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The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers

Nature Human Behaviour volume 6, pages 43–54 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused a rapid shift to full-time remote work for many information workers. Viewing this shift as a natural experiment in which some workers were already working remotely before the pandemic enables us to separate the effects of firm-wide remote work from other pandemic-related confounding factors. Here, we use rich data on the emails, calendars, instant messages, video/audio calls and workweek hours of 61,182 US Microsoft employees over the first six months of 2020 to estimate the causal effects of firm-wide remote work on collaboration and communication. Our results show that firm-wide remote work caused the collaboration network of workers to become more static and siloed, with fewer bridges between disparate parts. Furthermore, there was a decrease in synchronous communication and an increase in asynchronous communication. Together, these effects may make it harder for employees to acquire and share new information across the network.

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Fig. 1: Time trend comparisons.
Fig. 2: Time trends for collaboration networks.
Fig. 3: Effects of firm-wide remote work on collaboration networks.
Fig. 4: Time trends for communication media.
Fig. 5: The effects of firm-wide remote work on the use of communication media.
Fig. 6: The effects of remote work on the use of communication media by manager and individual contributor status and role type.
Fig. 7: Decomposition of the effect of remote work on collaboration networks into ego and collaborator effects.
Fig. 8: Decomposition of the effect of remote work on the use of communication media into ego and collaborator effects.

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Data availability

An anonymized version of the data supporting this study is retained indefinitely for scientific and academic purposes. The data are not publicly available due to employee privacy and other legal restrictions. The data are available from the authors on reasonable request and with permission from Microsoft Corporation.

Code availability

The code supporting this study is retained indefinitely for scientific and academic purposes. The code is not publicly available due to employee privacy and other legal restrictions. The code is available from the authors on reasonable request and with permission from Microsoft Corporation.

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Acknowledgements

This work was a part of Microsoft’s New Future of Work Initiative. We thank D. Eckles for assistance; N. Baym for illuminating discussions regarding social capital; and the attendees of the Berkeley Haas MORS Macro Research Lunch and the organizers and attendees of the NYU Stern Future of Work seminar for their comments and feedback. The authors received no specific funding for this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, USA

    Longqi Yang, Sonia Jaffe, Siddharth Suri, Shilpi Sinha, Jeffrey Weston, Connor Joyce, Neha Shah, Kevin Sherman, Brent Hecht & Jaime Teevan

  2. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    David Holtz

  3. MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Cambridge, MA, USA

    David Holtz

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Contributions

L.Y. analysed the data. L.Y., D.H., S.J. and S. Suri performed the research design, interpretation and writing. S. Sinha, J.W., C.J., N.S. and K.S. provided data access and expertise. B.H. and J.T. advised and sponsored the project.

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Correspondence to Longqi Yang.

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Competing interests

L.Y., S.J., S. Suri, S. Sinha, J.W., C.J., N.S., K.S., B.H. and J.T. are employees of and have a financial interest in Microsoft. D.H. was previously a Microsoft intern. All of the authors are listed as inventors on a pending patent application by Microsoft Corporation (16/942,375) related to this work.

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Peer review information Nature Human Behaviour thanks Nick Bloom, Yvette Blount and Sandy Staples for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Yang, L., Holtz, D., Jaffe, S. et al. The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers. Nat Hum Behav 6, 43–54 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01196-4

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