{"id":757999,"date":"2021-07-07T08:55:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-07T15:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/?p=757999"},"modified":"2021-08-03T17:38:51","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T00:38:51","slug":"new-future-of-work-staying-productive-and-happy-when-our-office-is-our-home-with-jaime-teevan-and-sonia-jaffe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/podcast\/new-future-of-work-staying-productive-and-happy-when-our-office-is-our-home-with-jaime-teevan-and-sonia-jaffe\/","title":{"rendered":"New Future of Work: Staying productive and happy when our office is our home with Jaime Teevan and Sonia Jaffe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"577\" src=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-1024x577.jpg\" alt=\"Two women side by side, Sonia Jaffe on the left and Jaime Teevan on the right, in black and white smile and look forward. Teevan is holding a cell phone.\" class=\"wp-image-758548\" srcset=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-1024x577.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-2048x1153.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-16x9.jpg 16w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-1066x600.jpg 1066w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-655x368.jpg 655w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-343x193.jpg 343w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-640x360.jpg 640w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-960x540.jpg 960w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-1280x720.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"episode-127-july-7-2021\">Episode 127 | July 7, 2021<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new questions that needed immediate answers surfaced as companies and their employees quickly adjusted to significantly different working conditions.&nbsp;Teams from&nbsp;across&nbsp;the Microsoft organizational chart pooled their unique expertise together under&nbsp;<em>The New Future of Work<\/em>&nbsp;initiative.&nbsp;The results have informed product features designed to better support remote work and are now being used to help companies, including Microsoft, usher their workforces into a future of hybrid work.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this episode of&nbsp;<em>The New Future of Work<\/em>&nbsp;series of the podcast, Chief Scientist&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/people\/teevan\/\">Jaime Teevan<\/a>&nbsp;and Senior Research Economist&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/people\/sojaffe\/\">Sonia Jaffe<\/a> delve into the \u201cPersonal Productivity and Well-Being\u201d chapter of the report, beginning with why measuring productivity isn\u2019t as easy as just observing output or counting hours worked. They also explore how people already working from home helped them better understand how people adjusted to remote work, the diversity in experiences among workers, and how we can be better coworkers to our remote colleagues whether we\u2019re working from home or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Learn more:<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Project page and report:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/project\/the-new-future-of-work\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The New Future of Work<\/a>&nbsp;<\/li><li>Future of Work&nbsp;digital magazine:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/worklab\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">WorkLab<\/a>&nbsp;<\/li><li>Guide:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/resilience\/hybrid-work-solutions?rtc=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hybrid Work: A Guide for Business Leaders<\/a>&nbsp;<\/li><li>Guide:&nbsp;<a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/clouddamcdnprodep.azureedge.net\/gdc\/gdcNr7VEG\/original\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hybrid Workplace Flexibility Guide<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>&nbsp;<\/li><li>Annual&nbsp;report: <a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/worklab\/work-trend-index\">The Work Trend Index<\/a><\/li><li>Publication: <a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/publication\/a-tale-of-two-cities-software-developers-working-from-home-during-the-covid-19-pandemic\/\">A Tale of Two Cities: Software Developers Working from Home During the COVID-19 Pandemic<\/a><\/li><li>Publication: <a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/publication\/how-work-from-home-affects-collaboration-a-large-scale-study-of-information-workers-in-a-natural-experiment-during-covid-19\/\">How Work From Home Affects Collaboration: A Large-Scale Study of Information Workers in a Natural Experiment During COVID-19<\/a><\/li><li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/note.microsoft.com\/ww-registration-microsoft-research-newsletter-s.html?wt.mc_id=S-webpage_podcast\">Microsoft Research Newsletter<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>: Sign up to receive the latest news from Microsoft&nbsp;Research<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Subscribe to the <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/podcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Microsoft Research Podcast<\/strong><\/a><strong>:<\/strong>&nbsp;<br><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/microsoft-research-a-podcast\/id1318021537?mt=2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">iTunes<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> | <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/subscribebyemail.com\/www.blubrry.com\/feeds\/microsoftresearch.xml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Email<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> | <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/subscribeonandroid.com\/www.blubrry.com\/feeds\/microsoftresearch.xml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Android<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> | <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/6XNI6rGsLFYlWJxLItw4S0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Spotify<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> | <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.blubrry.com\/feeds\/microsoftresearch.xml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">RSS feed<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>\u202f<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator aligncenter\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Editor\u2019s note: The privacy and protection of data is of the utmost importance to Microsoft.&nbsp;Research under The New Future of Work initiative, which includes qualitative and quantitative data, is conducted in accordance with the&nbsp;<\/em><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/privacy.microsoft.com\/en-us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>rigorous privacy standards developed by the company<\/em><span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"transcript\">Transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>SONIA JAFFE<\/em><\/strong><strong><em> (TEASER): <\/em><\/strong><em>W<\/em><em>e see these kind of benefits and challenges people face, and they\u2019re so linked.<strong> <\/strong>People talk about valuing the flexibility, like, it\u2019s great that my computer comes up with my little break timer, or I need to give my wrists a break, and so I go and I change the laundry, and that\u2019s super convenient, but that makes it harder to create that separation.<strong> <\/strong>It\u2019s because we lost the physical and temporal boundaries, but it\u2019s also because we want to take advantage of that flexibility. You could just say, &#8220;OK, I\u2019m going to pretend that I\u2019m in an office and I\u2019m going to be here 9:00 to 5:00 and pretend I\u2019m not at home.&#8221;<strong> <\/strong>But then you would lose much of the benefits of working\u2014or at least some of the benefits\u2014of working from home, and so people\u2019s reluctance to do that then leads to these challenges and this blurring of work and life boundaries.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[MUSIC PLAYS UNDER DIALOGUE]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAIME TEEVAN: <\/strong>Welcome to the Microsoft Research Podcast, where you get a front-row seat to conversations on cutting-edge technology. I\u2019m Jaime Teevan, and I\u2019ll be your host as we investigate how work practices have changed because of COVID-19 and what it means for creating a new and better future of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[MUSIC ENDS]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019ve been diving into the research contained in <em>The New Future of Work<\/em> technical report that Microsoft released, and the next chapter that we\u2019re going to talk about is titled \u201cPersonal Productivity and Well-Being,\u201d and it focuses on the impact that COVID-19 has had on how information workers\u2019 individual work practices have changed this year due to us all having to work remotely.<strong> <\/strong>We\u2019re joined by Sonia Jaffe, who\u2014along with Jenna Butler, Mary Czerwinski, Shamsi Iqbal, Kate Nowak, Emily Peloquin, and Longqi Yang\u2014synthesized the research about this coming from Microsoft and elsewhere.<strong> <\/strong>Sonia is a senior research economist in the Microsoft Office of the Chief Economist, and she\u2019s worked on projects in health economics, industrial organization, and platform markets.<strong> <\/strong>Over the past year, she\u2019s collaborated on, uh, various different projects looking at the effect of working from home and COVID-19 on work practices through both surveys <em>and<\/em> telemetry data.<strong> <\/strong>Sonia is also one of the editors with Brent Hecht and me of <em>The New Future of Work<\/em> report.<strong> <\/strong>Welcome, Sonia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>SONIA JAFFE:<\/strong> Thanks, Jaime.<strong> <\/strong>Glad to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> Sonia, what inspired you to get involved in this research initiative?<strong> <\/strong>You\u2019ve been a really active collaborator.<strong> <\/strong>What brought you into it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> So prior to COVID-19, I actually had been having some conversations with people in Microsoft\u2019s HR department\u2014human resources department\u2014who were thinking about the future of work and seeing kind of broad trends that before the pandemic were moving much more slowly but starting to move towards, uh, remote work and thinking about what a pilot in that space would look like.<strong> <\/strong>And then COVID came along and did the pilot for us, or much more than a pilot, and so those conversations naturally led to me connecting with you and others who were doing research in this space and trying to make the best of this big uncontrolled experiment that was dropped on us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> You know, one of the hardest things about studying productivity is figuring out how to measure it.<strong> <\/strong>What can you say about the different ways that information worker productivity might be measured?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, absolutely.<strong> <\/strong>From the perspective of an economist, when you talk about productivity, you first want to think about the fact that productivity is output per unit of something, either unit of, uh, input, unit of labor, or unit of time.<strong> <\/strong>And so in order to measure productivity, you first have to measure output, which for information workers is its own challenge.<strong> <\/strong>For specific types of workers, you can sometimes measure\u2014like the like place that we\u2019ve seen the most research historically is things like call centers, where you have tickets and\u2014and calls fielded.<strong> <\/strong>For developers, there\u2019s various measures of coding activity, of pull requests and collaborations.<strong> <\/strong>But these are all very, uh, imperfect proxies for the thing that we actually care about.<strong> <\/strong>And we don\u2019t have a great kind of technical or telemetry-based measure of output.<strong> <\/strong>Often people find that asking people how productive they feel is actually one of the better measures when it\u2019s available.<strong> <\/strong>And one of the projects that I worked on over the past year with people in MSR who focus on developer productivity was a survey that we sent out to software developers and program managers at Microsoft asking them how their productivity had changed, uh, during the pandemic.<strong> <\/strong>And one of my contributions to that survey\u2014because I don\u2019t have the specific expertise in software developer productivity\u2014was asking not just how productivity had changed but how output and hours had changed so that we could try and start getting into this difference between how much are you producing and kind of how effectively or efficiently are you producing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> So that\u2019s interesting.<strong> <\/strong>What about things like the number of meetings people attend or the emails they send?<strong> <\/strong>Are those useful, or are they &#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, I think those are absolutely important for kind of understanding work practices.<strong> <\/strong>And I have another paper that we\u2019ve been working on using telemetry data from Microsoft employees to look at what changes we\u2019ve seen in things like time spent in meetings, email and IM activity, collaboration networks, and those have the distinct advantage of being much more broadly available, right?<strong> <\/strong>We sent out a survey, you get maybe 20 percent response rate, and you work with what you have, whereas with telemetry, we can look at a much broader population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> Using these various different attempts to kind of approximate productivity, what are some of the key takeaways that we\u2019ve seen about people\u2019s productivity as they\u2019ve moved remote?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, so the short-term measures of developer activity, so these kind of pull request\u2013type measures, have been either flat or slightly increasing.<strong> <\/strong>I think a lot of people would have expected kind of these to fall off a cliff of like you\u2019re not seeing the people you\u2019re working with\u2014all your work practices have been interrupted\u2014and we did not see that.<strong> <\/strong>So those measures were kind of constant, maybe slightly up.<strong> <\/strong>That said, that\u2019s the output aspect of it. Another thing we\u2019re seeing across a whole bunch of different studies is evidence of increasing work hours.<strong> <\/strong>And this is also hard to measure in terms of using telemetry-based measures.<strong> <\/strong>We kind of can see like when people first start either having meetings or responding to emails in the day and then when they stop, but I think one of the patterns that a lot of people observed was, with people working at home, more interspersing of work and life.<strong> <\/strong>And so if I take a longer lunch break or someone stops work for an hour to help their kids with school or wants to go for a walk that they maybe wouldn\u2019t have done in the office, all those things\u2014which are, as information workers, one of the luxuries of this type of job, is it often has that flexibility\u2014but that suggests that even if the kind of workday has expanded, that may not be fully reflected in people actually working that much more.<strong> <\/strong>And so we also struggle with measuring the kind of\u2014the denominator of productivity of the amount of time that people [are] working.<strong> <\/strong>But the survey evidence when we ask people are, like, are you working more, less, or the same and also studies from prior to COVID that looked more specifically at working time do find that remote workers tend to work more, and it\u2019s a combination of not having to commute and some amount of that time getting reallocated to working.<strong> <\/strong>Sometimes it\u2019s a desire to kind of show dedication or show your face in a metaphorical sense. Because you can\u2019t be in the office, like, 9:00 to 5:00 showing that you\u2019re committed to your job,<strong> <\/strong>you demonstrate that commitment through longer working hours.<strong> <\/strong>And sometimes it\u2019s just kind of a blurring of boundaries of if you\u2019re\u2014you have your computer in your living room or your bedroom and an email comes in, it\u2019s very easy to respond, and that\u2019s definitely one thing that has come up in a lot of research studies of the struggles people have with kind of establishing and following boundaries between their work and home lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> I certainly feel like I\u2019m working more. <strong>[LAUGHS]<\/strong><strong> <\/strong>Pre-COVID, when I used to work from home, I would sometimes just sit in bed and take calls from there or do email from there.<strong> <\/strong>Post-COVID, I sat in bed still and realized that that was way too much of a blurring of the boundary <strong>[LAUGHS]<\/strong> between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, and, I mean, I think that\u2014you mention COVID.<strong> <\/strong>I think that\u2019s another super important aspect of it, is that at least initially, some amount of this additional work hours we saw was not actually about remote work or work from home, but about the fact that there was a pandemic and many of us were in lockdown.<strong> <\/strong>And so we didn\u2019t have plans to meet friends for dinner or plans to go do this in the evening and\u2014or couldn\u2019t go to the gym.<strong> <\/strong>And so it was much easier to just kind of keep working.<strong> <\/strong>And that is one of the many respects in which the research struggles, and we\u2019ve been working to try and separate out the effect of work from home from the effect of the pandemic, which if you\u2019re a manager concerned about what your employees are doing day to day, maybe you don\u2019t need to separate those out.<strong> <\/strong>But if you\u2019re trying to think about the future\u2014and hopefully soon we will be in a post-pandemic world\u2014and wanting to understand what remote work or work from home is gonna to look like, then separating out those two effects is super important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> Yeah, and so that\u2019s an area where I know you have a lot of expertise.<strong> <\/strong>Can you tell us a little bit about how we can tease apart the impact of COVID from the impact of remote work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, and it\u2019s definitely hard because, uh, looking over the past year, we don\u2019t have people who are working from home <em>not<\/em> in a pandemic.<strong> <\/strong>And so what one of the studies that I\u2019ve worked on does is trying to use data on people who were working from home <em>pre<\/em>-pandemic and think about, \u201cOK, so they\u2019d already done the work-from-home transition,\u201d and so if we look at how things changed for them from, say, February of 2020 to April, May of 2020, that\u2019s kind of the effect of the pandemic; the people who are already working from home, the major change for them was the pandemic.<strong> <\/strong>And so that\u2019s kind of our baseline.<strong> <\/strong>And then we compare those to the people who, in addition to being affected by the pandemic, also switched to working from home.<strong> <\/strong>And so if the two groups are sufficiently comparable and the effects are kind of separable, or linear, then we can use that as our control group and difference out the effect of the pandemic in order to get at the effect of remote work specifically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> And do we see different results when we do that compared to when we don\u2019t?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, so, I mean, one of the, uh, findings that <em>a lot<\/em> of studies have seen has been increases in meeting time, and we replicate that in our data just kind of observationally.<strong> <\/strong>But when we do this, this difference in difference of comparing to the control group, we actually find that people who were already working remotely saw a larger increase in meetings than those who were transitioning to remote work.<strong> <\/strong>And so it was something else about the pandemic, and Microsoft certainly had a lot of new business needs, uh, arising around that, and all those other things happening at that same time, the lengthening of the work days, that\u2019s what seemed to be driving most of that increase in meetings and not remote work itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> That\u2019s interesting.<strong> <\/strong>So regardless of the actual source, whether it\u2019s COVID or remote work, we clearly are working longer hours now, and, you know, the kind of canonical complaint that I think of, uh, for information work post-COVID is meeting fatigue, and I know one study showed that the share of IMs sent between 6:00 PM and midnight increased by 52 percent, and that people who previously didn\u2019t work weekends are, you know, working three times the amount of work that they used to do on weekends.<strong> <\/strong>What can you tell us about people\u2019s ability to keep our work from seeping into everything?<strong> <\/strong>Like has there been an impact on our well-being, on sort of some of these other things that are sort of related to productivity but not necessarily directly part of that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, I mean, I think those boundaries is definitely one of the biggest challenges that we\u2019ve seen, um, in a bunch of different studies.<strong> <\/strong>I mean commuting provided a very clear both temporal and physical boundary for a lot of people, and a lot of people have struggled to replace that boundary.<strong> <\/strong>And I think it\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s in some ways, I don\u2019t know if aggravated is the right word, but we see these kind of benefits and challenges people face, and they\u2019re so linked.<strong> <\/strong>So people talk about valuing the flexibility, like, it\u2019s great that my computer comes up with my little break timer, or if I need to give my wrists a break, and so I go and I change the laundry, and that\u2019s super convenient, but that makes it harder to create that separation.<strong> <\/strong>And so I think it\u2019s part of why it\u2019s so hard\u2014it\u2019s because we lost the physical and temporal boundaries, but it\u2019s also because we want to take advantage of that flexibility.<strong> <\/strong>And in the surveys that we did, those same people who said that they valued the flexibility from work from home, many of them were also saying they were struggling with boundaries.<strong> <\/strong>The link between the benefit and the challenge, I think, is part of what makes it hard to\u2014you could just say, \u201cOK, I\u2019m going to pretend that I\u2019m in an office, and I\u2019m going to be here 9:00 to 5:00 and pretend I\u2019m not at home.\u201d<strong> <\/strong>But then you would lose much of the benefits of working\u2014or at least some of the benefits\u2014of working from home, and so people\u2019s reluctance to do that then leads to these challenges and this blurring of work and life boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN: <\/strong>Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was super struck by the challenges of those transitions. You know, I mentioned how I moved from working in bed to setting up a separate workspace because I actually wanted to have an explicit transition.<strong> <\/strong>I also put a little bell on the door to my workspace so that when I open it, I don\u2019t know, that ding sort of means you\u2019re going to work or you\u2019re ending work.<strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[MUSIC BREAK]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN: <\/strong>Did any of the research findings in this chapter resonate with you <em>in particular<\/em>?<strong> <\/strong>Did you actually change your work practices in any way based on stuff you learned?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> Um, I mean, some of them definitely, uh, resonated.<strong> <\/strong>Um, so another finding in the chapter is people struggling with social isolation, and again, it\u2019s a combination of remote work and the pandemic, right?<strong> <\/strong>I would be a lot more OK with not seeing my coworkers day to day if I could, like, see my friends in the evening, but I think seeing that come out again and again in the research really highlighted that struggle that I was having and caused me to make more kind of explicit efforts to just have weekly catch-ups with my people on my team who I\u2019m not actively working on a project with, but just to check in and hear what they\u2019re working on and try and have, or re-create, a semblance of those hallway conversations that we would have in the office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN: <\/strong>I feel like that was something I did immediately after the pandemic, was, like, I did happy hours with\u2014I was like, \u201cOoh, this is cool.<strong> <\/strong>I\u2019m hanging out with friends who don\u2019t live near me who I never would have seen.<strong> <\/strong>I\u2019m seeing my aunts and uncles,\u201d and then, I don\u2019t know, keeping that up for a whole year, it\u2019s like I gave up or something. <strong>[LAUGHS]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, I mean, I\u2014my screen fatigue is definitely real. After spending all day at the computer, like, I want to see my friends, but I also don\u2019t really want to sit at the computer for\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<strong>TEEVAN: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE: <\/strong>\u2014more time after dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> Right. Um, do you have a sense of, like, how people\u2019s personal productivity has <em>evolved<\/em> over the course of this past year?<strong> <\/strong>Like, you know, are there phases or things that happened early in the spring of 2020, when we were just figuring things out, compared to, um, you know, in the fall, compared to now, when we\u2019re starting to look towards hybrid work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> I mean, so\u2014so one of the broad findings is just that there\u2019s a huge amount of individual heterogeneity in how people are affected by remote work.<strong> <\/strong>Um, so I hesitate a little bit to make kind of big, uh, statements about patterns.<strong> <\/strong>Um, I will say that in the spring, I think there were a lot of concerns showing up in surveys and the different studies around burnout and kind of the unsustainability of the work practices that some people had developed.<strong> <\/strong>And I think that both on an organizational level to some extent and an individual level, people kind of made some changes to try and make it sustainable, realizing that we weren\u2019t headed back to the office any time soon and we needed to make this work.<strong> <\/strong>And so I think that that got at least somewhat better over the summer and fall.<strong> <\/strong>Um, I do think that the year mark has been\u2014I mean, this is not really from the research and more just from my conversations with people\u2014but I think that the year mark has been difficult.<strong> <\/strong>And so maybe we\u2019re seeing some more of that again.<strong> <\/strong>I haven\u2019t seen a lot of, uh, panel studies or recurring surveys.<strong> <\/strong>Uh, the Work Trend Index that Microsoft put out in March did kind of show that there wasn\u2019t, in terms of IMs and\u2014and meeting times, we haven\u2019t reverted to baseline.<strong> <\/strong>It went up, and if\u2014if anything, like, it\u2019s no longer skyrocketing, but if anything, it\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s continuing to kind of creep up over\u2014over the rest of the year.<strong> <\/strong>So definitely last spring was a time of more change.<strong> <\/strong>But in terms of those work practices, I wouldn\u2019t say we\u2019ve seen any kind of\u2014of reversion to the pre-pandemic patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> So you mentioned the sort of heterogeneity in people\u2019s experiences to remote work. And I actually do personalized search research, and so I think about the individual variation that there is and that people experience, so much so that I actually kind of roll my eyes at it like, you know, \u201cYes, there\u2019s always individual variation.\u201d<strong> <\/strong>And yet, it seems with COVID and our experience of how, uh, work has changed, it seems like that\u2019s <em>deeply<\/em> true, and that, you know, the\u2014the variation in how different populations have been impacted by remote work is really significant.<strong> <\/strong>And I don\u2019t know if you can speak a little to sort of some of the different ways that people have been impacted or the different experiences that are showing up in the data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> Yeah, I mean, you asked about productivity earlier, and one of the earliest surveys we did of people asking how their productivity had changed, a third said that they were less productive than they\u2019d been in the office and a third said they were <em>more<\/em> productive.<strong> <\/strong>So really diametrically opposed effects on productivity.<strong> <\/strong>And I think the same is true for a lot of different dimensions.<strong> <\/strong>Um, distractions is another one that\u2014that people have looked at.<strong> <\/strong>And for a lot of people, I think particularly those who don\u2019t live alone or have kids at home, um, don\u2019t have a private office space, there\u2019s more distractions when they\u2019re working at home during COVID.<strong> <\/strong>But we also had a lot of people who are telling us they had fewer distractions, right?<strong> <\/strong>If they were in some kind of open office space or even if they had an office where colleagues would frequently drop by to ask them questions; that doesn\u2019t happen when you\u2019re working at home.<strong> <\/strong>So I think those are certainly two big axes where people can just have really opposite experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> Do you have any recommendations for people based on the findings in this chapter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JAFFE:<\/strong> I mean, I think we talked about kind of the challenges around isolation and the desire to kind of be intentional and\u2014and explicit about reaching out to people and\u2014and maintaining connections with coworkers. Um,<strong> <\/strong>I think that it can also be really helpful to have conversations with coworkers about communication preferences.<strong> <\/strong>Um, I think that people sometimes get a little overwhelmed with the IMs and the emails and all the different apps and that really just being explicit about what types of communication you want to have via different media or, like, \u201cIt\u2019s OK to send email after hours, but please don\u2019t IM me.\u201d<strong> <\/strong>Or, \u201cIf your status is \u2018do not disturb,\u2019 does that mean I shouldn\u2019t IM you at all, or it\u2019s OK to IM you, just don\u2019t expect a response?\u201d<strong> <\/strong>Really, just having those conversations, I think, can make the process work better for a lot of people and be less stressful.<strong> <\/strong><s><\/s><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>TEEVAN:<\/strong> Thank you, Sonia, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in.\u202fWe hope you\u2019ll continue to join us as we explore the new future of work.\u202fYou can learn a lot more about the research that we discussed today at <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/aka.ms\/newfutureofwork\">aka.ms\/newfutureofwork<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. Also, be sure to subscribe for new episodes wherever you listen to your favorite shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this episode of The New Future of Work series of the podcast, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and Senior Research Economist Sonia Jaffe delve into the \u201cPersonal Productivity and Well-Being\u201d chapter of the report, beginning with why measuring productivity isn\u2019t as easy as just observing output or counting hours worked. They also explore how people already working from home helped them better understand how people adjusted to remote work, the diversity in experiences among workers, and how we can be better coworkers to our remote colleagues whether we\u2019re working from home or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39507,"featured_media":758548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/id\/78975403\/","msr-podcast-episode":"127","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Jaime Teevan","user_id":"33975"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Sonia Jaffe","user_id":"37664"}],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[240054],"tags":[],"research-area":[13556,13548,13554,13555,13559],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[243990],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[243996],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-757999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-msr-podcast","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-research-area-economics","msr-research-area-human-computer-interaction","msr-research-area-search-information-retrieval","msr-research-area-social-sciences","msr-locale-en_us","msr-post-option-podcast-featured","msr-promo-type-podcast"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/id\/78975403\/","podcast_episode":"127","msr_research_lab":[],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[144942,643845],"related-projects":[717493],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Jaime Teevan","user_id":33975,"display_name":"Jaime Teevan","author_link":"<a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/people\/teevan\/\" aria-label=\"Visit the profile page for Jaime Teevan\">Jaime Teevan<\/a>","is_active":false,"last_first":"Teevan, Jaime","people_section":0,"alias":"teevan"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Sonia Jaffe","user_id":37664,"display_name":"Sonia Jaffe","author_link":"<a href=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/people\/sojaffe\/\" aria-label=\"Visit the profile page for Sonia Jaffe\">Sonia Jaffe<\/a>","is_active":false,"last_first":"Jaffe, Sonia","people_section":0,"alias":"sojaffe"}],"msr_type":"Post","featured_image_thumbnail":"<img width=\"960\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Sonia_Jaime_1400x788_No-logos-960x540.jpg\" class=\"img-object-cover\" alt=\"Two women side by side, Sonia Jaffe on the left and Jaime Teevan on the right, in black and white smile and look forward. 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