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Are Companies More Productive in a Pandemic? - The New York Times

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When the online learning company Chegg started working remotely in March, Nathan Schultz, a senior executive, was convinced that productivity would plummet 15 to 20 percent.

Hoping to keep his employees on task, Mr. Schultz tried to recreate the high-touch style of management that had served him well throughout his career. He set up a Slack channel with his two closest deputies, where they began communicating incessantly, even as they spent hours a day in the same Zoom meetings. He began regularly checking in on many of the other members of his team.

“The first reaction was to smother,” he said. “I was trying to replicate the many touch points you have in the office environment.”

It didn’t work. Mr. Schultz himself soon felt burned out, and he could tell that his constant online presence was not very popular with his employees. So he eased off.

Then something surprising started happening. Projects were completed ahead of schedule. Workers volunteered to take on new tasks. Instead of falling into a rut and losing focus in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Chegg employees became more productive.

When office workers around the world went remote four months ago, many managers feared that productivity would collapse. The distractions of home — from child care to television — would wreak havoc on workdays, they thought.

Some individuals have had a harder time than others working from home, but many companies say productivity has remained at pre-pandemic levels, or even gone up. Without long commutes, small talk with colleagues and leisurely coffees in the break room, many workers — especially those who don’t have to worry about child care — are getting more done.

Companies, too, are discovering that processes and procedures they previously took for granted — from lengthy meetings to regular status updates — are less essential than once imagined. And though some executives are concerned about burnout as working from home continues, they are enjoying the gains for now.

Credit...Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via Shutterstock

“We’re seeing an increase in productivity,” said Fran Katsoudas, Cisco’s chief people officer.

Most of Cisco’s employees have been working from home for months, and Ms. Katsoudas said data showed many were accomplishing more. For example, according to the company’s tracking, customer service representatives are taking more calls and customers are more satisfied with the help they receive.

A Deutsche Bank survey of workers in countries hard hit by the coronavirus found that on average, those in the United States felt they were more productive than before the pandemic, whereas those in Europe felt they were less productive.

At Eventbrite, the engineering team is thriving, while the sales and customer service teams are having a harder time working from home, the chief executive, Julia Hartz, said.

Ms. Hartz said that her customer service team worked in a more collaborative manner, and that Eventbrite’s representatives missed being able to trade tips on how to handle different situations.

“It’s never the same call,” she said. “Our office is open. There’s a bullpen-type feel. You can turn your chair around and all face each other and share ideas or share the stress with your co-workers. You can’t do that remotely.”

Business is humming along, but executives said working so hard in isolation could, in the long term, lead to burnout and loneliness and fray corporate culture.

Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, lamented the loss of in-person interactions, even as he said productivity was ticking up.

“How long lasting is that?” he said of the company’s improved efficiency. “What does burnout look like? What does mental health look like?”

Mr. Nadella said he worried that companies like Microsoft were “burning some of the social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remote.”

“What’s the measure for that?” he added.

Credit...Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In Houston, Elysa Nelson, a vice president at Pierpont Communications, a public relations firm, said she had hoped that the transition to remote work might free her up from some of her management duties, allowing her to spend more time focused on clients and less time tending to her more junior colleagues.

But Ms. Nelson, who does not have children, said in addition to managing her own clients, she was helping her employees, in a “momlike fashion,” navigate working from home.

“I was hopeful that I would become more productive because they wouldn’t barge into my office all the time,” she said. “But they’re still finding ways, through calls and texts and Slack.”

  • Frequently Asked Questions and Advice

    Updated June 22, 2020

    • Is it harder to exercise while wearing a mask?

      A commentary published this month on the website of the British Journal of Sports Medicine points out that covering your face during exercise “comes with issues of potential breathing restriction and discomfort” and requires “balancing benefits versus possible adverse events.” Masks do alter exercise, says Cedric X. Bryant, the president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise, a nonprofit organization that funds exercise research and certifies fitness professionals. “In my personal experience,” he says, “heart rates are higher at the same relative intensity when you wear a mask.” Some people also could experience lightheadedness during familiar workouts while masked, says Len Kravitz, a professor of exercise science at the University of New Mexico.

    • I’ve heard about a treatment called dexamethasone. Does it work?

      The steroid, dexamethasone, is the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in severely ill patients, according to scientists in Britain. The drug appears to reduce inflammation caused by the immune system, protecting the tissues. In the study, dexamethasone reduced deaths of patients on ventilators by one-third, and deaths of patients on oxygen by one-fifth.

    • What is pandemic paid leave?

      The coronavirus emergency relief package gives many American workers paid leave if they need to take time off because of the virus. It gives qualified workers two weeks of paid sick leave if they are ill, quarantined or seeking diagnosis or preventive care for coronavirus, or if they are caring for sick family members. It gives 12 weeks of paid leave to people caring for children whose schools are closed or whose child care provider is unavailable because of the coronavirus. It is the first time the United States has had widespread federally mandated paid leave, and includes people who don’t typically get such benefits, like part-time and gig economy workers. But the measure excludes at least half of private-sector workers, including those at the country’s largest employers, and gives small employers significant leeway to deny leave.

    • Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?

      So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.

    • What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?

      Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

    • How does blood type influence coronavirus?

      A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.

    • How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

      The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nation’s job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.

    • My state is reopening. Is it safe to go out?

      States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you aren’t being told to stay at home, it’s still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.

    • What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

      Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

    • How can I protect myself while flying?

      If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

    • What should I do if I feel sick?

      If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.


Douglas Merritt, the chief executive of Splunk, an enterprise software company, also questioned whether the appearance of busy remote workers was leading to actual gains.

“There’s a big difference between activity and productivity,” he said. “There’s no doubt that our employee population is not performing at the same level they were.”

Mr. Merritt said that after a rush of intensity during the first couple of months of the coronavirus crisis, Splunk employees were adjusting to their new routines. And many of the intangible aspects of office life were, he believes, central to some of his most meaningful work.

“How do you capture the face-to-face body language that you can’t pick up over a Zoom?” Mr. Merritt said. “I am craving going back and siting in a conference room.”

Affirm, the payments company, also went through early months of intensity.

“There was a period of high energy, high output, where nothing could stand between you and the tasks you want to accomplish,” said Affirm’s chief executive, Max Levchin, who was a founder of PayPal. “All of us went into this hyper-productivity drive. It was like we were back in a start-up.”

Four months into the work-from-home experiment, Mr. Levchin said that employees, on balance, felt they were less productive than they had been in the office, but that managers believed their employees were more productive.

Mr. Levchin said he was concerned the pace was unsustainable. “My primary worry productivity-wise is pacing,” he said. “The mangers are telling me that there’s a real possibility of burnout.”

Hoping to prevent that, Affirm recently gave everyone an extra day off.

At Chegg, 86 percent of employees said their productivity was as good as or better than before, according to an internal survey. They attributed the uptick to not commuting and not having boundaries to the workday.

Recently, Mr. Schultz’s team completed a project for Verizon in 15 days that he said would have taken a month during normal times.

“They would have filled their time with going down to our well-accoutremented cafeteria in Silicon Valley,” Mr. Schultz said.

Still, he is cognizant that the frenetic pace of work might not last.

“While we may have had a productivity bump in the short term, we need to respect the home and work balance,” he said. “We want to make sure they don’t burn out.”

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