As companies debate the impact of large-scale remote work, a new study of over 61,000 Microsoft employees found that working from home caused workers to become more siloed in how they communicate, engage in fewer real-time conversations, and spend fewer hours in meetings.
The study, published recently in the journal Nature Human Behaviour and coauthored by Berkeley Haas assistant professor David Holtz, made use of data from before and after Microsoft imposed a company-wide work-from-home mandate in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings suggest that a full-time remote workforce may have a harder time acquiring and sharing new information—which could have implications for productivity and innovation among information workers down the road.
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