People Work Longer Hours at Home

Research has found that people in many parts of Europe and North America are now working more hours than they did before the coronavirus pandemic began.

Virtual private network company NordVPN Teams looked at how long people were logged into its private business networks. It compared data from before the pandemic to the period around March and April when many countries were locking down and more people started working from home, and also looked at data from January this year.

The company found that, in January, people in Canada and the UK were working an average of two more hours than they did before the pandemic began, while Americans were working three more hours. Across all three countries, workers were spending an average of 11 hours a day logged into their business networks.

People in Austria, France, Italy and the Netherlands were also spending an extra hour logged in, working between nine and 10 hours a day.

"It's much easier to end up working for longer at home," said Dawn Morton-Young of human resources advice company Employee Angels, speaking to The Telegraph. She said that people answer emails before they get out of bed in the morning, don't take breaks, and may work later when they can't get everything done because of responsibilities with children at home.

But not everyone is working longer. While people in Denmark were working an extra hour a day around March and April, by January they were working nine hours a day, just as they did before the pandemic.

And people in Belgium, after increasing their work days by an hour in March and April, were working an hour less than they did before the pandemic by January, putting in just eight hours a day.

Discussion

1. What are your thoughts on the NordVPN Teams' findings?

2. Have you been working longer hours since the pandemic began?

3. How often do you work 11-hour days?

4. Do you ever check work emails and messages outside of office hours? Why? Why not?

5. What long-term impacts do you think the pandemic will have on the way people work?

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