Remote Work: More Meetings + More Emails = More Working Hours

According to recent study by researchers at Harvard Business School that analysed anonymous data, acquired from an information-technology services provider, covering more than 3m people in 16 cities in America, Europe and the Middle East:

More but Shorter Meetings

  1. Employees have been attending more meetings (increased by 13%) but shorter meetings (by about 20% or 12 mins) by video conference, rather than in person— with Europeans keener to shorten the meetings than Americans.
  2. The number of people in the average meeting has risen too, by 13.5%, perhaps because video conferences, unlike office-bound ones, are not constrained by space.

Longer Working Hours

  1. Working hours have expanded to soak up the extra minutes from the lack of work commute and more. On average, people have clocked up an extra 48.5 minutes a day—more than the average commuting time in America or Europe.
  2. This is largely because of a rise of 8% in the number of emails sent after normal business hours. Internal emailing during normal hours has risen too, along with the average number of recipients, presumably as a substitute for talking face to face

Reference: The Economist, “How has the pandemic changed working lives?” August 20th, 2020 https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/08/20/how-has-the-pandemic-changed-working-lives

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