Almost half of remote workers report decrease in productivity

Nearly half of those who work from home have reported a decrease in productivity, according to new research from online professional network Blind.

"The many changes imposed by the pandemic are acting as another challenge to the 9-to-5 workday model, which was already under threat before the pandemic," the company says.

"Remote working, relatively uncommon before the pandemic, has gone mainstream. Before COVID-19 roughly 5% of Americans worked from home. By May, the figure had risen to 62%," it says.

On Blind, an intel professional asked, How did WFH affect your productivity at work? Of the 2016 responses, 48% said their productivity was decreasing.

Of those, Square professionals reported the highest level of decreased productivity, at 73%, while Adobe was a close second, at 67%.

In a stark contrast, 67% of Bloomberg professionals say working from home increased their productivity, while 70% of Twitter professionals also said working from home increased their productivity, the research showed.

According to the research, a Google professional responded, "I never really cared for team building and getting to know my colleagues. All through my life Ive had friends outside of tech and never really fully connected with the technical people I worked with for some reason. My personality and demeanor is probably better suited for non-tech, but I enjoy the work I do, so working from home has allowed me to mostly concentrate on the work and ignore the social aspect I never cared for."

While an Amazon professional shared, "It's hard to say. My productivity went down but not only from WFH. The social aspect of work took a big nose dive which makes it less engaging and less energetic. But that doesn't need work from the office, regular in person get togethers would fix that. I can imagine one day every sprint where everyone gets together for some social events and workshop meetings while doing all actual work from home."

And finally, a VMware professional shared, "Lack of whiteboarding has been a big hindrance. Collaboration tools really suck."

"Working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year has presented a wide variety of challenges. from coping with childcare during school closures to managing work-life balance - because sometimes, doesn't it feel like instead of working from home, we're all just living at work?," Blind says.

"As we embark on a new year, we expect employee sentiment regarding remote work to continue to evolve."