The Great WFH Experiment
What we’ve seen in week 1.
It’s been a couple of weeks now since we’ve all found ourselves out of our normal offices and suddenly thrown into working from home. As an innovation company, naturally, we want to learn as much as we can from this new world of work — so we kicked off the Great Work from Home Experiment, to capture as much insight as possible. We’re curious about what we can learn from the new way of working and the impact it will have on our behaviours and habits.
We’re all human and are all different, so the way we’ll approach it, cope with it and come through the other side will be different. We’re running the study over 6 weeks and we’re asking participants to tell us what they like, what they don’t like, what motivates them, how they work on their own and collaborate with a wider team and we’re pulling together to stay sane and support each other. We had over 100 people volunteer to join, and it’s a real diverse bunch; from policemen to HR managers, an equal number of introverts vs extroverts and a good mix of family positions.
The experiment has been running for just over a week now and while we’re not into the deep analysis phase, we’ve already found some interesting insights, here’s our top 5:
Our moods tend to improve as the week goes on. Most people start the week feeling tense and then towards the end this improves and moves into a more hopeful, reflective and gratified mood.
We get into gear. Working from home is helping track a higher productivity level. This could be because we’re getting into the swing of working from home, or maybe the end of the week brings deadlines so we’re just more efficient at getting everything done.
Comprehension vs Apprehension. Everything’s better together right? Maybe the collectiveness of the whole workforce transitioning to working from home gave each of us individual comfort — that’s the case for half of our participants. The other half aren’t so sure and even feel apprehensive about the move.
“The world exists through my laptop”. Despite being well set up and having all the tech at our fingertips, we’re most anxious about our increased screen time. This is coupled with the fact that most of us feel overwhelmed by the constant stream of notifications from friends, family, and colleagues. Most people only have one laptop, which makes the separation between work and play even harder to strike.
‘It’s overwhelming now that in-person meetings are replaced by screen time video meetings because it adds to the overall amount of “tech time” in a day and using tech for leisure time (eg. movies, calling loved ones as mentioned above) feels bad and tiring.” WFHer, Product Manager
Adapting to this change is the biggest challenge with WFH. This includes adopting or adapting to new tech, creating a makeshift office, or just spending more time with your partner, children or flatmates than ever before. One WFHer suggested ‘treat your housemate like a colleague’ and use a shared calendar, minimizing disruption (and annoyance).
It was great to see that after just one week, our WFHers had already put a tonne of stuff into place to help them manage in this new world — from ordering wifi boosters, chairs and other appropriate equipment to agreeing a schedule and ways of working for a whole family, and setting strict working hours and having a dedicated workroom that you can shut the door on. One thing’s for sure, we’re adapting quickly and finding the new normal — and that’s different for everyone.
We’re excited to see what other rich insights the experiment will bring — stay tuned by following Fluxx on LinkedIn or WTF Newsletter, and we’ll update you as we go. To join the Great Work from Home Experiment get in touch at hello@fluxx.uk.com.
Jassi is a consultant at an innovation company, Fluxx. If you’d like to see ways we’ve helped businesses download our latest book ‘What we get wrong about People’ or subscribe to our newsletter.
Find out more about Fluxx’s live ‘Big Work from Home Experiment’, or get started by filling out this short questionnaire. For more stories check out The Great Transport Hack or What does a New Era of Retail actually mean? Anything else? Get in touch — jassi@fluxx.uk.com.
