The great remote work experiment – what happens next?

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly, four experts dissect the impact a year of working from home has had on employees and the companies they work for — and what a more hybrid future might look like. And we talk to a researcher who asked people to sit in bath tubs full of ice cold water to find out why some of us are able to stand the cold better than others.

For many people who can do their job from home, the pandemic meant a sudden shift from office-based to remote working. But a year of working from home, has taken its toll on some. We hear from Marie-Colombe Afota, assistant professor in leadership, IÉSEG School of Management in France on her new research into remote working during the pandemic, and Dave Cook, PhD candidate in anthropology at University College London, explains why burnout has become a public health issue. Jean-Nicolas Reyt, assistant professor at McGill University in Montreal, tells us how the view of chief executives towards remote working shifted over the past year and why. And Ruchi Sinha gives us a view of the conversations going on in Australia where hybrid working is already becoming a reality.

In our second story, we talk to Victoria Wyckelsma, postdoctoral research fellow in muscle physiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, about her new study which revealed how our genes influence how resistant we are to cold temperatures.

And Sunanda Creagh from The Conversation in Australia gives us some recommended reading about the recent floods in Sydney. 

The Conversation Weekly is produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.

If you'd like to sign up for The Conversation's free daily newsletter, please subscribe here. To get in touch, find us on Twitter @TC_Audio or on Instagram at theconversationdotcom. Or you can email us on [email protected]. Full credits for this episode can be found here.

Further reading

• COVID a year on: inequalities and anxieties about returning to workplaces are becoming clearer, by Jane Parry and Michalis Veliziotis, University of Southampton
• Faced by their employers' scepticism, remote workers are make themselves more available to signal their engagement, by Marie-Colombe Afota, IÉSEG School of Management; Ariane Ollier-Malaterre and Yanick Provost Savard, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM); and Emmanuelle Léon, ESCP Business School
• Work-life balance in a pandemic: a public health issue we cannot ignore, by Dave Cook, UCL; Anna Rudnicka, UCL, and Joseph Newbold, Northumbria University, Newcastle
• What Canada’s top CEOs think about remote work, by Jean-Nicolas Reyt, McGill University
• Your genetics influence how resilient you are to cold temperatures – new research, by Victoria Wyckelsma, Karolinska Institutet and Peter John Houweling, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
• ‘They lost our receipts three times’: how getting an insurance payout can be a full-time job, by Chloe Lucas, University of Tasmania
• Why do people try to drive through floodwater or leave it too late to flee? Psychology offers some answers, by Garry Stevens, Western Sydney University; Mel Taylor, Macquarie University, and Spyros Schismenos, Western Sydney University