6.1 Survey 1: Challenges Experienced Working from Home
The survey respondents shared a wide range of challenges and many respondents indicated they experienced multiple challenges working from home. In this section, we discuss challenges that were frequently mentioned in Survey 1 or later emerged as significant in the productivity analysis based on Survey 2.
Connectivity. Of all the challenges, problems with connectivity was the most frequent challenge shared. This included access to remote desktops, special access workstations, and internet bandwidth. Respondents mentioned they experienced slow speeds due to a high number of users on their internet connections:
Periodic internet disruption due to wi-fi router and modem resetting due to 2 VPN connections for my wife & I, and our kids being online for school work. (P1013)
Internet connectivity speed went beyond one’s home internet and became a challenge when a colleague’s internet connection was not as resilient.
Remote desktop connectivity issues. Coworkers with spotty internet quality are hard to meet with. (P691)
Respondents also described workarounds they used to rectify their connectivity issues:
The VPN/Remote tools are not great, crashes often. I especially dont want to Intune my personal device, so working remotely have been challenging with the redmondts gateway down more than 50% of the time, and the WVD features crashing/disconnecting/not allowing correct alt-tab etc. (P37)
Although many attempted to find a resolution, at times the connectivity issues they experienced felt out of their control.
Family, Children, Pets. One of the most frequent challenges respondents shared concerned proximity to family life. Being physically co-located with family members, housemates, children, or pets encouraged some to change their work habits:
Staying focused, especially with young kids around. Normally I would only work from home for a few hours occasionally after the kids went to bed. That is the only time I currently feel like I can be productive. (P531)
The additional interactions with family have even to be more mindful of supporting family “child care schedules” (267). Respondents also mentioned how there was an implicit expectation of being engaged that often felt at odds with work:
Family in the house means there is also expectations from them to spend time or help around. (P338)
The challenge of being physically present with family but mentally focused on other tasks is an experience that was hard to resolve.
Communication Channels. Another frequent challenge that respondents reported having was with the channels they used to communicate with their team members. One issue with communication channels was the increased friction to get ahold of a colleague versus simply walking over to their office:
The hardest thing has been that standard communications/questions and general collaboration take about 2–3 times as long. Something I could just pop over to someone’s office to ask now requires an online chat or an email and the response is much slower. (P267)
Likewise, for some there was also a higher frequency of using instant messages. This made some participants feel like they should be highly responsive at all times:
I also feel like there is no “down time” away from work. I constantly get emails/messages/asks and sometime I have to respond right away. (P384)
Managing multiple communication channels and the expectation to be very responsive on many of these channels presents an additional layer of interactions that does not adapt to every respondent’s working style.
Work Environment. During the pandemic, most respondents’ work environments were their homes, however, the experience drew comparable challenges with in-office work settings.
Tuning out distractions (which is a similar problem I’ve faced working in Open Spaces), finding the space to set up my home workspace. (P1233)
Many respondents were also not prepared to work from home and improvised their work settings:
I did not own a desk and chair so currently improvising with dining table. Not sure if I want to invest in or have space for expensive home office equipment. I miss having multiple screens but do not have space at home to set up. (P930)
As respondents missed their work office settings, they found themselves under new constraints ranging from financial to square footage when trying to create a comparable home office setting.
Interruptions and Distractions. When software developers are working in the office, interruptions and distractions often come from colleagues stopping by their desks. In a remote work setting, respondents described the advantage and disadvantage of only being available online:
Interruptions and concentration as I can [only] be reached on Teams and by email vs someone walking over for a question. Harder to keep tabs on direct reports. (P333)
However, in this special remote work environment, a new set of distractions emerged from people they live with (e.g., spouse, children, etc.): “Constant distractions especially from kids who are bored at home” (P552) For some respondents, this created a similarly distracting environment they had to manage in open office settings:
Tuning out distractions (which is a similar problem I’ve faced working in Open Spaces), finding the space to set up my home workspace. (P1233)
Healthy Habits. When respondents described challenges with reduced physical activity, they often mentioned their movements between physical meeting locations that no longer happened:“Sitting for a long time is hard on the body. At work, I’m up and around, moving more. At home all meetings are online so I never (hardly) move....” (P72) When respondents did find an opportunity to move, it was either only to the restroom or for more coffee so that they can sit down for longer periods of time:
Since I don’t do my daily bike ride I sometimes feel I just sit the whole day, and only do very few steps to the toilet [and] coffee machine (P867)
The reduction in what participants referred to as healthy habits also affect their work–life routines.
Work–life Balance and Routine. Respondents described their work–life boundaries blurring outside of the typical eight-hour work day, running late into the evenings: “Unless I impose a strict regimen, I feel like I am working for a lot more hours sometimes way into the night - the line between home and work gets far more blurry.” (P104)Respondents also reflected on routines they previously had to distinguish boundaries for that were now lost:
To find my time boundaries. Very easily you can end up working much more hours because you don’t have the signals of “Time to leave the desk”, you don’t have the time to decompress your mind in traffic, for example. You just jump from personal to work tasks (and vice-versa) so fast. (P195)
In summary, the lost transition time and lack of physical movement between work and home removed a boundary they had before.
In the next subsection of our article, we report on the association of these challenge with the Survey 2 respondents’ productivity.
6.2 Survey 2: Challenges and Productivity
From the themes that emerged in Survey 1, we inferred a list of 20 characteristic challenges (C1–C20) that we included in Survey 2. The results are displayed in Table
4. The challenges are sorted and numbered in descending order of frequency.
Frequency and Impact of Challenges. We make the following observations from Table
4 about the prevalence and impact of challenges:
•
The Prevalence column shows the frequency of the challenges. The most frequently reported challenges (C1–C5) were missing social interactions (83%), lack of work–life boundaries (78%), poor ergonomics (70%), less awareness of colleagues work (65%), and less physical activity (65%).
•
The Impact column shows the percentage of participants that indicated a challenge to be a major issue among the participants who experienced it. The challenges most frequently rated as impactful are lack of childcare (58%, C16), poor ergonomics (52%, C3), and less physical activity (51%, C5). The challenges less frequently rated as a major issue are friction with collaboration tools (22%, C14), lack of dining options (24%, C18), and being blocked waiting on others (28%, C16).
Relationships between Challenges and Productivity. The
Delta column of Table
4 shows the difference between the percentage of respondents who reported that their productivity stayed “about the same” or increased (“more productive” or “significantly more productive”) for those who did
not experience the challenge vs. those who did experience the challenge. We make the following observations:
•
We found that all of the challenges were associated with lower productivity. For all but two out of the 20 challenges, the difference was statistically significant.
•
The challenges with the largest reduction in productivity are more distractions and interruptions (–36.5 percentage points, C11), lack of motivation (–33.7, C15), poor home work environment (–32.6, C17), less time to complete work (–31.2, C20), lack of a routine (–25.1, C12), difficulty communicating with colleagues (–21.9, C6), and less awareness of colleagues work (–20.4, C4).
Subgroup analysis. We compared the following subgroups to identify differential characteristics in the survey data.
•
People managers vs. individual contributors. Compared to individual contributors, people managers were more likely to indicate too many meetings (+26.1 percentage points), fewer breaks (+21.1), lack of childcare (+15.2), less time to complete work (+12.8), and poor work life balance (+11.4) as challenges. They were less likely to indicate lack of motivation (–9.3 percentage points), and being blocked waiting on others (–5.2) as challenges.
•
Software engineers vs. program managers. Compared to program managers, software engineers were more likely to indicate connectivity problems (+12.1 percentage points), difficult to find dining options (+8.3), lack of a routine (+7.5), lack of motivation (+7.2), difficult to communicate with colleagues (+6.6), insufficient hardware, monitors or devices (+6.3) as challenges. They were less likely to indicate too many meetings (–26.1 percentage points), fewer breaks (–16.1), less time to complete my work (–9.4), and lack of childcare (–7.4) as challenges.
Lasso Analysis. The previous analysis shows the relationship between individual challenges and change in productivity but does not take into account the presence of multiple challenges and the interaction effects between two challenges, which can be particularly important for productivity. Therefore, we ran a Lasso analysis to see which challenges were most strongly associated with productivity change in a combined model, and to check whether interactions between the challenges matter.
Table
5 shows the marginal effects from the logit analysis for the Lasso-selected variables (details on the method are in Section
3.2). People are substantially less likely to report that their productivity is the same or increased when they say that having
more distractions and interruptions (–40.9%) or
lack of motivation (–26.4%) were major issues;
difficult to communicate with colleagues (–13.1%),
connectivity problems (–11.9%),
missing social interactions (–11.2%),
poor home work environment (–8.0%), and
less awareness of colleagues work (–6.2%) were also associated with a significantly lower probability of reporting unchanged or increased productivity.
The challenge less time spent to complete work was also selected by the Lasso algorithm, though the coefficient is not significant. However, when combined with a lack of childcare, the interaction between both challenges is associated with a substantial and significant lower probability (–34.0%) of reporting unchanged or increased productivity.