Following our initial research, we moved forward by creating a survey that was sent out through multiple channels in order to reach a wide range of people. Below are our survey questions and results as well as an analysis of the collected data. A link to view the survey is provided here.
Residence Type and Duration
Below are the results:
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This data showed that many of the people working from home do not live in a permanent residence but reside in rented spaces currently. This showed us that any permanent changes to the residence would not be ideal as our candidates will likely not be living in their current residences long term.
Living Situation
Below are the results:
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The data showed that most of our candidates lived with at least one other person. We will analyze later how the roommates of a person working remotely have a large effect on their work environment.
Occupations
- Main occupations:
- 85.7% are taking classes online
- 17% have a full-time job
- 10% have a part-time job
- 10% are doing research
- 7.4% are facilitating/assisting with online learning
This question was a multi-select allowing the result percentages to surpass 100%. The data showed that most of the candidates we surveyed were students currently. However, there are still many people who also work in some capacity.
Moreover, we analyzed how often our candidates were communicating and the location of where they completed their work.
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This data revelated that almost everyone working remotely needs to communicate at least once per week. Another important piece of information that was seen from this data was that the candidates do not seem to have private dedicated office spaces in abundance. Almost half work form their individual bedrooms but many work in shared spaces.
We then wanted to look at what caused our candidates the most amount of distraction. We split this section into two parts, non-noise related distractions and noise-related distractions. The following data was pulled from these questions.
- Non-Noise Distractions
- 50% people coming into room
- 61.3% being around comfortable, nap spots
- 61% household chores
- 8.3% interruptions from children
- 6.6% of people are not distracted
Two major points that were drawn from this data. Firstly, it is seen that there is an issue with others interrupting people as they work. A person’s roommate may not know that they are working and are likely to interrupt them throughout the day. Another point is that working remotely can upset the work life balance a person would have if they didn’t work remotely. It is hard for candidates to stay focused throughout the day when working from home because they feel comfortable in there home and this motivates them to stop working.
- Noise Distractions
- 56.8% are distracted by people talking
- 46.8% are distracted by non-linguistic noise from others (people moving around, cooking…)
- ~20% cars driving by, pets and/or lawn mowers
- 26.9% said music was distracting
- 19.7% are not distracted by noise
The noise distractions also raised two major points from the data. A large issue concerning noise from people is the noise that comes from within the house. Noise from within the house caused about half the candidates some form of distraction. Moreover, there is concern of noise coming from outside the house that also causes issues for people.
Lastly, we asked the candidates what were there top three concerns about what makes a good working environment. We also asked what equipment they would want to improve there current working environment. Here were the results we pulled from the survey.
- For facilitating a productive workspace
- 72.8% said a large workspace
- 59.9% said a quiet space
- 58.8% said ample lighting
- 57.4% said distraction free space
- 45.9% said privacy
- 38.5% said having storage for books, papers, etc.
A large workspace is something that we recognized as a concern during our initial research and this data backed that point. Some of the other top choices picked were also things that we considered in our initial research as major points of concern.
- Equipment
- 61 people said having a bigger desk
- 42 said having extra monitors
- 39 said they don’t need any improvements
- 20 people mentioned a better chair
- 10 mentioned noise-cancelling headphones
- 9 said better lighting
Again, a large workspace is seen as something that can help to facilitate a better working from home environment.