ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

Nat Hum Behav. 2022;6(1):43-54. doi: 10.1038/s41562-021-01196-4.PubMed ID: 34504299

Brief summary: This study analysed a large database of emails, calendars, instant messages, video/audio calls and workweek hours routinely generated by 61 182 US Microsoft employees in the months before and after 4th March 2020, when the company mandated that all non-essential employees change to full-time working from home (WFH). Remote working led to more ‘siloed’ work groups, fewer phone calls but more e-mails.

While most of our clinical duties and laboratory-based research requires on-site working, we learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic that many types of work can continue quite efficiently by WFH. My own experience in epidemiology research (KO) was that PhD students and post-doctoral scientists in my team continued to train and work very productively using a variety of online platforms to connect us while working across 6 different countries. However, some aspects of work suffered, particularly those that rely on spontaneous interactions, such as cross-team sharing of ideas and inter-personal sharing of advice, experiences and broader pastoral support.

This study formally documents and quantifies what many of us have come to realise about remote working. While remote working strengthened many interactions within workers’ immediate teams, across the wider company the network of interactions became fragmented, making it harder for staff to gain and share new information across the network. Workers spent more time interacting with those linked by existing strong ties. However, the different business groups within Microsoft became less interconnected. While there are benefits for the efficient achievement of the defined short to medium-term goals, creative working and ideas that result from multi-disciplinary interactions suffer. The authors comment that when 2 people are connected by a strong tie, they more easily trust each other, cooperate and share information easily. By contrast, weak ties are more likely to provide access to new, non-redundant information.

Similar lessons likely apply to our interactions with those outside of our own institutions. So we do hope that you are able to enjoy the ESPE 2022 meeting in person and, through both formal and informal networking, you gain and share much new, non-redundant information, as well as new friends!