Cameras, not meetings, cause Zoom fatigue
(Getty Images)
The effects of being on camera tend to be harder on new employees and women
In the post-pandemic world, a few things have become ubiquitous: masks, hand sanitizer and Zoom fatigue, or the feeling of being worn out after a long day of virtual meetings. But new research from a team led by University of Georgia psychologist Kristen Shockley suggests that it’s not the meetings causing the fatigue—it’s the camera.
“We knew people had the perception that Zoom meetings were leading to fatigue, but we didn’t know what about those meetings was the problem,” said Shockley, associate professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “Our study revealed that there’s something about the camera being on that causes people to feel drained and lack energy.”
Remote work and video collaboration
For the study, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Shockley and the team worked with BroadPath, an Arizona-based health care services company. BroadPath has been in the remote-work field for almost 10 years using its own proprietary video software, and CEO Daron Robertson wanted to quantify how video can add or detract to the experience.
“A lot of the prevailing thought around remote work and video collaboration technologies has been, ‘More is better.’ It’s like saying, ‘Drinking a glass of wine every night is good, so drinking a bottle of wine can only be better,’” said Robertson, co-author on the paper.
“Our experience is that using front-facing video cameras in back-to-back Zoom meetings doesn’t feel good for a lot of employees. We wanted to quantify that and establish a baseline to measure improvements against.”
BroadPath employees were 95% remote before the pandemic and quickly transitioned to 100% after the pandemic, providing the team with a valuable opportunity to investigate a new phenomenon.
Experimenting with video meetings
“I never heard the term ‘Zoom fatigue’ before the pandemic, and it’s rare that you get to study something that’s so relevant and new,” Shockley said. “We were able to conduct a study using the gold standard design—a true field experiment, with random assignment, which is also rare.”
Using a sample of 103 BroadPath employees, the team randomly assigned half the participants to have their cameras on during meetings, and half to have their cameras off. After two weeks, the groups switched. Participants filled out a daily survey assessing fatigue, voice (the feeling that you can speak up in meetings) and engagement for that day.
After accessing calendar data for the employees, the team was able to control statistically for the number of meetings and total time spent in meetings, allowing them to isolate the finding that having the camera on during meetings led to fatigue, rather than just being in more meetings.
Zoom meeting fatigue especially affects women and new employees
“We’re not advocating for cameras off all the time,” Shockley said, “but we are advocating for allowing people autonomy and being more strategic in the way that we do meetings with Zoom and other video platforms.”
The researchers also found that the effects were stronger in women and people who were newer to the organization. These groups exhibited more fatigue when their camera was on, perhaps because women feel heightened pressure to demonstrate competence by appearing extra vigilant on camera, and because newcomers may feel the need to prove themselves since they do not have established relationships with others, according to Shockley.
Additionally, there are issues related to child care and appearance norms.
“Women are statistically more likely to have kids running around in the background, and we also hold higher standards for physical appearance for women, which can add to stress and fatigue,” she said. “That just speaks to the need for people to have flexibility and more autonomy when it comes to video.”
Rethinking Zoom etiquette for meetings
Camera status during meetings did not lead to a direct reduction in engagement and voice in meetings, according to the researchers. The effect occurred through fatigue—when having the camera on makes people feel fatigued, there was a subsequent reduction in engagement and voice in meetings.
“I suspect that there are some individual differences at play here that we didn’t measure,” Shockley said. “I’m guessing extroverts get less fatigued in general by the camera, so their performance isn’t going to suffer because they’re not going to feel that fatigue.”
“In my company, you’ve seen over the last 18 to 24 months that people have largely stopped using face-to-face video during meetings, in part because of what this research is daylighting,” Robertson said. “It’s just not a comfortable environment to work in all day long. But I think throwing the baby out with the bath water and having cameras off entirely would be the wrong conclusion.”
In addition to Shockley and Robertson, co-authors included Allison S. Gabriel and Mahira L. Ganster at the University of Arizona; Maira E. Ezerins and Christopher C. Rosen at the University of Arkansas; and Nitya Chawla at Texas A&M University. The team is currently planning additional collaborations including research on how side-facing cameras, avatars and other technology enhancements impact video fatigue and employee engagement.
COVID-19 was meant to start a remote work revolution in Japan — that didn't happen
Three years ago, Kaori and her family escaped the bustle of Osaka and moved to Gojo, a small, mountain-ringed city in Nara Prefecture known for its well-preserved townhouses and abundance of nature.
In retrospect, it was a move that was ahead of the curve, with COVID-19 spurring more urbanites to show an interest in relocating to rural regions. But while Kaori has been able to avoid jam-packed commuter trains and enjoy weekend canoeing expeditions, there’s been one setback: Her company doesn’t allow her to work remotely.
“I can probably do 90% of my tasks from home, but the people at the top are against the concept,” says Kaori, a 37-year-old mother who works in human resources for a small manufacturer with around 50 employees, speaking on condition that she only be identified by her first name due to privacy reasons. “There’s this mentality among the digitally unsure older generation that it’s not work unless you show up to work.”
Kaori is not alone in her frustration. The pandemic was expected to trigger a major shift toward working remotely in corporate Japan, where face-to-face meetings are valued and long hours are often considered a sign of loyalty. But 20 months since the nation reported its first COVID-19 patient, the concept appears to be losing steam — at least for now — as many workers remain bound to their offices, especially those like Kaori working for small and midsize firms.
As the delta variant raged across the nation last month, leading to record numbers of infections, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga asked the nation’s major business circles to help promote remote work in a bid to reduce the number of commuters by 70%.
He had good reason to make the renewed pitch. The latest figures released in July by the Tokyo-based nonprofit the Japan Productivity Center, for example, showed that the work style had been adopted by only 20.4% of the workers surveyed, a figure that hasn’t changed much over the past year. What’s more, the ratio of those working remotely full time in July fell to 2.4%, compared with 3.6% in April and 4.7% in January.
What does that mean?
“The number of days remote workers are going into work is increasing and the return to the office is progressing,” the organization said in its report. “It’s necessary to monitor ‘telework fatigue.’”
A lack of digital infrastructure and an archaic corporate culture that values long working hours and face-to-face meetings is slowing down the nation’s push toward working remotely. | GETTY IMAGES
Take a 38-year-old woman who works for a web marketing firm in Tokyo. While her company recommends its staff work remotely two days a week during a state of emergency, the practice is rarely observed now as employees get used to the pandemic and the frequent emergency decrees.
“Despite being an IT firm, the president and managers around him are very traditional and top-down when it comes to work ethics,” she says, declining to be identified. “I’d love to telework, but since the head of my department doesn’t work remotely, I have to be present at the office whenever we have meetings.”
Behind the phenomenon may be Japan’s corporate culture, which emphasizes unity and in-person communication, she says. The nation is also one of the oldest in the world, with 28.7% of the population age 65 or older, while the average age of corporate presidents in Japan has risen by 0.2 years to a new record high of 60.1, according to a 2020 nationwide report conducted by Teikoku Databank.
“But it reaches a point of absurdity when 10 of us crowd into a meeting room wearing masks to video chat with a client who is working remotely,” she says. “I don’t think the government can achieve the 70% reduction goal.”
Despite a slow start to the vaccine rollout, Japan has managed to avoid the worst of the pandemic, with around 1.66 million cases and 17,097 COVID-19 related deaths as of Sept. 18, according to the health ministry. Still, the country has been battered by five waves of the virus, with case counts in August soaring to more than 25,000 per day, overburdening hospitals and forcing some to turn away patients.
While the government has declared one state of emergency after another in an effort to curb the spread of the virus, which has seen restaurants and bars asked to close early and to refrain from serving alcohol, it has maintained a hands-off approach when it comes to remote work.
Corporations aren’t forced to offer the working option to its employees — it’s on a voluntary basis. The result has seen a widening gap between employers who have embraced working remotely and those who have decided to give it a pass, especially between larger tech companies and smaller firms.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has asked the nation’s major business circles to help promote remote work in a bid to reduce the number of commuters by 70%. | BLOOMBERG
In April, mobile and online services company DeNA Co. announced that it will move its headquarters to a shared office space. In its press release, it said less than 6% of its workforce came to the office in March, and it expects the remote work arrangement to continue after the health crisis subsides.
Meanwhile, Deloitte Tohmatsu Group returned two floors of a building near Tokyo Station this summer, and reports have said Yahoo Japan Corp. will be vacating 40% of its Tokyo office space, or around 30,000 square meters, by November when leases expire. Since the onset of the pandemic, only around 10% of Yahoo’s staff have been working in the office.
But while some larger firms are accelerating the pace of downsizing office space, a majority of smaller firms appear to prefer keeping their workers in the office.
According to the trade ministry, 99.7% of all businesses in Japan are small or midsize. These companies employ around 70% of the working population and account for a significant portion of economic output.
While they are the cornerstone of the service sector and play a critical role in the manufacturing and export supply chain, they’ve also been the slowest when it comes to introducing flexible work arrangements.
In a survey conducted by the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry in May during the third state of emergency, 38.4% of the small and midsize enterprises in the capital that responded said they had implemented remote work. That was 27.8 percentage points lower than when the organization conducted a similar survey during the previous state of emergency that lasted between January and March.
The latest figures released in July showed that working remotely had been adopted by only 20.4% of the workers surveyed. | REUTERS
“Remote work will likely stick with big tech companies and startups, but I believe many others may revert back to traditional work styles,” says Ryusuke Ishii, a researcher at the Japan Research Institute and an expert on human resources. He cites three primary factors inhibiting the proliferation of remote work in Japan: type of occupation, working environments and management mentality.
People working in jobs requiring their physical presence, including those in the service industry, health care professionals and blue-collar workers, don’t have the luxury of staying at home like their white-collar counterparts.
Meanwhile, many small and midsize businesses lack the necessary hardware and software — laptops, data storage, workplace collaboration apps and so on — to support the work style, Ishii says.
Finally, Ishii says, “management, especially older managers, are used to allocating work to subordinates face to face, often through gestures and indirect communication. A Zoom call won’t do it for them.”
A 23-year-old woman who began working in sales at a major insurance company in April says her section doesn’t have a paid Zoom account.
“Since I joined, we tried working remotely for two days but soon gave up since the training curriculum would be cut off every time we reached the 40-minute free-call limit,” she says, asking not to be named. While many firms no longer allow her to book in-person sales appointments due to infection risks, she says her company considers it essential for insurance agents to meet potential customers face to face.
“I understand how that may be more effective in achieving our quota, but I still hope we can have the option to work remotely at least two or three days a week.”
Behind the low rate of telework may be Japan’s corporate culture that emphasizes unity and in-person communication.
The government has been pushing remote work for years. Not only would it ease the notoriously congested rush-hour commutes in Japan’s major urban centers, the argument goes, but it could also offer a better work-life balance and encourage more women and elderly citizens to enter the workforce. And perhaps most crucial to corporations, young job seekers are increasingly raising the availability of working remotely as a priority when scouting for potential employers.
In a survey conducted in February by Gakujo Co., a company that runs a recruitment information platform, 57.2% of university students that responded who are expecting to graduate in April said they considered the availability of remote work important when applying for jobs. A little more than 77% said they’d like to use the work arrangement if it is offered.
“It’s becoming increasingly essential for corporations, including small and midsize firms, to offer the option of working remotely to lure workers,” says Mizue Murata, executive director of the Japan Telework Association, an organization that promotes the work style.
“Sure, there are many obstacles to overcome, but I don’t think Japan will revert to its old ways after the current crisis passes,” she says. “Corporations that have successfully adopted remote work understand how practical and efficient the arrangement can be. What’s more, the younger generation who will become central to Japan’s workforce are embracing the practice.”
Kaori, who works for the manufacturer in Nara, agrees. As an HR representative, she often interviews college students seeking jobs, some of whom appear to lose interest when she mentions that remote work is not possible at her company.
“We’ve managed to get the digital infrastructure in place, so we’re just hoping for the managers to give the go sign for us to implement remote work,” she says. “It’s a pity that we’re missing the opportunity to hire these young, talented people.”
Another Truth About Remote Work
A misconception about the prevalence of working from home explains a lot about confirmation bias in America.
Mara Truog / 13 Photo / Redux
About six months ago, a colleague asked me to guess what percentage of Americans were still working from home. I was still spending eight hours a day making calls just a few feet from my fridge. So were most of my friends. Maybe 40 percent? I guessed. I was off by half. Twenty-one percent of Americans were still teleworking as of March 2021; the other 79 percent were leaving their home like the old days.
This was a case of beltway bias on my part, and I should have known better. My parents, in Iowa, had gone back to in-person work at that point, and many of my friends in the state had teleworked for only a few weeks at the beginning of the pandemic—if at all. Last week, The Atlantic commissioned a poll from Leger, asking Americans to estimate how many people had worked from home during the pandemic. The results weren’t entirely surprising: Those working remotely tended to overestimate how many other people were doing the same.
Seventy-three percent of survey respondents who had teleworked because of the pandemic guessed that at least half of Americans had done the same. But the actual number of people who worked remotely because of COVID-19 was, at its highest point, roughly 35 percent, way back in May 2020. Let’s skip ahead to last month: About 90 percent of surveyed respondents who worked from home in August because of the pandemic guessed that at least 40 percent of Americans did too. In reality, only 13.4 percent worked from home in the final month of summer.
Part of the reason for the discrepancy comes down to basic psychology. Human beings tend to believe that other people are like us, that our thoughts and opinions are more common than they actually are, the sociologists I interviewed for this story told me. But when I answered that question so wrongly back in March, I felt a pang of embarrassment; I was out of touch. “People don’t have a great sense anymore of what the lives of others across the economic divide look like,” Jonathan J. B. Mijs, a sociology professor at Boston University, told me.
So much of the media coverage throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has focused on the phenomenon of remote work and how it’s here to stay. For months, we were drowning in articles about ergonomic desk chairs, Zoom fatigue, and the comfiest teleworking sweatpants. (I wrote a story last spring about how much it sucks to work from home in a group house.) All of those articles were relevant for a certain segment of the population—one that is quite likely to read this publication. But the prevalence of these stories also helped obscure the reality that most Americans were still going to work in person, risking their life and the health of their families. Nurses, line cooks, delivery drivers, assembly-line workers, grocery-store clerks, and plumbers simply don’t have the option of getting an extra hour of sleep and hopping on Zoom in their pajamas.
Americans with the option to telework are much more likely to be highly educated; they’re also more likely to be upper-income workers, rather than low- or middle-income. And the professionals who telework tend to be concentrated in urban centers. That all might seem intuitive. But it’s difficult for most people to perceive that disparity, given the increasing socioeconomic segregation in the United States: Americans are more likely to live and work and pal around with others of similar educational backgrounds and job types than they used to be, the sociologists I spoke with told me. Online social networks, which in theory should help us burst out of our social bubbles, have instead tended to reinforce them.
Exclusively socializing with people who have similar lifestyles has consequences. Highly educated white-collar workers who spend a lot of time with like-minded people are more likely to underestimate income disparities and the structural barriers many people face, Mijs said. Being trapped in a class bubble can also affect Americans’ political and policy preferences. In her 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land, the sociologist Arlie Hochschild described how feeling misunderstood breeds resentment and political division.
Americans were not so divided by income 40 or 50 years ago, when neighborhoods, churches, and social organizations, while less racially diverse, were more socioeconomically diverse. Cross-class mixing happened often, but much of that mixing disappeared when Americans began to group themselves based on identity. That has happened in other wealthy countries too. “Economic clustering became lifestyle clustering became political clustering,” Bill Bishop, the author of the 2004 book The Big Sort, told me. One of the outcomes of that clustering is that most people don’t know how other Americans are living.
Hochschild believes mutual understanding is still possible between Americans. She offered some advice for people—like me—who assumed incorrectly that more Americans were living like them. “Ask yourself,” she said, “Why didn’t I know this?”
