, and suffered a bigger decline in productivity than thosewithout children. This tells you all you need to know about the study. You can't analyse the relative effectiveness of working from home and working in the office when you're conflating "remote work" with "trying to get something done on your laptop on the ki…

> This tells you all you need to know about the study. Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than the one they did. Asking what happened in the real world, including in a range of work situations, is a very interesting question to ask. Looking for/at the delta between optimal work-at-home and the office would also be interesting, for different reasons.

> Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than the one they did.

Of course, don't we all? It would be much more useful to have data on what remote work will be like in the future (i.e., when kids are in school/daycare).

There is something interesting about knowing the pros/cons of what happened during the pandemic, but most of the time research is done so that the conclusions can inform future decisions. Here, the future decisions about WFH would benefit from disentangling the WFH aspect from the COVID-induced remote school aspect.

One way to accomplish this is to assume that all workers who have kids (and lost productivity as a result) would have had the same productivity gains of people without kids. There are probably smarter/more nuanced ways to determine the global pros/cons of WFH in the future.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#22

Post by songshuu »

While it is given a brief nod in the paper, it is worth reiterating:

WFH during a global pandemic is not the same as WFH generally.

I say this as someone who has been remote for years.

Run this same study starting in September (barring huge Delta variant outbreak in the US) and you'll see a totally different set of numbers.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#23

Post by ClumsyPilot »

_jal wrote: post #11
taneq wrote: post #8

> Employees with children living at home increased hours workedmore than those without children at home, and suffered a bigger decline in productivity than thosewithout children. This tells you all you need to know about the study. You can't analyse the relative effectiveness of working from home and working in the office when you're conflating "remote work" with "trying to get something done on your laptop on the ki…

> This tells you all you need to know about the study. Your comment only tells me you wanted a different study than the one they did. Asking what happened in the real world, including in a range of work situations, is a very interesting question to ask. Looking for/at the delta between optimal work-at-home and the office would also be interesting, for different reasons.

A study of unprepared people being locked at home without childcare or schooling, without time to setup an office and in companies in dissarray is about as representative of home working as people falling overboard the titanic are representatice of health benefits of swimming.

Similarly if a group of tourists gets lost in the jungle we don't call that a study of prehistoric tribal life.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#24

Post by jvanderbot »

Vitriolic discussion around this. I'm completely unsurprised. All the key findings are easy to see in my own group. People are working longer hours because they are unaccustomed to working from home near their gaming rigs, or are making up unproductive day hours that their kids interrupted. Its harder to drop in and get quick exchange of information, leading to more meetings, etc.

The danger is that people (c-suite) see this and think it can't be done. It can, but COVID was an imperfect laboratory for studying this.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#25

Post by mym1990 »

geodel wrote: post #13
st8675309 wrote: post #2

Surprised this post isn’t getting more comments. The result is pretty clear with over 10,000 participants in the study. >>Total hours worked increased by roughly 30%, including a rise of 18% in working after normal business hours. Average output did not significantly change. Therefore, productivity fell by about 20%. Time spent on coordination activities and meetings increased, but uninterrupted work hours shrank con…

> Surprised this post isn’t getting more comments. From article: "The company that provided data is one of the world’s largest IT services companies. They have over 150,000 employees who work with clients across the globe. Most work in the home country, a rapidly- developing Asian nation." This is about a half-assed Indian "IT Services" company. (From where I am. Need to specify lest I also be branded as racist white…

Pretty hostile here from multiple angles. You ok?

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#26

Post by geodel »

mym1990 wrote: post #25
geodel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surprised this post isn’t getting more comments. From article: "The company that provided data is one of the world’s largest IT services companies. They have over 150,000 employees who work with clients across the globe. Most work in the home country, a rapidly- developing Asian nation." This is about a half-assed Indian "IT Services" company. (From where I am. Need to specify lest I also be branded as racist white…

Pretty hostile here from multiple angles. You ok?

Never been better. Thanks for asking!

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#27

Post by stinkbomb »

My company started doing a serious WFH 'experiment' about 18 months before COVID hit. The team I oversee consists of a dozen or so teams of about 40-50 developers each, with a manager that reports directly to me. I don't manage the devs directly, but deal with dev productivity and budgets for (amongst other things) staffing. So our N is not small, but not huge either.

50% of our devs - randomly selected - were offered the chance to WFH, and about 95% of them wound up doing WFH at least 3 days a week, rising to 5 days a week after a few months. The other 50% stayed in the office. The teams that went WFH and the other 50% don't work on the same projects or in the same location.

After about 6 months, we started looking at productivity metrics using a couple Pinpoint-like tools that we built. Simple metrics like: backlog change time, on-time delivery, workload balance, LOC/Checkins ratio, etc. We also tracked things like non-code calendar hours, time logging delays, and other non-development related activity.

Neither group knew what we were tracking or how often. The results were pretty clear as soon as 6 - 9 months in: WFH numbers sucked pretty hard. Everything was down across the board, and it seemed like WFH devs were spending 15-30% more time in non-development tasks, their PR reject rate was as much as 40% higher than office-based devs.

Things were so bad that if COVID had not hit, we were going to abandon the idea of letting people WFH altogether outside of extreme circumstances.

We aren't a unique shop. We're not doing anything out of the ordinary - we're developing on a variety of web and RT device platforms, but doing the same stuff in similar ways as other companies. We have a pretty flat team structure, and teams have a lot of flexibility and decision-making power, which has always worked well for us.

However, it's clear to me and the other execs that WFH absolutely does not work for us.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#28

Post by wcarss »

stinkbomb wrote: post #27

My company started doing a serious WFH 'experiment' about 18 months before COVID hit. The team I oversee consists of a dozen or so teams of about 40-50 developers each, with a manager that reports directly to me. I don't manage the devs directly, but deal with dev productivity and budgets for (amongst other things) staffing. So our N is not small, but not huge either. 50% of our devs - randomly selected - were offere…

This is really interesting!

Do you know anything about the tools/methodologies of the teams that went part WFH and the adjustments they made when changing up their workstyle?

For example, do you know things like whether meetings were held at their previously scheduled times, vs. whether people started shifting them around to "meet when we're all here", or whether conversations and decisions were pushed organizationally to be more public, visible, and documented, vs made by whoever was in the office, because they could have a hallway chat?

Anecdotally, a friend of mine works at a "remote-first" company, where even when the whole team is in the office, they'll typically meet through zoom/hangouts at their desks, and I have other friends who are "the remote person" on an in-office team. There's a huge gap in the experiences of those two, which is why I ask about those kind of factors in your experience.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#29

Post by renewiltord »

stinkbomb wrote: post #27

My company started doing a serious WFH 'experiment' about 18 months before COVID hit. The team I oversee consists of a dozen or so teams of about 40-50 developers each, with a manager that reports directly to me. I don't manage the devs directly, but deal with dev productivity and budgets for (amongst other things) staffing. So our N is not small, but not huge either. 50% of our devs - randomly selected - were offere…

Interesting data driven approach to the problem. Would you be available to share more details about aggregate outcomes in private? Curious if you were able to slice out common patterns.

Re: Work from home and productivity: evidence from personnel and analytics data [pdf]

#30

Post by mikelward »

saas_sam wrote: post #10

I remember reading on a different post (can't find it) that productivity went up sharply at the beginning of the pandemic-induced WFH trend, but then subsided over time. The thinking was that people were on their toes early on for fear of being viewed as a slacker, but then once they adjusted to WFH they relaxed. Maybe someone else saw this study...

People were running on adrenaline at first. Then the fatigue of having kids at home and not having the usual ways to let off steam eventually hit.
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