The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an immediate shift towards working from home (WFH) in early 2020. Employees started to use their home spaces such as kitchens, bedrooms and offices to work remotely and comply with social distancing measures (Davis et al. 2021). There is evidence that employees like WFH, making it challenging for them to return to the office (Bloom et al. 2021). And in terms of productivity, although some employers saw lower productivity from remote working (Bartik et al. 2020; Morikawa 2021), most employers have seen productivity from WFH rise overall (Davis et al. 2021).
In this column, we show that the efficiency of videocalls is more complex than first appears since it differs by demographic characteristics and by the level of technical support that is provided. To answer how efficient is it to work from home, we use the October 2021 update of our survey (Taneja et al. 2021) of over 2,000 UK working adults, and draw a comparison between online meetings and in-person meetings.
Small teams are more efficient meeting online
Figure 1 shows online meeting efficiency compared to in-person, by team size. We find that online meeting efficiency differs by team size, with a steady decrease in efficiency with increasing meeting size. From talking to employees and firms we hear that small two- to four-person online meetings do not typically require muting and each person is in a large Zoom box. These online meetings save on travel and can be easier for sharing documents, so that on average people find it more efficient to meet online rather than in person with small groups. In reverse for large meetings of 10+ people efficiency is better on average in person. In large meetings online, each person is in a small zoom box so facial expressions can be hard to see, and participants generally have to mute so conversations can be stilted. With so many participants there are also more frequent interruptions, with accidental unmuting, individuals turning on/off cameras, and distracting chat conversations.
Figure 1 Online meeting efficiency compared to in-person, by team size (full main team)
Notes: Data are from a survey of 2,077 UK residents, that Prolific carried out in October 2021 on behalf of the University of Nottingham and Stanford University. We reweighted the sample of respondents to match the Labour Force Survey figures by age, gender, and education.
Demographic characteristics matter
We analyse the efficiency of online meetings versus face-to-face meetings by age in Figure 2. Respondents aged 30-39 and 40-49 have the highest online meeting efficiency boost. Interestingly this is also the group that in our data has the highest preferred number of days to work from home. One explanation for the preference to work from home amongst middle-aged employees is their higher level of young children at home, although it is less obvious it should make them perceive online meetings as relatively more efficient.
Figure 2 Online meeting efficiency compared to in-person, by age groups
Notes: Data are from a survey of 2,077 UK residents, that Prolific carried out in October 2021 on behalf of the University of Nottingham and Stanford University. We reweighted the sample of respondents to match the Labour Force Survey figures by age, gender, and education.
Figure 3 examines online meeting efficiency compared to face-to-face meeting by gender, and we find that men report online meetings are about 5% more efficient on average compared to men. According to Ibarra et al. (2020), providing women the flexible option to work from home will be an ‘equalizer’, as …….
Source: https://voxeu.org/article/comparing-online-person-meetings