2022/09/09 by Christopher Atti, Cliff Cross, Atti, Christopher +11
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #Digital Marketing and Social Media #FOS: Computer and information sciences
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2209.04383
openalex publication_date 2022/09/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 or other business decisions, remote work is becoming increasingly popular. "Remote first" working environments exist within companies where most employees work remotely. This paper takes a deep dive into the remote-first mentality. It investigates its effects on employees at varying stages in their careers, day-to-day productivity, and working relationships with team members. We found that the remote-first mentality most impacts seasoned employees and managers, potentially due to trouble adjusting to a new way of working compared to the rest of their careers and the "always on" mentality associated with working from home. Regarding productivity, we found that while software development productivity appears unimpacted, the effectiveness of communication and employee wellbeing saw declines which are generally associated with lowered productivity. Finally, we looked closer at the communication side of things and how remote work impacts relationship building. We found that the most significant impacts on relationship building centered around "trust" and "credibility" being harder to build due to a lack of non-verbal cues during social interactions.