"Is it working from home or living at work, or both?"

Working from home during the COVID-19 epidemic results in more meetings and longer working hours, according to a new study.

According to a Bloomberg report on August 4, the study, conducted by researchers from Harvard Business School and New York University, covered more than 21,000 companies in 16 cities in North America, Europe and the Middle East.

The researchers compared the behavior of employees who worked at home for more than eight weeks before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. They found that the workday lasted 48.5 minutes longer, the number of meetings increased by about 13 percent, and people sent an average of 1.4 more emails per day to their colleagues.

According to a Washington Post analysis, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a financial toll on companies, causing a sharp rise in occupational anxiety as many fear they will be laid off.

"People are afraid - the fear around your job and around the economy - I want to make sure [managers] know I'm constantly responding to emails and messages and am always on Slack," Cali Williams Yost, founder of the workplace consultancy Flex Strategy Group, told the Washington Post.

However, according to Jeff Polzer, a professor in the organizational behavior department at Harvard Business School and one of the study's five co-authors, having a longer workday does not necessarily mean people worked more hours within that day as people might have stepped away from their computers or at-home offices to care of their young or elderly relatives. These interruptions can cause work to run into the evening and can have downsides, he said. 

"Is it working from home or living at work, or both?" Polzer said. "As we try to manage our work from home environment, it's very hard to turn off work."

In a few U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago, average working hours have gradually returned to pre-epidemic levels. But in New York City, San Jose, and much of Europe, the longer hours lasted until May.

"People have adjusted their work patterns," said Polzer. 

It wasn't that people's work conditions didn't improve during the two months the study was conducted - the extra meeting time, for example, was getting shorter, according to researchers at Harvard Business School and New York University. Also, the number of emails returned to pre-epidemic activity over time, the paper said.

The results can help companies understand the impact of teleworking on productivity, energy, culture and cost, and determine how to adjust employees' work patterns, Bloomberg reported.

More research is needed to see if people's habits have changed permanently, Polzer said. He does not expect work behavior to return to pre-epidemic levels any time soon. 

"It's not like we're going back to normal times," he said.

(Cover image from CFP)