Maria Flynn in “Working at Home Had a Positive Effect on Productivity During the Pandemic, Survey Says”

A recent survey indicates that working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic has had a positive effect on people’s productivity—though there are downsides, especially loneliness, according to a May 4 article in USA Today.

The 54 percent of respondents who said they were more productive at home attributed the improvement to factors such as time saved because they didn’t have to commute, a decrease in distractions from coworkers, and less time spent in meetings.

However, 25 percent of the respondents to the survey—which was conducted by YouGov in partnership with USA Today and LinkedIn—said they had been less productive at home, with the main reason being that it takes longer to get answers from coworkers.

Quoted in the article, JFF CEO Maria Flynn observes that workplaces might be forever changed.

“As folks do start to go back to work in offices and resume their commutes, I think individuals are going to be thinking through what parts of this COVID phase of life are they going to want to keep,” Flynn says. “Is it going to make folks reconsider how much time they want to spend commuting or having more flexibility to work from home? It’s going to be changing the mindset for the works as well as the employers.”