Collaborating During Coronavirus: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Nature of Work

Evan DeFilippis, Stephen Michael Impink, Madison Singell, Jeffrey T. Polzer and Raffaella Sadun

No 27612, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We explore the impact of COVID-19 on employee's digital communication patterns through an event study of lockdowns in 16 large metropolitan areas in North America, Europe and the Middle East. Using de- identified, aggregated meeting and email meta-data from 3,143,270 users, we find, compared to pre- pandemic levels, increases in the number of meetings per person (+12.9 percent) and the number of attendees per meeting (+13.5 percent), but decreases in the average length of meetings (-20.1 percent). Collectively, the net effect is that people spent less time in meetings per day (-11.5 percent) in the post- lockdown period. We also find significant and durable increases in length of the average workday (+8.2 percent, or +48.5 minutes), along with short-term increases in email activity. These findings provide insight from a novel dataset into how the nature of work has changed for a large sample of knowledge workers. We discuss these changes in light of the ongoing challenges faced by organizations and workers struggling to adapt and perform in the face of a global pandemic.

JEL-codes: L2 L23 M0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: PR
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

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