We read an interesting article in Adage yesterday about how remote work may be hurting creativity in the workplace so we decided to delve into this idea a little deeper. Creative collaboration can push projects to the next level, but does it matter if these collaborations are in person or digital? Some say that those stating creativity is suffering from at home work is just a cop out for the uncreatively bad work they’ve produced, but could it actually be true? Well, a study was done on this and the results are very convincing. According to this article from CNN, results showed that digital meetings can actually drain creativity and that it is actually easier to come up with creative ideas in person. This is how it was determined. The college study used 602 participants and divided them into pairs. They were given every day things and asked to come up with new and creative ways to execute them. Some of the groups were virtual and some were in person. Performance was measured on how many ideas they came up with, the novelty of those ideas and value of the ideas, which was ranked by other students. Eye tracking software was also used and they found that the virtual groups spent more time looking directly at their partner on the screen. Those that were in person gazed around the room more. Also, the virtual pairs remembered less about their surroundings when asked about it later. This suggests that the virtual space narrows cognition and narrows focus that can inherently hurt creative formulations.
It’s not surprising that remote work could hinder creativity since part of creative inspiration comes from in-person collaboration. 68% of employees say that they have found communication with colleagues more difficult while working remotely (CROOW). Less in person engagements at the office equals weaker relationships between employees. One could see why less collaboration happens with at home work. The need for collaboration IRL is key for creativity. It promotes things, such as brainstorming, story-telling, open-mindedness and active listening all hone in on the creative mind. It also allows for a more open-ended focus that is necessary to get in the creative head space. At Locomotive we love remote work and encourage it. That being said, our team already knew each other and had many in person interactions before they went fully remote, so their employee bonds were already awesome. The concept of remote work is fairly new since the pandemic and we think there are benefits to both. However, we believe that there should be some in-person meetings every week in order to promote relationships and collaborations between employees, especially if the field is creative in nature and the employees are still getting to know one another.
