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Microsoft Businesses IT

The Pandemic Made Our Workweeks Longer (axios.com) 48

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The average American's workweek has gotten 10% longer during the pandemic, according to a new Microsoft study published in Nature Human Behaviour. From a report: These longer hours are a key part of the pandemic-induced crisis of burnout at U.S. firms -- and workers are quitting in droves. Microsoft calculated the length of the workday based on the time between Teams users' first email, message or work call and their last. So the longer workweeks don't necessarily mean we're working more, the study says. People may be spending more time logged on because they are distracted with other obligations while working from home and so are less productive. This contributes to burnout because the lines between work life and home life are increasingly blurred, experts say. Further reading: Study of 61,000 Microsoft Employees Finds Remote Work Threatened Productivity and Innovation.
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The Pandemic Made Our Workweeks Longer More

The Pandemic Made Our Workweeks Longer

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  • That's not what the study found (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday September 20, 2021 @03:09PM (#61814781)
    I read it. The study found that there is less collaboration between business units when everyone is work from home. That is a solvable problem.

    But yeah, I'm not surprised work weeks got longer. A downturned economy is a great time to put some pressure on.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by Locutus ( 9039 )
      or also can be stated as there is less collaboration between business units when everyone is working from home using Microsoft Teams. Zoom users might be collaborating just fine.

      But I have to wonder if Microsoft is funding these "research" articles to feed their own search engine with information, BING. For thirty something years Microsoft funded research has been about marketing both for attacking other vendors and promoting their own flavor of MS dogfood of the month.

      LoB

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )
        If this study is anything like Microsoft's "MyAnalytics" and "Cortana" spam, then it's useless.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Locutus ( 9039 )
          Useless? Don't ever underestimate the skills of the Microsoft marketing department. They have been pedaling 3rd rate software for decades and the naive public has been drinking it up. The late great Douglas Adams once said:
          "The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all his customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who by peddling second-hand, second-rate technology, led them all into it in the first place."

          "http://www.gksoft.c

    • I'd rather be answering emails and writing code than sitting in traffic.

      So WFH is a win for me even if I do 10% more work.

      • I'd rather be answering emails and writing code than sitting in traffic.

        So WFH is a win for me even if I do 10% more work.

        This.

        I spend 2 - 3 hours a day in traffic. I have always told my employers I would GIVE them that time and work for free if I can do it at home. That's 10+ hours a week, free! No takers. They want their reports sitting at their desks in the office.

        Three hours of traffic today just so I can attend meetings virtually. I haven't even left my cubicle. Dumb. It was looking like the lockdown had solved these problems but it all went back to normal. Fast.

        But I don't complain. Just happy to have a job agai

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I haven't even left my cubicle.

          User name checks out!

      • Live closer to work? Walkable communities are good communities. We need more communities in the US that are actual towns, not exurbs.
      • It's a win for me as well. I generally start work at least fifteen minutes late, and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour. I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

    • Incidentally, a dubiously-measured 10% longer workweek would be, at best, a very tiny contributor to burnout if the workweek was previously a reasonable 40 hours or less. And you know what else contributes to burnout? Having an unrewarding job full of tedium, poor benefits, low pay, and no pension. Those would be much greater contributors to burnout than an extra 10% of time sending emails from home.

      This feels like another attempt to convince everyone who is working from home that they hate it and should

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      The part discussed here is that people paying tension to work for longer time than if they were at work. Working in a building, If I go direct to wrk and directly home, I will be gone around 9 hours. I might check email and other things for another hour or rarely two. When I was at home, I seldom put more than 4 or 5 hours direct attention into work during the day, then a few hours later on not looked like, according to the metric used here, 15 hour day. But it was less focused. I was less willing to do non
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Mine went down (Score:4, Insightful)

    by spudnic ( 32107 ) on Monday September 20, 2021 @03:14PM (#61814791)

    My workweek hours went down. Without all of the constant interruptions, I can get my work done in about three hours a day and spend the rest of the time automating the rest of my job and working on cool stuff.

  • Or is it that our responses to the diseases have gotten worse? Or have we gotten stupider? Or is this story confused by averaging in the long hours that healthcare workers are putting in since this mess began?

    The main thing that's bothering me is that it didn't have to be this way. We really did start off knowing a heck of a lot more about Covid-19 than we knew about the Spanish Flu. (Now I'm thinking about the related news that Covid-19 is about to pass the Spanish Flu deaths in America.) I've read a coupl

  • Time between first email and last. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Monday September 20, 2021 @03:16PM (#61814805)

    The measurement method (from the article) is the time between first email accessed and last, using Mircosoft Teams.

    That means it's exclusively ignoring:

    Travel Time.

    Time spent in the middle of the day outside paid work tasks.

    Anyone not using Microsoft Teams.

    Or any of a large number of context issues like someone called at 9pm to look at a notification about server capacity or something, and sent an email to the team to let them know it was a false alarm after a 1 minute remote check ... then this logic would say they worked a 14 hour day.

    I'd categorize this data as one of an ENORMOUS number of similar ones set up to categorize remote work as a nebulous bad thing, using selective data, and ignoring who knows what other data to produce the desired illusion.

    Ryan Fenton

    • The measurement method (from the article) is the time between first email accessed and last, using Mircosoft Teams.

      That means it's exclusively ignoring:

      Travel Time.

      Time spent in the middle of the day outside paid work tasks.

      Anyone not using Microsoft Teams.

      Travel time is not considered work time.
      They probably subtract the federally mandated 1 hour of break time.
      Enough people use Teams to provide a statistically significant sample.

      Or any of a large number of context issues like someone called at 9pm to look at a notification about server capacity or something, and sent an email to the team to let them know it was a false alarm after a 1 minute remote check ... then this logic would say they worked a 14 hour day.

      They are almost certainly only measuring during the "normal" work hours. The information being used indicates that they are gathering this information from Exchange servers and Teams servers which would give them a means of determining what "normal" work hours are for a given company.

      • Travel time is not considered work time.

        The company may not consider it a part of my paid "work time" but I sure do. I have changed jobs because the commute removed 1/2 hour off of my daily commute. You would be crazy to not consider the time it takes to get to work as a part of your "business" day. If you didn't why wouldn't you live 3-4 hours away from your bay area commute where you can actually afford housing.

      • They are almost certainly only measuring during the "normal" work hours.

        No, they aren't---at least, you can't assume that. They explained their methodology, which is comparing the first and last communications during that day.

        I don't know if you've ever conducted or published any kind of work, but you don't leave things to the imagination. If they were constraining their analysis to a particular time of day, that detail would be spelled out.

        That said, I believe their metric is flawed, and it will overestimate the time spent working.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      The measurement method (from the article) is the time between first email accessed and last, using Microsoft Teams. That means it's exclusively ignoring: ... Anyone not using Microsoft Teams.

      I'd categorize this data as one of an ENORMOUS number of similar ones set up to categorize remote work as a nebulous bad thing, using selective data, and ignoring who knows what other data to produce the desired illusion.

      Ryan Fenton

      I think you can take your tinfoil hat off. The study very clearly states that it's about Microsoft employees only. It makes no pretense of being about everyone in other companies. It explains that it analyzes the entire dataset other than senior management and privacy-sensitive work areas; there's no selection or ignoring of data really even possible.

      Is there a background motivation to the authors? Are they part of some shadowy cabal seeking to categorize remote work as a nebulous bad thing? If the authors

  • My weeks didn't get longer, but I worked more (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday September 20, 2021 @03:38PM (#61814855)

    For me I would say the amount of work I did week to week is about what I normally do.

    What did happen though, was I took a lot less time off, travelled way less... so the end effect was that month to month, I worked a lot more than I normally would have.

    Lesson to me is that, during times like this if I can't travel as much, I really need to take time off to just step away from work (even if only for a day or two at a time).

    • Lesson to me is that, during times like this if I can't travel as much, I really need to take time off to just step away from work (even if only for a day or two at a time).

      When my vacation time bucket began hitting the use-it-or-lose-it limit, I began taking every Friday off. Did it for a couple of months. I highly recommend it.

      (Aside: This is part of why so-called "unlimited" vacation time is a scam.)

      • This is part of why so-called "unlimited" vacation time is a scam

        It's not a scam at all, it's great... you just have to make sure you use it.

        Just because "real" vacation time forces you to use it or lose it, does not make it better at all. In fact it's far worse because there have been some times at other companies I was on the edge of losing some vacation but because of work schedules it simply was not possible to take all the time off I needed at that point...

        With unlimited vacation you can bet I am offs

  • A history lesson. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DaveV1.0 ( 203135 ) on Monday September 20, 2021 @03:47PM (#61814889) Journal

    In the 1970s and 1980s, people would work roughly from 0900 to 1700, an 8 hour day, with two quarter hour breaks and a half hour break for lunch. If one was was hourly, one was generally required to clock out but salaried workers got paid for that time. That was one of the biggest perks of being salaried. Salaried workers were generally expected to work odd hours on occasion, things like on-call.

    In the 2000s, workers started working a 9 hour day, 0800 to 1700/0900 to 1800 with the same breaks. But, management claimed that it was really just 8 hours because of the federally mandated breaks. Hourly worker pay went up by 5 hours a day. Salaried workers pay stayed the same but they worked an extra hour a day. this was considered an increase in productivity.

    I'm in the process of quitting my job because, in addition to the 9 hour work day, I am expected to show up for meetings that can be anytime between 0700 and 1800 because people work from home and my company has decided that it can schedule all hands meetings during lunch. We had 4 people on my team but now we have 3 so we are on call one week in every 3. We have on-call and an off-shore team. The off-shore team is not allowed to work on production systems so when we are on call, we end up being called at various times of the night during the week and working from midnight Saturday until 0600 Sunday.

    The U.S. work day has been getting longer and longer over the last 50 years in the name of productivity and employees are the ones paying the price in their personal lives and their health. Management doesn't care as long as productivity goes up and they can pay themselves higher salaries and bigger bonuses.

    • odd how people in unions when down at the same time.

      Management doesn't have an union pushing back to stop stuff like that.

      • You mean the unions that are led by people who don't work in the industries and take a portion of one's pay for working in the industry and then those same non-workering union leaders do things like the UAW which had in it's contracts:

        Junior people work the front of the assembly line.
        Senior people can't do the work of junior people.
        If sales are slow and the company is going to lay off assembly workers, junior people in the plant will be laid off first.

        This led to the company having to choose between laying off junior workers and having to pay the senior workers to stand around OR idling the entire plant. Guess what management ended up doing? Moving jobs offshore and to non-union state.

        Or the unions that required electric

        • Or the unions that required electricians to change light bulbs instead of janitors.

          I got bitched at by union electricians about that a few times. Once I was in a factory installing a new set of hardware/software updates for an industrial laser marker, and the union guy came up to tell me "you're not allowed to work on that - it has to be a union guy". I calmly told him that the customer had not signed for the hardware, so it still belonged to me. Also, I was neither a union member nor an employee of the

        • Modern labor agreements avoid that problem entirely. The smart ones, anyway.

          It's quite simple, really. There is a separate senior position that employees must rate for (combination of seniority and a short test).

          The company decides how many senior/junior positions it needs, and layoffs happen by seniority within each position. If there are new senior positions, internal junior employees get first crack at them before they're posted publicly.

          One place has rules that allow the least-senior employees to step b

          • Modern labor agreements avoid that problem entirely. The smart ones, anyway.

            No, they don't. The no-worker union heads and negotiators don't think beyond their own paycheck and so have no problem causing long term issues as long as things look good in the short term.

            It's quite simple, really. There is a separate senior position that employees must rate for (combination of seniority and a short test).

            The company decides how many senior/junior positions it needs, and layoffs happen by seniority within each position.

            Those positions are "assembly line worker". The workers with the lowest seniority work the head of the line and are the ones laid off first. So far, nothing you have said contradicts what I said.

            If there are new senior positions, internal junior employees get first crack at them before they're posted publicly.

            That has nothing to do with what I said so is irrelevant.

            One place has rules that allow the least-senior employees to step back into a junior position to protect their jobs; I don't know if this is typical.

            Most places have rules against senior employees doing junior position

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      In the 1970s and 1980s, people would work roughly from 0900 to 1700, an 8 hour day, with two quarter hour breaks and a half hour break for lunch. If one was was hourly, one was generally required to clock out but salaried workers got paid for that time. That was one of the biggest perks of being salaried. Salaried workers were generally expected to work odd hours on occasion, things like on-call.

      I think you may be wording generalities too absolutely.
      I started my professional career in 1980. Since then I

  • From what I've seen at work, work emails are pretty broadly distributed over 24 hours. There are fewer between midnight and 5am. Its not at all unusual for people to check and send email before they go to bed or first thing in the morning - but that doesn't really mark the start of a work day.
  • First Off. Read the original Study. I received the following conclusions: 1. All other forms of office communication remained consistent but IMs shot up dramatically 2. People's communication networks became more static and more silo-ed. 3 People's work day increased somewhat. My conclusion is that IM is a less efficient means of communication. But that could be because we are bad at it. I think if done correctly getting people to stop think and formulate a written question that receives a writt

  • I'd MUCH rather work 10% longer at home if it means not spending even more time and money having to drive to/from the office for no good reason every day, and to sit in a windowless farm where it's harder to concentrate because of all the incessant noise.

    If nothing else good at all comes from this epidemic, the fact that it has forced managers out of the Dickensian mentality that occupied seats in the office is a measure of productivity, and to finally accept that developers can work from home is, in my opi

  • Nah, y'all just love the hell out of working 50 and 60 hour weeks and more.

    Suckers.

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