Video Meetings During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In common with companies around the world, from March in 2020 Microsoft employees entered a prolonged period of mandatory working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We wondered what would happen to employees’ effectiveness and collegiality as all meetings went remote. From April through August 2020 we recruited 849 employees to take part in a large scale study involving two month diaries and weekly polls. This ‘natural experiment’ highlighted the everyday reality of the difference in “being there” as against “being remote” in work situations.

• See our Publications for reports on our primary study and related work.
• See The New Future of Work site for Microsoft’s cross-organizational program to understand the impact of the pandemic on our work and the work of our customers.
• See WorkLab for detailed reports and actionable advice on the science of work an ingenuity.