7 Workplace Myths Disproven by Research

Most of these came as no surprise to me at all, but one of them actually did surprise me.

First off, the ones I wasn’t surprised by.

The most productive people don’t necessarily work longer hours. I know this from my own experience, and from what I’ve seen in others, the work tends to really suffer the longer the hours. Working long hours is not a productivity positive, in fact, it’s often a negative.

47% of college grads say their first job was not related to their degree. I recently read a number of posts about the benefits of a gap year after the news that the President’s daughter would be taking one before starting Harvard, and it occurred to me that many of the claimed benefits of a gap year could easily be extended to a much longer gap, or even to make the argument that college is almost irrelevant. Think about it.

The others seem fairly obvious if you pay attention at all.

The one that caught my eye is that remote workers are actually more engaged. I do firmly believe that remote workers are more productive, but maybe because of my own experience, I’ve always felt like it takes more work to truly be engaged with your coworkers when you rarely ever see them face to face. Clearly, that hasn’t stopped many remote workers from being very engaged.

On the productivity front, I believe I’ve written this before, but I will never forget the experience of being in the office of a company that bragged about the open, collaborative, workspaces they had created, but which was mostly empty because so many folks were working from home in order to really focus on getting work done. Coworkers really can be a drain on productivity. 😉

Do any of these surprise you?

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