Working from home impact on business productivity

Working from home might not be so bad for productivity after all.

A new survey from tech workplace advisory firm Valoir reveals that the shift to working from home might only be reducing overall worker productivity by a marginal 1%.

The survey, which polled more than 325 workers from around North America, also showed that about 40% of workers would prefer to work from home in the future rather than return to an office environment.

Interestingly, the survey also found parents to be reporting a smaller drop in productivity compared to workers without children. Parents reported a 2% drop to productivity in the work-from-home environment compared to the 3% drop for workers without kids at home.

Kids are reportedly less of a distraction when working at home than social media, according to a new survey.More

“Parents have a slightly bigger productivity hit of 2% on average, but the folks that really were hit were those who were working alone without anybody else in their house to talk to,” said Valoir CEO Rebecca Wettemann.

Workers surveyed generally reported the negatives of distractions at home being offset by the positive that came with eliminating commute time. On average, workers reported a nearly 10-hour workday, starting at 8:15 a.m. and ending around 6 p.m.

While some workers enjoyed eliminating the workplace distractions, the most common distraction at home has become social media, with workers estimating it eats up about two hours of productivity.

“People are getting a lot of distractions from places that you might not expect, with social media being the biggest distraction folks commented on even for those folks who had kids at home,” Wettemann said.

Despite the reported lack of a drop in productivity, workers still appear worried about job security in the work-from-home environment, according to the survey’s findings.

“When we asked people what they were most concerned about — we didn't say about the work environment but just in general - and more than a third of them said that they were worried about their job and job security which rated far ahead of worried about being sick or worried about a loved one getting ill,” Wettemann said.