With the nature of work transforming rapidly under the global pandemic, organizations and employees alike are settling in to the new normalities of their work / life setup.
As time passes and people begin to look toward the future of work, business routines and everyday workflow processes that may have been novel six months ago are now the norm.
Caption: The hybrid work model, where some employees work from the office and others work from home, is more common than ever.
Using trial and error, companies and their workers across the enterprise are determining best practices for meetings and digital communication in order to drive business and innovation forward.
The Economist recently highlighted a brand-new study from the Harvard Business School entitled “Collaboration During Coronavirus: the Impact of COVID-19 on the Nature of Work,” where researchers conducted the first large scale analysis of how meetings and digital communication patterns changed throughout the early stage of the pandemic across the globe.
By selecting 16 Metropolitan Statistical Areas around the world from Zurich to San Francisco, researchers compiled metadata starting eight weeks prior to the first government mandated lockdown (March 8, 2020 in Milan) and ending eight weeks after the last (March 25, 2020 in Washington, DC).
Here’s the data reflecting what changed around meetings and email communication - from eight weeks before the first lockdown to eight weeks after the last.
RESEARCH ON MEETING TRENDS
The variables
- Average Meeting Duration
- Average Meeting Size
- Total Number of Meetings
The findings post-lockdown
There are more meetings.
The total count of meetings per person per day increased by 12.9%, with +0.8 meetings per person per day.
Organized meetings are happening more often, with more dispersed teams. Whether in-room or remote, employees are meeting more frequently to improve their communication and workflows when working from anywhere.
The number of people at each meeting is higher.
The average number of attendees per meeting increased by 13.5%, with +2.1 attendees per meeting.
Miscommunication can be a huge pain point for teams and often face-to-face, real-time collaboration can reduce wasted time spent on emails and chat apps.
Meetings are shorter.
The average duration of meetings decreased by 20.1%, proving meetings to be 12.1 minutes quicker.
With the hybrid work model, not everyone is in the office at all times, which creates new perspectives on time management. Employees are held accountable for managing their time on their own, which has caused a collective mindset shift to self-evaluate individual employee work and efficiency. After findings that suggest people experience fatigue from lengthy video conference calls, no one wants to spend hours upon hours video conferencing.
Overall, people spend less time in meetings.
The total number of hours employees spent in meetings fell by 11.5%, or -18.6 minutes per person per day.
"Organizations post-lockdown period appeared to have more frequent meetings with more attendees, and shorter meetings, compared to the prior period. The net effect of these changes was to significantly reduce the total number of hours employees spend in meetings during the post-lockdown period."
Source: “How has the pandemic changed working lives?” The Economist, August 20, 2020.
TRENDS IN DIGITAL COMMUNICATION
The variables
- Total number of distinct, internal, and external emails
- The average number of recipients per email
The findings post-lockdown
Within organizations, the number of daily internal emails has increased.
Internal emails within companies increased 5.2%, with 1.4 additional emails sent per person per day.
Without being able to physically be together, teams have to rely on technology platforms to communicate. With more challenges arising across industries - including supply chain problems and dispersed team process issues, more communication is necessary to reduce distance disparity.
There is a higher average of people on each email sent.
The average number of recipients included on emails sent in the post-lockdown period increased by 2.9%, with +0.25 recipients added on each email sent.
When teams are working from anywhere - working from home, social distancing in the office, etc... - research found that more people are included on sent emails. Supporting the idea that more communication results in more successful collaboration, when additional team members are looped in to a project workflow or even organizational updates on processes during COVID-19, the less room there is for miscommunication.
To cope with the changes in meetings and digital communication, the nature of work has shifted to a Work From Anywhere mindset. Technology and collaboration solutions have been vital tools to connect employees by supporting trends like quicker, more efficient meetings and an open working dialogue of digital communication between employees - regardless of their location.
Learn more about T1V’s Work From Anywhere solutions by attending an upcoming webinar.