As a measure to prevent the spread of COVID-19, telecommuting has been recommended by many companies since March 2020 in Japan. Even after the COVID-19 pandemic is over, the telecommuting implementation rate, including working from home, may continue to increase.
The purpose of this study is to clarify the impact of working from home on the individual satisfaction and productivity of workers in companies that introduced the telecommuting system from April 2020 as a countermeasure against COVID-19.
Questionnaire surveys of workers who normally work at an activity-based working office were conducted in order to compare the effects of working from home and at the office. The survey targets were workers of a research and development institute located in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. Approximately 210 employees work in the facility, of which 85% are researchers and 15% are in clerical positions. In this study, the results of three questionnaire surveys are described. We conducted a survey of “conventional office work period” in February 2020, a survey of “recommended work from home period” in April 2020, and a survey of “combined work from home and at the office period” in July 2020 where workers could choose to go to work or work from home.
From the survey results, it was found that the working environment at home had large individual differences, and the illuminance and CO2 concentration levels often deviated from the standards of the “Ordinance on Health Standards in the Office”. Despite the environment with large differences, the satisfaction level of the thermal environment, air quality and sound was significantly higher at home. It was also found that when working from home, self-efficacy regarding control of the indoor environment increases. This is considered to be one of the reasons for the increase in satisfaction of environmental qualities at home.
As an advantage of working from home, most office workers chose “reduction of coronavirus infection risk”. Next, more than half of the respondents chose “having no commuting stress” and “having a reduced dress code” as advantages. On the other hand, “lack of face-to-face communication” became the highest disadvantage of working from home. The degree of satisfaction with interpersonal communication was significantly lower at home than at work. In particular, the decrease in the satisfaction of informal communication was large.
Compared to the period when workers could only work at the office or at home, the period with relative freedom to choose between both options showed a great increase in the satisfaction with the work environment and a decrease in the difficulty of performing office activities.
In addition, a high correlation was found between the frequency of working from home and commuting time. Workers with longer commuting hours tended to work at home more frequently. Furthermore, it was confirmed that the higher the frequency of working from home, the higher the degree of satisfaction with the working environment at home.
The most common response to the ideal rate of working from home was two times a week, but the actual rate was only 25% in the survey conducted in July. It is presumed that there were many situations in which employees chose to come to the office in order to proceed with their work duties more efficiently.
