Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, about 29 percent of college graduates worked from home at least some of the time. Many Americans were already couch laborers before this all started. In the post-pandemic workplace, nerds may get their revenge. What might emerge is a future in which results-oriented introverts prevail while those who thrive on face-to-face interactions and office politics fumble. Conferences, in-person meetings, and even handshakes might be deemed not worth the risk of infection.
While working remotely confers some mental-health and other benefits, the “job” as we know it might never be the same. Though children will (hopefully) go back to school in the fall, many white-collar workers will be strongly encouraged to work from home at least some of the time over the next year or so. The blurring of work and home lives might not be just a temporary side effect of the pandemic. They were also happier and were less likely to quit their job.ĭerek Thompson: The coronavirus is creating a huge, stressful experiment in working from home In 2015, Bloom published a study that found that Chinese call-center employees who worked from home were 13 percent more productive than employees in a control group, because they took fewer breaks and made more calls per minute.
But often, working from home can be very productive. “Working from home is not very productive right now,” Bloom told me. (Another challenge is his two oldest kids’ in-house bagpipe lessons, spurred by Bloom’s Scottish wife.) It’s just one of the myriad challenges that Bloom says makes working from home less than ideal at the moment. This is the interruption that the Stanford University economist Nick Bloom hears several times a day as his 4-year-old daughter runs into his office and summons him to play by using his nickname. Editor’s Note: This article is part of “ Uncharted,” a series about the world we’re leaving behind, and the one being remade by the pandemic.
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