Average hours people spend in working per day
The corporate world has a structure in which people work. This is quite common among many big MNCs. If we look at the actual productivity hours, it can be much less compared to the number of hours people work. There can be discussions, collaborations, taking breaks, reading, socializing, etc inside the workplace which also takes place and comes under the working category.
There are hard rules in place that ensure the employees' productivity is tracked properly so that it is fair both to the employee and the employer. This was affected during the Covid time when people worked from home and productivity was affected a little for some work nature.
Taking breaks
Today taking breaks has become a culture in the IT industry. I don't know about other countries but in some companies in India, the employees form a gang and they go for a break as a gang. They sometimes take close to 1 hour for a break and take 3 such breaks within a day. As long as the work is complete it shouldn't be a problem but usually, such things happen only if the employees go to the office. They say that during COVID-19 when employees worked from home, productivity was high because these type of breaks were not a possibility. But it is true that during the COVID-19 work-from-home culture people had other types of privileges that affected the work too. Some managers complained saying that it was hard to catch their subordinates through the chat.
Travelling to work
Travel time is usually the biggest save for a Work-from-home option. If we don't have to travel to work, we will be able to save a lot of time. Especially if the travel has to happen during the peak hours of the day, it can be really hard because of the traffic. Some people have flexible work timing so that they can avoid the huge traffic during commute so that they can increase productivity in actual work rather than staying on the road and getting frustrated about the traffic.
Working outside work hours
For some companies, there was a boost in productivity because the employees had the flexibility to work from home as and when they wanted to and they stayed more than work hours to complete their tasks. This increased productivity. Some companies also have a strict rule that the employees should not work outside the work hours. During the initial days of my job, my managed used to ask me why I sat late hours and I shouldn't be doing it. We had a very good culture in that we insisted on going home sharp at the leaving time and going to the office at the right time.
During Covid when people worked from home, they had flexible work timings as an option and for some teams as long as the tasks were completed, they were okay with that flexibility. People stretch more hours to work and that increases overall productivity for the company.