What science is teaching us about the future of work

My job as Chief Scientist?is to use science to inform how?Microsoft?thinks about the future of work.?To be able to contribute research during this unprecedented time means a lot?to me.?For instance,?our?research on transition time?led to?Virtual Commute?in Microsoft Teams,?and?brain studies?informed?Together Mode, a new view in Teams that makes?meetings less taxing.???

I’ve?spent the?past?year and a half working?with researchers across the company?toward a clear objective:?Use?research to understand how the pandemic is changing?the way we work and?share?what we learn to?guide?innovation?for?our?customers.??

We?recently?published an in-depth?research paper?in Nature Human?Behaviour?that’s?getting lots of attention.?And some people are asking,?“Does the research mean remote work?is?bad and we should all go back to the office?”?

Based on?decades of past research?and?dozens of studies?we’ve?conducted on remote and hybrid work?over?the past 18 months, the answer is: No. Remote and hybrid work have both benefits and challenges. And if we take a narrow view of only the challenges or only the benefits, we risk missing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that’s in front of us—to create a new and better future of work.?

Rather than seeing this research as a prophetic statement of?“what will be,”?we should view it as?input?to the?discussion?of?the challenges and opportunities ahead of us.?Based on our?ongoing?research,?Microsoft’s view?is that?the future of work will be hybrid?and?defined by increased flexibility in how, when,?and where?people?work.?And we are using research to?ensure?this?future will be?as bright as possible?for?everyone.?

With that in mind,?I thought it would be useful?to?summarize our?findings and?provide?some?perspective on what they mean. ?

THE FINDINGS

The article uses a statistical approach to understand the impact that remote work has on collaboration patterns when controlling for the impact of the pandemic. Many recent studies have described changes in behavior since March 2020 by looking at temporal patterns, and while that sort of correlational inference has value, it is hard to infer causality.

Part of what makes this article unique is that we use the fact that some workers were remote before the pandemic to tease out the impact of the shift to remote work—separate from what happened because the shift was made in the middle of a global pandemic.

The study compared the anonymized collaboration patterns of two groups: Microsoft employees who worked remotely before (and during) the pandemic and employees who shifted to working remotely during the pandemic – a total of about 61,000 people. Because the collaboration activity of the two groups moved in parallel prior to the pandemic, we could subtract out any difference in behavior between the two groups to isolate the effects of remote work.

And here’s what the study has taught us:

1. Remote work caused fewer scheduled meetings, more asynchronous collaboration.

While many of us have spent more time in virtual meetings during the pandemic, after removing the effects of the pandemic using causal inference, our findings show that firm-wide remote work actually caused a 5% decrease in total meeting time. It also caused a change in the mode of communication used. Despite the decrease in meetings overall, for example, it increased unscheduled meeting time, which is something I’ve experienced myself. I never used to just jump on a video call before, but now, as people lean into more spontaneous interactions, I do it all the time. It also made people engage in a lot more asynchronous communication, like IMs and emails.

On the surface, this seems great. I mean, who wants more meetings?! Asynchronous communication is flexible and makes it easier to collaborate across different time zones and working hours. But prior literature suggests synchronous collaboration is where we align and do meaning making. If we can use technology and adapt work practices to bring more meaning making to our asynchronous collaboration, we can get the best of both worlds. Teams are starting to do this by, for example, turning on meeting transcription and recording when they meet.?

Meeting recording and transcription in Microsoft Teams?

2. Collaboration shifted from weak ties to strong ties.??

Consistent with?correlational trends?in?previous?research,?another thing?the study showed?is that while?firm-wide remote work increased intra-group connections (also called?strong ties),?the?share of time with cross-group connections (weak ties) dropped by about 25%.?Teams essentially adapted to do more loosely coupled work while remote.?But because?weak ties?bring people new information, it’s going to be important to use proactive measures to ensure people continue to get diverse exposure and build broad networks.??

For example,?knowledge sharing systems?can use AI to help connect people with colleagues and information relevant to a project they are working on. Managers can encourage employees to build relationships with those outside their immediate network and share learnings with other teams. Employees can also do short stints working on other teams so they can make connections and bring novel ideas back to their core working group.?

Microsoft Viva Topics connects knowledge and expertise across an organization

3. Remote work?made the?workday?span?longer.??

By looking at the time between the first and last communication of the day, including IMs, emails,?and meetings, we found that remote work increased the length of the workday by 10%.?This?doesn’t?necessarily mean the total number of hours worked increased, just that?the start and end time of the workday changed. It?could be?that?as?people?embrace more flexible work schedules, they?are?weaving?non-work activity into?their?workday.??

More flexibility during the day is?great.?People can avoid long commutes?by?staggering their schedules to avoid traffic, and they can?design their days to include other priorities,?take time to step?outside between meetings, or even take a nap.??

But we?have to?create boundaries so?people?don’t work every hour of the day just because they can. For example,?calendaring technology?can?make it?easier?to communicate work hours outside the 9-5, and managers can set norms around the times of day responses are expected.?Features?that?mute notifications?during quiet hours can?then?help avoid one person’s flexible working hours becoming another person’s after-hours messaging.??

Redesigned?Working hours and RSVP in Microsoft Outlook?

4. Individual collaboration patterns impacted the team.

We also looked at the impact of an individual moving remote versus the impact of their colleagues moving remote. While the changes we observed were strongest when everyone made the change, individual decisions clearly impacted collaboration patterns. This highlights the interplay between how one person works with how groups work together. The other day, for example, I went into the office but none of my team was there, so I still spent the whole day interacting with people remotely.

At Microsoft we’re addressing this by asking teams to create team agreements, or a set of?team norms?that define how they’d like to work together in our hybrid workplace.?Individuals?can share how they work best, and teams can?establish meeting-free days?or plan regular?in-person team meetings.?On my team, for example, we’ve now chosen to come into the office to be together on Wednesdays.

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THE FUTURE

These findings offer a rich opportunity to reimagine remote and hybrid work in a way that will make work better regardless of where we are. While there remain many unknowns, the role of research is to help make sense of ambiguity, identify challenges, and articulate possible solutions. By building on the best science available, we are learning how to craft a new future of work that proactively addresses the known challenges while also supporting the flexibility, connection, and innovation that will define the next era of work.?