Remote working is a ’mixed bag’ for employee wellbeing and productivity

Adapting remote and hybrid work policies to employees' specific work-life situations can result in increased well-being and productivity, but many employees are stuck in an increasing number of low-quality meetings when working remotely, according to a new study. The shift to remote working for many office-based workers at the start of the pandemic initially led to an increase in productivity, especially by reducing commute times, but a new large-scale study has outlined the many ways in which remote working has affected wellbeing and productivity over the past two years, both positively and negatively. One of the big changes for remote workers was the number and quality of meetings. As outlined in a new article in MIT Sloan Management Review , the study from Cambridge Judge Business and School and the Vitality Research Institute, part of the wellness and financial services group Vitality, found that the average number of meetings increased by 7.4% from June 2020 to December 2021. The study, based on more than 1,000 Vitality employees, also found that people in most departments spent more hours in low-quality meetings - defined as meetings in which participants multitask, are double-booked into competing meetings or tasks, or are accompanied by another person with a similar role. "Low-quality meetings often translate into less productivity and high levels of multitasking can increase stress," said study co-author Thomas Roulet from Cambridge Judge Business School. The study, which looked at employees from four Vitality locations in the UK and across all business units, is based on automated data collection using Microsoft Workplace Analytics complemented by weekly surveys.