Have we just stumbled on the biggest productivity increase of the century?

https://theconversation.com/have-we-just-stumbled-on-the-biggest-productivity-increase-of-the-century-145104

by rwmj • 6 years ago

101 65 6 years ago

blakesterz• 6 years ago

In case you don't feel like clicking through...

"If working from home eliminated an hour of commuting, without changing time spent on work or reducing production, the result would be equivalent to a 13% increase in productivity (assuming a 38-hour working work)."

I have to admit I've wondered about that. I'm not sure this article answers any questions, but it's a good question.

xmprt• 6 years ago

And the people who think that's a bad thing because now bosses are going to ask for more work... Having more time in your day doesn't mean you have to be more productive at your job. You can do tons of other things, whether that's caring for children, learning a new skill, or working on a hobby/side project.

AltruisticGapHN• 6 years ago

I don’t understand this at all. Where’s the 13% increase coming from? (if i work the same number of hours)

cma• 6 years ago

Less hours are tied up with work, if you consider commuting as hours tied up due to work. So: as productive with less hours is a productivity increase (if other downsides don't offset too much).

cpeterso• 6 years ago

The article assumes that time you previously spent idle commuting is now spent diligently working.

Dylan16807• 6 years ago

Instead of spending 43 hours to do 38 hours of work, you spend 38 hours to do 38 hours of work.

43 / 38 = 113% productivity

hogFeast• 6 years ago

Yes, basically accurate if you produce the same amount in less time...that is productivity growth.

But: it isn't sustained productivity growth (it is one-time), there will be losses elsewhere in the economy (won't someone think of the landlords!), and most people aren't going to swap their commute time for more actual production (which is perfectly fine, the purpose of life isn't work...but the point is there will be no output growth, inputs are changing but output isn't).

Barrin92• 6 years ago

Only under a static view of productivity, that is to say taking the economy as it is and eliminating commute time (and ignoring the problems associated with working from home).

Much more importantly though is the question if remote work facilitates the same degree of long term capital formation that traditional work environments do.

Alexander Pentland's work (Social Physics)[1] casts doubt on this. Physical interaction turns out to be quite vital when it comes to cross-pollination of ideas, starting new business ventures and basically just transferring knowledge.

It's the casual everyday interactions at the workplace, organic team-building, long term informal relationships formed and so on that are completely missing from remote work, and they have a huge impact.

[1]https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/314230/social-physi...

Olreich• 6 years ago

I’ve very successfully transferred watercooler conversations that “just happen” psychically to a better system of watercooler channels on chat programs. It’s better than just the 2-3 people you share a office with, as you can get ten people cross pollinating all at the same time. Have a novel thought or cool solution to a problem? Post about it and get kudos and feedback.

I grew up with chat being the primary way to transfer ideas, especially with peers that weren’t close to me, so it’s more natural to me to do the conversational knowledge sharing via text. The missing piece from a workplace is a shared whiteboard that anyone can draw on. Everyone needs to get a digitizer at the quality of an iPad Pro or Cintiq to really bridge that gap. Hopefully the prices keep going down and that sort of thing can become as ubiquitous as chat.

chrisco255• 6 years ago

The missing piece is the 65+% of communication that is nonverbal. Chat is no replacement for a team of highly focused, highly integrated people doing innovative work.

It's too easy to give casual criticism or casual kudos on chat.

Could something like the iPhone have been created without engineers and designers physically in the same space, debating and discussing ideas? I highly doubt it.

If your job is not all that innovative in the first place, and no groundbreaking, chat might be ok for iterative innovation.

xcambar• 6 years ago

It is sad that the article shows the additional time available as productive/work time.

In my experience, the workforce maintains a similar productivity while working slower number of effective work hours. This boost of productivity is explained by the benefits of the loss of stress and commute, the comfort of home, the additional family time etc.

There are downsides of course, such as lack of direct contact, unavailability of an actual office, and mostly the inability to disconnect when everything happens at the same place, aka home.

But I'd like the general discourse to focus more on the fact that the direct benefits are for the employee, with positive side-effects for the employer. As in: let's put the employee at the core of the studies.

Ozzie_osman2• 6 years ago

I love this. It's not just about productivity (which is employer-focused), it's about well-being (which is employer-focused). And working from home is double-edged in that regard, though I believe the positives will generally outweigh the negatives.

corpMaverick• 6 years ago

Did you mean to say employee-focused the second time ?

esperent2• 6 years ago

I agree, but on the other hand, the goal is to persuade companies that it's a good idea to continue this post-covid. To that end, focusing on benefits to the company will be more effective.

glofish• 6 years ago

what an absurd article.

And if you are wondering and unaware of Betteridge's law, no we have not stumbled into the biggest productivity increase in a century.

Working from home does not make most people more productive, eliminating commute does not make you more productive. Productivity has nothing to do with time spent in a location.

yjftsjthsd-h• 6 years ago

Right, but productivity has everything to do with time spent and work done, so doing the same work with less time wasted on overhead (commuting) means more productivity.

unabst2• 6 years ago

It's absurd to think "we've stumbled on the biggest productivity increase" by changing the math to include commute. If you work 10 hours and are productive for 10 hours, nothing changes regarding workd done whether you commuted 1 hour or not. It's only when you swap 11 hours for 10 that there is a difference. Nothing agaist saving time, but to say that's the biggest productivity increase is stretching it I think.

endymi0n• 6 years ago

I don't doubt the main conclusion of the article for certain tasks at least — what I do think is questionable though is using productivity as the only valid metric without controlling for others, including happiness, loneliness, effectiveness and sustainability.

For makers of any kind, I think remote work has mainly been a net benefit. There's a lot of developers in our teams who say they're more productive than ever.

For me as a technology manager, I'm more exhausted than ever. Video meetings are a pain. Because of this, people switch to asynchronous communication methods, which is definively more effective, but lacks even more personality. Text has many more layers of ambiguity. People get more aggressive and lonely. Misunderstandings rise.

My job is to be aware of the emotional undercurrents of arguments and technology and physical distance just seems to get in the way of that. Any forms of creativity that happens in a group, like whiteboarding together, just isn't the same.

So yes, I think I'm more productive, at least in some ways. There are some bright sides, also in my private life from being able to work from home that I'm sure to do more of once I'm able to go back to the office. But I haven't ever been as exhausted, lonely or miserable as right now and I simply can't wait to actually have the choice of seeing people in person again.

bJGVygG7MQVF8c• 6 years ago

This all rings true but from my vantage point this kind of management ends up introducing excess overhead that makes my work life more fraught with emotional uncertainty rather than less. I avoid it altogether.

I don't want anyone, let alone an EM — someone overwhelmingly likely to have below average emotional intelligence relative to the general population — to be probing into my inner life in 1:1s and playing 4D chess orchestrating the team. I've experienced this. It's exhausting.

The whole organizational arrangement is misbegotten. Most companies follow it largely out of faddishness and cargo-culting.

threeseed• 6 years ago

It makes you wonder if it will change the way people are managed as well.

Instead of traditional management it will shift to a purely results-focused style.

Inthenameofmine• 6 years ago

For me as a technology manager, I'm more exhausted than ever. Video meetings are a pain. Because of this, people switch to asynchronous communication methods, which is definively more effective, but lacks even more personality. Text has many more layers of ambiguity. People get more aggressive and lonely. Misunderstandings rise.

IMO That's a cultural and psychological problem similar to when people moved from industrial facilities to service industries, or from waterfall development to agile. People can and have to learn workflows to accomodate that, and they will be happier.

My job is to be aware of the emotional undercurrents of arguments and technology and physical distance just seems to get in the way of that. Any forms of creativity that happens in a group, like whiteboarding together, just isn't the same.

In my experience online whiteboaridng on tablets is far superior to in-room whiteboarding. Recording, replaying, integration of other tools, etc. It's again a question of consistent workflows.

karaterobot• 6 years ago

If working from home eliminated an hour of commuting, without changing time spent on work or reducing production, the result would be equivalent to a 13% increase in productivity (assuming a 38-hour working work).

Maybe I'm just dense, but I've read this sentence 20 times, and it still doesn't make sense. If you aren't changing the time spent on work, where is the productivity gain coming from? Surely they aren't including commute time in calculating worker productivity?

ssanders82• 6 years ago

I think they're defining "productivity" as a fraction, i.e you used to be able to do 38 hours of work in exchange for 43 hours of your life. Now it's 38 hours of work while only using 38 hours.

ksaj2• 6 years ago

I still remember Dolly Parton singing about how much a drag it was to work 9 to 5. Most offices nowadays require you to work 8:30 to 5:30 and still call it 8 hours.

Remote work at least allows some people to effectively regain some of that hour, since you can discount the travel time, and associated costs for parking, gas, etc, or transit.

briandear• 6 years ago

8:30 to 5:30 with an hour lunch is 8 hours.

kizza• 6 years ago

It's talking about the net productivity to society - now that you have more free time you might start that side project that changes the world :)

aphextron• 6 years ago

I'm definitely more productive working from home. But I'm not as happy. Yes commuting sucks. Yes waking up early sucks. But my coworkers were also my friends. I looked forward to having lunch with my team every day. I miss happy hours and book club meetings. I miss having a back and forth casual discussion on some open ended problem we're dealing with. I miss feeling like a part of something larger than myself, rather than just being some guy who wakes up, types code into a laptop, eats dinner, and goes to bed. Maybe this is different for people with families. But I, for one, am dreaming of the day life can go back to normal.

nvrspyx2• 6 years ago

I think it largely depends on the person. For example, as I am someone that's extremely introverted, going to work and interacting with people outside of my duties drains the hell out of me and makes me miserable by the time I get home.

The more conciseness of communicating and lack of socializing with coworkers has made me both much happier and more productive. Granted, I'm on the pretty far end of the introvert-extrovert spectrum and am much happier being by myself for extended periods of time, so I'm sure it definitely varies.

marmaduke2• 6 years ago

interacting with people outside of my duties drains the hell out of me

Do you find the interaction universally draining or a matter of consent? I usually detest the interruptions save a few colleagues which I find fun to talk to.

vidarh• 6 years ago

We had a single day of office time a week before covid, and I basically wrote off that day as 'social day' for similar reasons.

I'd get things that involved meetings done, but the density of social stuff that got packed into that day meant it was a struggle to get other things done, so I mostly tried to pack meetings into that day and just accepted I'd do little of anything else.

They I realised there was nothing special about those days - it was how things used to be for me when I spent the whole day in an office.

The thought of going back to an office in any future job file me with dread.

spaetzleesser• 6 years ago

I love working from home but sometimes I miss my colleagues. I think ideal for me would be to be at the office once very one or two weeks. If I have to choose between being at the office 4-5 days a week vs never, I'll choose never just to keep my sanity.

vernon99• 6 years ago

You can have it all remotely too. Intentional communities are being formed now across the globe with the idea of getting amazing people together in the nature to maximize both their joy AND productivity. This is the best of two worlds really. Check the one we started in Somoma: @siliconforestblog on IG (dm if interested).

Upd: on intraversion, somebody said nicely that we just love being at piece and because of that we just need people who bring us piece. It’s really about who you surround yourself with, not extra/intraversion, IMO

satysin• 6 years ago

For me I hope the "new normal" is a balance of being able to work from home without prejudice and work in the office when that makes the most sense.

By without prejudice I mean not having to beg for it or it being limited to X days a month, etc. I want to be able to update a team/department/whatever calendar every week or so with when I will be in the office and that's it. Maybe I work from home for 3 weeks then had three days in the office the week after. If that works best it shouldn't be an issue to just say that is what you're doing.

While I talk in the first person I actually already work remotely and have done a while now. However having my wife working from home since March has been amazing for us. We get to have lunch together most days which I thought we would get bored of but 6 months later we still love it. Preparing a nice lunch together then just chatting and eating together is something we very rarely get with a child.

Not to mention the time saved sitting in a car/train/bus means we can better use that time for other daily responsibilities such as household chores or sometimes just having an hour or two more personal time that isn't restricted to a seat in a vehicle. Once or twice a week my wife and I have been going out for a walk, usually together but sometimes alone just to get some time outside without any specific reason for it.

She is back in the office two days a week now and she is okay with that. She likes seeing her "office family" but as she puts "it seeing them twice a week is enough". She likes her colleagues as many are good friends and she missed them a lot when it was 100% WFH but she also finds 5 days "a bit too much with some of them".

I wouldn't say a push for 100% WFH is what most people want (some yes but not most). It is the flexibility to decide with your team what needs to be done in the office and what can be done from home and being able to just do that without any hassle.

zanecraw• 6 years ago

I agree, having a balance is probably what will happen after Covid goes away - hopefully.

Viliam12343• 6 years ago

Similar here. I miss the opportunity to have a lunch with some of my colleagues. But five times a week, after spending the entire day together, is too much. It feels like my colleagues are my family, and my real family is just an unimportant side job.

PeterStuer2• 6 years ago

Keep in mind that your COVID WFH experience is not the normal WFH. Normally you would have the opportunity to gain all your commute time and ge to experience a real social life that is not bound to your office.

Living in one of the most congested areas in the world, with a public transit system that has been deliberately neglected by successive governments since the 1970's thanks to the car and concrete lobby, a 1 hour commute is very much an underestimate for most office workers here.

I notice especially the younger single colleges never had the time to build a real social life post university, because they spend all their time outside work commuting. So they have substituted this with an in office social life. WFH for them now means sitting alone in an apartment, missing their office social circle, and having more time but nothing to fill it with as all the bars and restaurants, the cafes and the theaters are closed, as is the gym, art school, language courses, those have moved online as well.

This is not normal. Normal WFH is gaining not just 2 hours that were lost in commute, but also gaining massive productivity due to not having the stress that comes with 2 hours of bumper to bumper stop and go traffic each day. Those 2 hours open up enormous social possibilities. Things you can do each evening that you normally only get to enjoy in the weekends.

I do hope the 'new normal' stays, and people will get to experience the 'real' WFH as well.

saiya-jin• 6 years ago

You realize that not everybody is so desperate to have work that requires commute taking 2+ hours of life, every single effin day. Its mostly issue with huge cities or folks desperately wanting to buy a home with garden regardless of realities of their current location, like it would magically solve whatever issue they face in their lives.

WFH now might not be representative of WFH of yesterday's days, but its what many folks face now, and its not going anywhere soon.

Productivity increase - I can't imagine this happening in any big, multinational corp, only smaller, more agile companies or if you work on your own. Its simply not the way things are done. Way more conf calls, amount of emails is roughly 3x higher so finding even a stupid email conversation I still recall from few weeks ago becomes a challenge. Expectations from business are the same.

You need serious discipline, no distractions (if you are not constantly pulled into some decisions/calls then you are probably not important in that company or a fresh hire).

For me, covid was a blessing, I could spend home with my newborn son and wife and overall I am clearly one of the winners in very small pool of folks who can claim similar situation. For now while I still have work. But I am clearly an outlier, for most its has been pretty bad situation in many aspects.

Companies will save on rent, and probably lower salaries long term but I can't see employees as winners overall in long term. Apart from few very loud folks, who either had stupid long commute because of their not-so-bright prior decisions, or some other outliers.

jrumbut• 6 years ago

The 8 hours alone is already too much for me, even if I had all the normal stuff open. I actually had close to the ideal remote existence, complete with month long vacations and all that, and had come back to the office pre-COVID because it just was not healthy for me to spend so much of the average week alone.

I think the other part of the dynamic is that with no one around employees become inboxes that you can dump infinite work into. Some of the finer grained feedback like the grimace when an overworked person is assigned yet another task is lost.

My hope for the future is we rediscover the value of human contact, just any human contact, but that feels unlikely.

AniseAbyss• 6 years ago

I don't miss commuting. Aside from the stress and the smell its also expensive! A public transport subscription costs thousands of euro per year.

pbhjpbhj• 6 years ago

For me, being present but not available with my family is some kind of hell, like the end of Interstellar looking at your family after you've gone - ever present but out of reach. But I've been suffering from the emotional fallout of going back to work full-time after having a family already - this just rubs it in extra deep.

summitsummit• 6 years ago

I miss feeling like a part of something larger than myself

hoping your job is fill that hole for you is begging to be abused. this is how tesla and other major "be a part of something bigger!" marketing allows for them to pay little

jordwest• 6 years ago

You can have it both ways.

I wrote about this when I worked full-time remote a few years back [1]. It's a very different scenario when you think of it as working anywhere instead of working from home. I think post-COVID we're going to see a huge boom in coworking spaces with much better facilities, and that will provide the missing social elements of the office.

[1] https://west.io/blog/working-remotely-vs-working-alone/

jasonv• 6 years ago

Not me.. I’m exactly the opposite. Happy to WFH forever, and I’m in senior management at a financial services company.

Seems we each have to make our stands with every article on this. But I’m not sure any of them are saying anything different within the body of this reporting. Go back to the office if you want, but I hope businesses can adjust to a mix of office arrangements, and WFH arrangements.

rlonn• 6 years ago

You say you're more productive but are you producing the right things?

It's easy to note when you suddenly get more uninterrupted time for work, and also to note how that translates into e.g. more code produced.

But does it improve the bottom line in the longer run? I.e. is it good for business? I think the jury may still be out on this one.

Working remotely means less efficient communication with coworkers, and that might in the longer run result in people getting less efficient because they can't synch very well, so end up working on the wrong things, or prioritising badly. Then it's also the psychological effect of missing out on social interaction that may reduce happiness and, in the end, efficiency/productivity.

It's an interesting experiment for sure. Covid may be to remote working what Tesla is to the electrification of personal transport.

Viliam12343• 6 years ago

You say you're more productive but are you producing the right things?

This is often a problem even when people are spending the day in the office. It is not obvious that working from home makes this problem worse.

Sometimes you get an information on Monday, a contradictory one on Tuesday, and a completely different "final" version on Wednesday. Suppose you missed the version from Tuesday because you were not in the office. How much harm actually happened?

Generally, when a resource is abundant, it becomes cheaper to abuse it. In the age of corporate-agile, managers often don't even bother to think their decisions to the end, because hey, we can still change the plan tomorrow. Nobody bothers to write meeting minutes, because there is another meeting soon anyway. Not sure if it's just my bubble, but even having a flipchart with notes is becoming a rarity.

I would enjoy the return of the culture where we thought whether we are producing the right thing before I already had half of the code written.

fierarul• 6 years ago

This is the best and worst thing that could happen for remote work. Some discovered something good for them.

But many will forever associate work from home with this pandemic house arrest and will get back among people as soon as it's safe plus swear off the whole idea.

finaliteration• 6 years ago

This is my concern, as well. We have some people at my place of work saying, “Working from home has been great! I’ve never been more effective and happy at my job.”, and then we have a smaller but more vocal group that says, “I hate working from home and it’s incredibly stressful. I want to go back ASAP.” I worry that the second group will “win” and the pendulum will swing the other way because of the latter group’s experience.

What we should really be aiming for is flexibility. Some people can be in the office, some can stay remote.

Personally, I dislike being in an office every day, but even more than that I hate the commute. If my manager forces me back, I’ll probably quit and look for a job/company that plans to allow remote work permanently. I’m trying to remain hopeful, however.

ghaff• 6 years ago

and then we have a smaller but more vocal group that says, “I hate working from home and it’s incredibly stressful. I want to go back ASAP.”

I hope they can get their way as soon as possible--so long as they understand that a lot of their teammates won't want to join them and that the new normal will be less co-located generally.

I have zero problem with people who want work-life separation, so long as they don't insist on others to do the same based on their preferences.

(I was remote before anyway so it doesn't really affect me. What's missing now is meeting co-workers on trips.)

ezoe• 6 years ago

Unfortunately, most people are not get used to the efficient communication by text chat. That's why we are using the inefficient time-wasting communication by video chat. If we were to truly increase the productivity with the remote work, we must abandon the video chat. But most companies relies heavily on face-to-face communication so it doesn't happen in our generation.

bvaldivielso• 6 years ago

What makes you say that face-to-face never is the most efficient way of communication? I would be quite surprised if text-chat was ever proven to be the only kind of communication needed in the context of work.

esperent2• 6 years ago

I have worked from home as a freelancer for several years now. A big part of my communication with clients involves politely deflecting constant requests to video chat. It usually goes like this:

Client: explains problem that I understand perfectly in two sentences.

Client: "but maybe we can jump on a quick chat so I can explain this"

Then I have to come up with some way to deflect the request because I know the "quick" chat will take at least an hour (maybe 30 minutes actually chatting, but one hour productivity cost).

If it's a quick fix, I usually just don't reply for a few hours and then send them the fix. If they are persistent, I bill them for the time spent chatting. But I'd rather spend that time being productive.

On the other hand, I feel it's important to have one longish video chat with a client when I start a new project, because that gives me a connection to the person.

Supermancho• 6 years ago

most people are not get used to the efficient communication by text chat.

Text is a terrible way to communicate compared to video (or better, in person). The ability to ad-hoc illustrate (picture worth a thousand words), rephrase/clarify, and use context-specific language necessitates some sort of face to face interaction.

Try dating using only text messages, it's pointless. Humans require most than literal communication to coordinate in groups.

rspeele• 6 years ago

I'm less productive working from home. I'm confident some people are more productive working from home. There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

Have we just stumbled on the biggest productivity increase of the century?

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