The commute is something that seldom seems appreciated by employees. Indeed, a few years ago, there was a growing trend among software companies to pay staff a bonus if they lived within a few miles of the office. The idea is that commutes are not only stressful and expensive, but they suck the energy out of people such that they seldom give their best at work.
These concerns are exemplified by research from the University of Haifa, which highlights how commuting-related stress can be harmful, not least because it can make us drive in an unsafe way.
The researchers found that a couple of distinct forms of stress had an impact on our driving ability. Firstly, if we had conflict between our work life and family life, this tended to result in more dangerous driving during our commute. The rationale behind this is that the commute offers a liminal period, and as such our thoughts become especially salient and disrupt out attention.
The second form of stress was related to our boss. It’s well known that abuse from a supervisor tears away our attention at work, but the study also suggests this spills over into our commute time as well. Indeed, a hard time from our boss can prompt us to focus unduly on work matters whilst driving, and therefore not on the matter at hand.
The end of commuting?
It’s perhaps no surprise, therefore, that so many people have been lauding the forced removal of our daily commute by the Covid-19 related lockdown measures that have meant so many of us have been working from home over the past few months. In the UK, the number of people working from home jumped to 50% in April, up from just 5% in 2019.
People took to social media to highlight the financial savings they’ve made from not dragging themselves to work each day, together with the huge time savings possible when we don’t have to travel an hour or so to get to and from work every day. It’s an intuitive reaction in many ways, as the prospect of cramming onto a train or navigating the rush hour traffic is not something that any of us can really enjoy.
Except things might not be quite so straightforward. Research from the University of Cambridge highlights how our commute can provide us with a great way to clearly demarcate our professional and personal lives.
The researchers argue that our commute actually plays a vital role in helping us transition from our work life to our personal life, thus greatly helping our work-life balance. Indeed, the commute is especially important for those who struggle with work-family conflicts.
“With no more separation of home and work, many remote workers will now miss out on the opportunity to transition into their work role during their commute,” the researchers say. “Our study challenges the idea that commuting time is necessarily harmful and has a negative impact on workers’ attitudes toward their jobs. The situation actually is far more nuanced: instead of passively enduring what many people see as a drudgery, employees can actively shape their commute into a useful period of role transition that will benefit them at work.”
The value of commuting
These benefits have also been found in a second research project undertaken by a team from the University of Stirling, which aimed to understand how people have adapted to homeworking during the pandemic. The researchers highlight how commuters to London can often spend 79 minutes each day getting to and from work, which costs on average over £5,000 per year.
After interviewing a number of people who are new to working from home on a permanent basis, they found that people seemed far more enthusiastic about their commute than they had expected. While the time and cost savings from their commute were very much appreciated, and indeed few respondents wished to return to the office on a full-time basis, around half of them nonetheless reported missing their daily commute.
A common reason for this was that the commute provided a clear buffer between work and home. Indeed, for those with families, the commute was often a clear chunk of “me time” where they could read a book, listen to the radio, or phone friends. People reported missing these activities because they no longer have the time or space to do them, despite theoretically having more time to do them.
This time also provides a buffer between home and work that allows people to make the transition between the two worlds more effectively. Among those people who had lost this buffer, they were typically those that reported the highest dissatisfaction with homeworking as they weren’t able to separate the two worlds effectively enough.
Building a buffer
If home working is to be a much bigger part of our working lives, it seems that creating an effective buffer between our work and personal lives is key. Among the early evidence from those working from home during the pandemic, active commuting seemed popular. This often involved a solitary, physical activity, such as jogging, cycling, doing yoga, which helped them to separate the two worlds, while also getting some valuable exercise, fresh air, and so on.
Similarly, employers can help workers to manage this transition effectively. Research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign highlights how giving workers control over their work-life balance allows them to craft their affairs in a way that suits them. This can mean resisting the urge to use digital technologies to snoop on workers, and instead trusting them to work efficiently and effectively.
The Scottish research suggests that people can, and are, being creative in the ways in which they adapt to this new normal, so it just needs employers to be similarly creative to help develop a way of working that benefits both parties equally. If this is to be the “new normal”, then it’s a transition that can’t come soon enough.
