Working from home during the coronavirus pandemic might have helped employees across India save time that was earlier spent on their commutes, but it’s also meant that they’re working harder than ever before.
Indians have added an extra 32 minutes to their workday while working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, says a study by workplace software company Atlassian. The study, conducted during April and May, shows that employees across the world are starting remote work earlier, and logging off later than they’d been doing while working at office.
While Indians added 32 minutes to their workday, Israeli employees fared even worse, working for an extra 47 minutes per day. South African employees worked an extra 38 minutes, while those from US and Australia also worked an extra 32 minutes, the same as employees in India. Japanese employees added 16 minutes to their workdays, while the South Koreans seemed least affected by the pandemic, working only 7 minutes more than usual.
The study also said that employees across the world were struggling to delineate between work time and personal time, and were prone to working long hours without pausing for a break. “Over half of respondents said it’s harder now to maintain work-life boundaries than before the pandemic, and 23% reported thinking about work during their off-hours more than they used to,” the study noted.
This isn’t the only report which has said that employees are working harder than ever while working from home. A survey conducted last month by anonymous workplace app Blind had said that sixty eight percent of Silicon Valley employees have reported feeling more burnt out while working from home than from office.
These concerns had been raised by several corporate honchos in the months in which work from home had first been instituted. “What does burnout look like? What does mental health look like? What does that connectivity and the community building look like? One of the things I feel is, hey, maybe we are burning some of the social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remote. What’s the measure for that?,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had said all the way back in May. His views were echoed by Netflix’s Reed Hastings, who had called remote work ‘a pure negative.’ “Not being able to get together in person, particularly internationally, is a pure negative. I’ve been super impressed at people’s sacrifices,” he’d said.