For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new questions that needed immediate answers surfaced as companies and their employees quickly adjusted to significantly different working conditions. Teams from across the Microsoft organizational chart pooled their unique expertise together under The New Future of Work initiative. The results have informed product features designed to better support remote work and are now being used to help companies, including Microsoft, usher their workforces into a future of hybrid work.

In this episode of The New Future of Work series of the podcast, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and Senior Research Economist Sonia Jaffe delve into the “Personal Productivity and Well-Being” chapter of the report, beginning with why measuring productivity isn’t as easy as just observing output or counting hours worked. They also explore how people already working from home helped them better understand how people adjusted to remote work, the diversity in experiences among workers, and how we can be better coworkers to our remote colleagues whether we’re working from home or not.

https://www.microsoft.com/research