Productivity Within Organisations (Working From Home vs In Office)

CHRISTINE AN, JAMES DENNIS, SIGOURNEY GOSS, LOUISE BAILEY AND MATT HEALEY

September 30th, 2021

Broad Overview of the Home Office Setup - Pros and Cons

One significant change facilitated by the pandemic has been the transition from the traditional office set-up to the home office. Whilst for some this has been a positive experience, this is not always the case, and is largely dependent on circumstances which are often outside of an employer's control.

For some, working from home has been a largely positive experience. Hours spent commuting to work have been cut down to mere minutes, and many have found the experience to be more relaxing and their productivity levels to have increased. The home office set-up also provides a great opportunity for employees to work from home when feeling mildly unwell, and to take their work on holiday if need be, adding a level of flexibility that both employers and employees should benefit from. However, the home office experience is very much reliant on the home environment in which one is living.

For many people with children, a home office set-up may be more detrimental than beneficial, and limit work productivity, especially if they are required to look after their children whilst working from home. Furthermore, in loud and disruptive households, it can often be difficult for individuals to get work done, creating excessive stress and affecting life both in and outside of work negatively.

In order for the home office to be beneficial for both the employer and employee, it needs to be a mutually agreed upon situation. It cannot be ignored that many people do not have living situations that provide a conducive working environment. Many people also wish to separate their work life from their home life, and having an office space outside of the home greatly assists with this.

Finally, the benefits of working in the same physical space as others, from both a social and productivity perspective cannot be ignored. Whilst Zoom and other online platforms are an excellent way for us all to communicate, they just do not compare to being in the same room as our colleagues. Thus, whilst the home office certainly has benefits, working from home is not suitable for everyone, which is something that should be taken into consideration as we move forward in the pandemic.

Important Effects of In-Person Meetings/Work 

With the recent climate, everyone seems to be in an age of digital communication more than ever. Due to in-person meetings no longer being an option, many companies have adjusted to working from home. Amongst other platforms, this has taken shape predominately through Zoom calls and Microsoft teams – both would not have been practical platforms just a few years ago. However, as essential as virtual meetings are, the technology is not without its shortcomings. Whilst virtual meetings help everyone to stay productive and unified during the pandemic, they have also highlighted exactly what is so effective about in-person meetings.

Firstly, face-to-face meetings allow for clearer communication due to being able to better read facial expressions, body language and inflection. In fact, without non-verbal cues, 60% of people regularly misread tone or message when communicating virtually.[1]

Secondly, in-person meetings tend to be more positive and productive. Steve Jobs stated “creativity comes from spontaneous meetings [and] from random discussions.”[2] In fact, on average, an in-person meetings generates about 13.36 ideas, whereas a virtual meeting generates 10.43.[3] Lower productivity in virtual meetings may be due to people browsing social media to pass time, especially during audio-only conference calls, as admitted by nearly 70% of people.[4]

Lastly, in-person interactions are at the very core of relationship building, both personally and professionally. They create time and space for informal small talk that can feel inappropriate or insincere in a more formal videoconferencing situation, which demonstrates the difference between meeting and connecting. In fact, 85% of people believe face-to-face meetings contribute to stronger and more meaningful business relationships.[5]

In recent years, there has been a lot of reports and statistics on how meetings are a waste of time. However, if an in-person meeting is properly organised, it would result in more benefits than having virtual meetings only.

Effects of Isolation on Young Lawyers/Law Students

Unstainable Expectations

Invariable institutional practices within traditional law firms have continued to lead to a culture that promotes unhealthy work expectations.[6] Despite statements of outstanding productivity and seemingly improved family connection resulting from remote working during COVID-19, the issues of isolation and overwork did not go away. Without a support system regularly and casually engaging with young lawyers and students, these individuals are susceptible to suffering the stress of the legal profession alone.[7]

Despite the legal profession no longer overtly promoting overwork, it is an unstated assumption that young lawyers will work overtime,[8] threatening their mental health and the future productivity of practice groups. By failing to communicate realistic expectations and outline clear boundaries, law students and young lawyers will continue to work themselves to failure for the benefit of others. The pandemic not only provided further insight into the importance of valuing our emotional and mental wellbeing, but also demonstrated how much the legal industry still needs to improve.

Reflective Opinion Re: Females Perspective

The impact of Covid-19 has been especially apparent in the reinforcement of gender roles within the household.[9] The time which was once used to commute to work has been utilised by women in the household to engage in further childcare and household responsibilities, which contributes to the overall burden of responsibilities placed upon women within the domestic home.[10] Through working from home, women report a greater blurring of boundaries between work and family domains, with household responsibilities continuing to fall predominantly on women, especially where they are living with a heterosexual partner in a dual-career home.[11] This blurring may impede women’s abilities to effectively balance work with household responsibilities.

The effects of working from home have the capacity to generate family-work tension, which increases with the presence of young children.[12] This tension seemingly stems from an unequal division of labour when it comes to attending to children, a responsibility that women are often expected to undertake.[13] This interference of work and family, including family tensions, has resulted in women experiencing lower work productivity and job satisfaction than men.

Due to the likelihood of ongoing work-from-home arrangements, this indicates that managers within organisations should take account of the differential effects of these arrangements on male and female employees. Unexpected crises such as Covid-19 has the capacity to generate a gender gap in work outcomes between men and women where previously one did not exist.

How will firms respond in the future?

Certainly, it does not appear as though the modern law firm will be able to return entirely to pre-pandemic structures. Amongst the broader professional workforce, it is estimated that up to 40% of workers are considering leaving their current positions – due largely, many speculate, to growing tired of being forced to adhered to antiquated models of work including strict office hours and imposed commutes.[14]

As the pandemic has shown, being able to work from a remote setup offers a solution to many of these problems. It is likely that law firms will be increasingly accepting and supportive of those employees who wish to incorporate more of this adaptability into their employment agreements, allowing for time split between home and the office.[15] Failure to do so will risk a firm falling behind its competitors in terms of ability to attract high level candidates, given the increased demand within the workforce for flexible work arrangements.[16]

From this, an increased reliance on telecommunications infrastructure will likely bear out in the way firms allocate their budgets. Similarly, other costly services like cloud data storage, server management, and encryption software will all become more integral in an environment in which workers are no longer centralised in the one location.[17]

Finally, law firms will face the difficulties associated with re-capturing the lost ‘human element’ that comes from in-person work/office culture, as well as the associated productivity benefits. Perhaps this is not something that can be artificially created or ‘forced’ through over-management; rather, broader structural changes in areas of need may be what is required to re-energise a workforce and inspire fresh commitment and drive.[18]

[1] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238058.

[2] https://medium.com/@shannonkelly_80469/steve-jobs-on-the-importance-of-face-to-face-meetings-even-in-the-age-of-iphones-a5a4b83621a6.

[3] https://www.greatbusinessschools.org/networking/.

[4] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238058.

[5] https://www.greatbusinessschools.org/networking/.

[6] Margaret Thornton (2016) ‘Squeezing the life out of lawyers: legal practice in the market embrace’, Griffith Law Review, 25:4, 471-491, DOI: 10.1080/10383441.2016.1262230, p. 474. Lexis Nexis 2017 ‘Lawyers & Robots? – Conversations Around The Future Of The Legal Industry’ Viewed 5 February 2021.

[7] Lexis Nexis 2019, ‘The Bellwether Report 2019: Stress In The Legal Profession — Problematic Or Inevitable?’ Viewed 5 February 2021.

[8] Queensland Young Lawyers 2019, ‘Salary and Careers Guide’, Pepper Corn Recruitment, Viewed 5 February 2021. Khan 2013, ‘Study Reveals Increasing Time Demands Placed On Legal Professionals’, Thomson Reuters, Viewed 3 August 2020.

[9] Deirdre Anderson and Clare Kelliher, ‘Enforced remote working and the work-life interface during lockdown’(2020) Gender in management: an international journal, volume 35, issue 7/8, 677, 680

[10] Ibid 682.

[11] Zhiyu Feng and Krishna Savani, ‘Covid-19 created a gender gp in perceived work productivity and job satisfaction: implications for dual-career parents working from home (2020) Gender in Management: An international Journal.

[12] Mirna Safi et al., ‘When life revolves around the home: work and sociability during the lockdown’ (2020), 5.

[13] Ibid, 11.

[14] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-24/the-great-resignation-post-pandemic-work-life-balance/100478866

[15] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/this-big-law-firm-has-permanent-plans-for-remote-working

[16] https://wisetime.com/what-will-remote-working-mean-for-law-firms-in-the-long-term/

[17] https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2021/01/why-legal-technology-is-inevitably-moving-to-the-cloud/

[18] https://wisetime.com/what-will-remote-working-mean-for-law-firms-in-the-long-term/