One possibility is that managers are less certain of their team's commitment and are holding more meetings to check on them.

Another is that managers canll so many meetings to validate their won existence when they are not in the office.

However,the academics suggest the greater need for meetings is the result of the greater difficulty of co-ordinating employees when they are working remotely-another hint that the process is inefficient.

When working remotely,employees also spend less time being evaluated,trained and coached.

This seems a raw deal for the employees.

They received no more money fo the overtime.

Although they saved commuting time,this did not offset the extra hours spent in meetings.

Not all workders behaved the same way.

Those who had worked at the company the longest tended to be more productive,suggesting that they found it easier to navigate the hazards of home-working.

Employees with children worked around 20 minutes a day more than those without,implying an even greater fall in their porductivity,presumably because they were distracted by child-care duties.

So does this mean companies will abandon remote working altogether ,even  its hybrid version?

The academics point out that the staff at the firm under study are nearly all college-educated and their roles" involve significant cognitive work ,developing new software or hardware applications or solutions,collaborating with teams of professionals,working with clients ,and engaging in innovation and continuous improvement."

Such work may have posed a particular challenge in remote settings,compared with occupations like responding to customer calls ,say ,where employees may work to a scripted set of replies.

It is hardly surprising that there would be some teething and co-ordination problems involved with remote working.

The practics was,after all ,imposed suddenly.

The study stopped last August and one wonders whether employees have learned to use their time more efficiently since then.

And the research shows that employees were able to achieves as much output with slightly less "focus time" than they had at the office.

The real source of inefficiency-surprise,surprise-was the time spent in meetings.

And the answer is simple;don't call as many,and keep them short.

BBC NEWS.