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

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HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Papers: Interaction, Knowledge and Social Media (HCII 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12427))

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Abstract

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.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Construction Animation, Robotics, and Ergonomics (CARE) Lab, School of Construction Management Technology (SCMT), Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47906, USA

    Hongyue Wu

  2. CARE Lab, SCMT, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47906, USA

    Yunfeng Chen

Authors
  1. Hongyue Wu
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  2. Yunfeng Chen
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Correspondence to Yunfeng Chen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Crete and Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Crete, Greece

    Constantine Stephanidis

  2. University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    Gavriel Salvendy

  3. University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, USA

    June Wei

  4. Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo, Japan

    Sakae Yamamoto

  5. Tokyo City University, Tokyo, Japan

    Hirohiko Mori

  6. Towson University, Towson, MD, USA

    Gabriele Meiselwitz

  7. Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, USA

    Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

  8. Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, USA

    Keng Siau

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Wu, H., Chen, Y. (2020). The Impact of Work from Home (WFH) on Workload and Productivity in Terms of Different Tasks and Occupations. In: Stephanidis, C., et al. HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Papers: Interaction, Knowledge and Social Media. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12427. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60152-2_52

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60152-2_52

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-60151-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-60152-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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