Abstract
The flexibility allowed by the mobilization of technology disintegrated the traditional work-life boundary for most professionals. Whether working from home is the key or impediment to academics' efficiency and work-life balance became a daunting question for both scientists and their employers. The recent pandemic brought into focus the merits and challenges of working from home on a level of personal experience. Using a convenient sampling, we surveyed 704 academics while working from home and found that the pandemic lockdown decreased the work efficiency for almost half of the researchers but around a quarter of them were more efficient during this time compared to the time before. Based on the gathered personal experience, 70% of the researchers think that in the future they would be similarly or more efficient than before if they could spend more of their work-time at home. They indicated that in the office they are better at sharing thoughts with colleagues, keeping in touch with their team, and collecting data, whereas at home they are better at working on their manuscript, reading the literature, and analyzing their data. Taking well-being also into account, 66% of them would find it ideal to work more from home in the future than they did before the lockdown. These results draw attention to how working from home is becoming a major element of researchers' life and that we have to learn more about its influencer factors and coping tactics in order to optimize its arrangements.
Highlights
Fleeing from the Great Plague that reached Cambridge in 1665, Newton retreated to his countryside home where he continued working for the year and a half
The respondents were asked to select one of the offered options to indicate: whether or not they worked more from home during the coronavirus lockdown than before; whether it is possible for them to collect data remotely; whether they have education duties at work; if their research requires intensive team-work; whether their home office is fully equipped; whether their partner was working from home during the pandemic; how far their office is from home; whether they had to do home-schooling during the pandemic; whether there was someone else looking after their child(ren) during their work from home in lockdown
The results showed that 94% (n = 662) of the surveyed researchers worked more from home during the COVID-19 lockdown compared to the time before
Summary
Fleeing from the Great Plague that reached Cambridge in 1665, Newton retreated to his countryside home where he continued working for the year and a half During this time, he developed his theories on calculus, optics, and the law of gravitation—fundamentally changing the path of science for centuries. Focusing on the efficiency of the subgroup of people who live with children (n = 295), we found that for 32% their research work would be less efficient, for 30% it would be no different, and for 38% it would be more efficient to work from home after the lockdown, compared to the time before the lockdown
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