Wine, Work & Friends: The Weekly COVID Update
If you relate to this, you are not alone.
Pre- and post-COVID research is emerging and one of the “that just proves what I already know” findings is that wine consumption is up, particularly among Millennials and Gen X. Although we are spending slightly less on each bottle of wine, we have increased the number of times we screw cap one open.
Red wine, obviously, is the most popular. Rosé seems to have the most passionate fan base. 18% of the wine-related social media conversation since April 1 has been about rosé wines, yet it accounts for less than 8% of sales. It might be that people refer to rosé in general rather than a specific variety like cabernet. Other more interesting interpretations could be:
As a “summer wine” people are longing to get out of the house and enjoy summer.
People talk about rosé but it’s too intimidating to drink.
“Pretty in Pink” has been re-released on Amazon Prime Video (true).
It’s easier to colour-coordinate rosé in an Instagram photo.
Rosé is classy, intellectual, and an aphrodisiac. Although most of the posts calling rosé classy are not what we would call classy posts.
But are the rosé-drinking selfies getting in the way of your work?
Research released earlier this week by Valoir identified a nominal 1% decrease in productivity by people who have started working from home. Far less than many predicted.
Parents of young children reported a decrease of only 2% and people working by themselves saw the largest decrease, still only 3%.
We’re working the same amount of time too. On average, we start our days at 8:15 and wrap it up at 6. This suggests the time saved commuting to the office is being given to work, rather than keeping it for ourselves. Hmmm. Although it also suggests we are giving the time we save throwing a hoodie over our Jammies back to ourselves.
And how distracting are our children? Not as much as social media.
An odd statistic was that we are spending an average of 2 hours a day with these distractions when at home and yet our productivity has not changed. What have we been distracted by for those same 2 hours at the office?
It’s probably our friends. Work is a very social environment. Research by Olivet Nazarene University showed that 82% of people have meaningful friends at work, and ¾ of these see their friends outside of work too.
A stark contrast is that when we work from home, we have significantly fewer friendships.
This might present a significant barrier to the work-at-home movement. Gartner interviewed CFOs and business finance leaders and found that 74% plan to move at least some of their on-site workforce to remote locations post-COVID-19. The biggest factor is the cost-saving benefits of working from home.
What most future-of-work predictions overlook is the long-term importance of the social environment. With fewer friends at work will we be as bonded to our teams and our organizations? Or will we spend more and more time on social media taking beautifully curated photos of rosé while drinking craft beer? But that’s a different trend.
And if you haven’t used up all two hours of distraction yet today, this is the meeting of the week with our best friends.