The COVID-19 pandemic changed the lives of people around the world at home and at work, with effects lasting beyond the lockdowns. Along with Microsoft’s New Future of Work Report 2022, this research looks at the impact of remote work on the personal productivity and well-being of Microsoft’s own employees, the effects of remote work on cross-group collaboration, how working from home affects work relationships, how the pandemic has affected farmers and farmworkers and exploring social talk and remote collegiality in video conferencing.

Microsoft New Future of Work Report 2022

The pandemic’s remote work experiment has caused work to change faster than it has in a generation. As people return to work and experiment with hybrid work, Microsoft and other researchers have been investigating evolving hybrid work practices and developing technologies to address new challenges and opportunities. This report summarizes recent research related to hybrid work, highlights themes that have emerged, and encourages knowledge sharing. The purpose of the report is to help the community build on what has been learned through the pandemic and create a new future of work that is meaningful, productive, and equitable.

The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

Before the pandemic, no more than 5% of Americans worked from home more than three days per week. To understand the impacts of working remotely, Microsoft examined its employees’ work patterns before and after its company-wide work-from-home mandate in March 2020. It found that remote work caused the time employees spent collaborating across groups to drop by about 25%. This suggests that companies will need to proactively help workers acquire and share new information across groups, so productivity and innovation are not impacted.

The impacts of working from home on work relationships

After over a year of the COVID-19 pandemic and enforced remote work, teams across Microsoft conducted over 50 studies to understand how the nature of work itself has changed since early 2020. Microsoft’s annual Work Trend Index is part of this initiative and includes an analysis of trillions of productivity signals — think emails, meetings, chats, and posts — across Microsoft and LinkedIn’s user base. It also includes a survey of more than 30,000 people in 31 countries. The research showed employees feeling isolated, and teams becoming much more siloed. No gatherings or chance encounters meant connections outside one’s team shrank, with fewer interactions around innovative ideas and opportunities to build social capital. This research suggests helpful approaches for workers and leaders.

Meeting (the) Pandemic: Videoconferencing Fatigue and Evolving Tensions of Sociality in Video Meetings During COVID-19

When COVID-19 led to mandatory working from home, significant blind spots in supporting the sociality of working life were revealed in video meetings. This study of a global technology company’s employees’ experiences of all-remote video meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic explored the tensions expressed by employees around effectiveness and sociality, as well as their strategies to cope with these tensions. We argue that videoconferencing fatigue arose partly due to work practices and technologies designed with assumptions of steady states and taken-for-granted balances between task and social dimensions of work relationships. Our analysis offers a social lens on videoconferencing fatigue and suggests the need to reconceptualize ideas around designing technologies and practices to enable both effectiveness and sociality in the context of video meetings.

Farmer and farm worker illnesses and deaths from COVID-19 and impacts on agricultural output

Farmers and farm workers are critical to the secure supply of food, yet this population is potentially at high risk to acquire COVID-19. This study estimated the prevalence of COVID-19 among U.S. farmers and farmworkers in the United States by coupling farm worker numbers relative to the general population with data on confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. It found the COVID-19 incidence rate is significantly higher in counties with more agricultural workers. Reduced labor availability from COVID-19 is estimated to reduce U.S. agricultural output by about $309 million.

Managing Tasks Across the Work-Life Boundary: Opportunities, Challenges, and Directions

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a shift in how people manage their work and personal tasks. This study examines and probes the practices of for managing task-related information across the work-life boundary during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study surveyed 150 information workers in Summer 2019 (i.e., pre-pandemic) and 70 from the same organization in Summer 2020 (i.e., mid-pandemic). Across both survey cohorts, cross-boundary task management practices are characterized, exploring the central role that physical and digital tools play in managing task-related information that arises at inopportune times. The study concludes by discussing the opportunities and challenges for future productivity tools that aid people in managing task-related information across their personal and work contexts.