During the Covid pandemic, many of us worked from home, so our commutes were one of the often unloved factors of working life that fell by the wayside.  With workplaces largely re-opened, however, this aspect of our lives has returned.  Research from Dartmouth suggests that our commute might be able to tell us whether we will perform well at work or not.

“Your commute predicts your day,” the researchers say. “This research demonstrates that mobile sensing is capable of identifying how travel to and from the office affects individual workers.”

Wearable health

The researchers equipped volunteers with a Garmin vivoSmart 3 activity tracker and a sensing app for their smartphone to capture various behavioral and physiological patterns as they commute to work.  This data includes things such as their heart rate, stress and activity levels, and phone usage.  The app was also capturing external factors, including the weather, duration and variability of the commute, and the location of the volunteer.

In total, nearly 300 workers were assessed over a one-year period (prior to the Covid pandemic).  95% of the volunteers drove to work, and they were monitored throughout their commute, as well as for a 30-minute period before and afterward.

“We were able to build machine learning models to accurately predict job performance,” the researchers say. “The key was being able to objectively assess commuting stress along with the physiological reaction to the commuting experience.”

Job performance

The authors assessed job performance in terms of both organizational citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior.  The latter is when we deliberately harm the organization, whereas the former is far more beneficial.  The authors generated baseline figures for both via self-reported questionnaires.

“Compared to low performers, high performers display greater consistency in the time they arrive and leave work,” the researchers say. “This dramatically reduces the negative impacts of commuting variability and suggests that the secret to high performance may lie in sticking to better routines.”

High performers also tended to have various physiological indicators that suggest they have both good physical fitness and resilience to stress.  For the lower performers, they would more often exhibit stress before, during, and after their commute.

The study builds on previous work that has illustrated how our commute can increase stress and anxiety, which in turn leads to a less productive workforce that is more inclined to exhibit counterproductive behaviors at work.

As well as the findings themselves, the researchers believe that the use of wearables and smartphone apps to monitor worker behaviors and health could signal a way for employers to monitor the wellbeing of employees and try to design more effective and supportive work patterns.

They also demonstrate that our commutes can be a good thing, especially if workers have active commutes that involve physical activity, with those people who were more active during their commutes found to be most productive at work.

The authors hope to continue examining the topic and see if tailored interventions can be designed, whether in the form of social activity, music, or other interventions that could make our commutes better for us.  As we look to “design back better” after the pandemic, it is perhaps food for thought for employers.