The Impact of Work from Home (WFH) on Workload and Productivity in Terms of Different Tasks and Occupations

Most people have to work from home (WFH) due to stay-at-home orders in response to COVID-19 pandemic. The shifting of work environment from regular office to home has caused changes in workload and productivity, which may lead to reduced salaries for employees, economic loss of the companies, and impacts on the national economy. Thus, it is urgent to explore the impacts of WFH on workload and productivity of different employees. A nationwide survey was distributed to collect data about the workload and productivity of regular work and WFH considering different types of tasks and occupations. The findings indicate that WFH causes an increase in workload for all participants by three hours per week and a loss of productivity for 38% participants. Moreover, the technical issues, such as less efficiency of online communication technologies, are the core reasons for the decrease in productivity. For different occupations, employees who regularly work in an office or workstation show a higher workload because their major work can be done at home but require more time due to the technical issues, while on-site occupations and many researchers have less workload because their major work cannot be done at home, such as onsite work and experiments. Then, the workload and complexity of tasks lead to the differences in productivity. In the future, the key problems are how to address the technical issues and strengthen the human-computer interaction to improve the productivity, and support on-site work and lab-based tasks to improve the feasibility of WFH.