Remote Work: Managing the Future

Before COVID, remote work was an exception to how work got done in the United States. For many, remote work meant answering work emails and working on documents during vacation. During COVID, remote work became more mainstream by necessity. Now that many American employers and employees have experience with remote work, and the threats from COVID are receding, the question arises: how should the American workplace be structured now?

According to the Pew Research Center, 60% of Americans have jobs that cannot be done remotely.[1] Remote work is largely an option available to those whose work can be done largely via computers and virtual meetings. The U.S. Census Bureau found that

More than a third of U.S. households reported working from home more frequently than before the pandemic, but the percentage who made the switch varied widely across sociodemographic groups.

Households with members who teleworked more frequently reported higher levels of income and education and better health than those in which no one changed their typical in-person work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.[2]

How widespread is remote work? Pew reports that almost 60% of Americans who say their work can be done from home are working from home, but interestingly, 83% of them were working from home before omnicron spread.[3] It would seem to be the case that many Americans who are able to work from home are doing so.

Where are some pain points associated with expanding and normalizing working remotely? Real estate is a key concern for employers. It is not profitable to have office space that is leased long term or owned by a business be unoccupied. Before COVID, many businesses were resistant to the technology that made remote work feasible, and instead invested in legacy office space models. The cost to transition to a more mobile workforce could be high for those businesses tethered to brick-and-mortar office spaces.

Certain management styles emphasize time employees spend at their desks, and equate that with productivity. There has traditionally been pressure for employees to stay at their desks for long periods of time so they could be seen by their managers to be working, even when their main tasks had long been completed. Some managers want to have their employees constantly in their figurative field of vision.

Not every remote work-capable job can be done from home all the time, and teamwork has a key role in how some work gets done. There is a strong case to be made for a hybrid work environment, one in which remote work is the norm, with in-person meetings occurring regularly, and sometimes happening for emergency reasons or to deal with specific projects. Some argue that in-person work has to be the norm because remote work isn’t productive. However, that is largely an argument based on perception.

Has productivity been dinged by remote work? The Society for Human Resource Management reports that “[n]inety-four percent of 800 employers surveyed by Mercer, an HR and workplace benefits consulting firm, said that productivity was the same as or higher than it was before the pandemic, even with their employees working remotely.”[4] With more and more Americans seeking out remote work, and productivity not seeing dips due to the rise of working from home, employers have the opportunity to rethink what the workplace of the 21st century will look like. That process will result in disruptions to traditional management ideas, potentially tough real estate decisions for companies, as well as a reexamination of what downtowns and business districts should look like. Some of this thinking and acting is being done now.

Advances in technology over the last several decades made an evolution to remote work for some Americans possible. COVID sped up this process, as disruptive events often do. The rise of remote work, which was resisted for so long by so many companies, will force American businesses to be creative, nimble, and resourceful. Luckily, we have the most dynamic economy in the world precisely because American businesses possess these characteristics. The American economy has been a world leader in so many fields. It looks like we have the opportunity to lead again, this time in remote work.