Has COVID opened the remote work floodgates?

See Survey results here https://myosh.com/future-of-remote-work/

We are witnessing the world’s largest work-from-home experiment unfold in real-time. As businesses have been forced to uproot their existing processes to stop the spread of COVID-19, an unprecedented number of workers are currently working from home.

The question is, what will work arrangements look like in a business world post coronavirus? Once restrictions are lifted, how many workers will want to return to the office every day? How many employers will be happy to be more flexible?

The myosh team recently conducted a survey of workers to better gauge how they were coping at home and what their pain points were. The results of this survey can be found below in an interactive and drill-able chart powered by Viking Analytics.

What we found, was that a large number of workers can see themselves adapting to the current norms long term. In fact, 34 per cent of respondents said they could maintain their current work-from-home arrangements permanently. Additionally, 56 per cent said it was very easy, or somewhat easy, to work in their current arrangement (with a further 25 per cent finding it neither easy nor difficult).

There are, of course, some workers sitting at home thinking that they never want to do this again – especially those whose jobs require collaborative work. In our survey, however, we found this number to be small. Only 5 per cent of workers found it “very difficult” to work under their current circumstances, and only 23 per cent found it somewhat difficult – a number you would expect to drop if workers split their time evenly between the office and home.

So what are the pain points for employees? The main ones concern communication (34 per cent); distractions (29 per cent); keeping a regular schedule (28 per cent); and social isolation (26 per cent). If people are going to do more work from home, these are the things that employers and employees need to be working through together.

From an organisational point of view, employers are beginning to realise that some tasks they thought were impossible to execute efficiently at home are not only possible – they might even be easier. And cheaper. Could companies save a significant amount of money on office space and commercial leases if fewer workers came in each day? Of course.

There are also significant sustainability and environmental benefits to increased remote work that are hard to quantify. These include reduced pollution and congestion, less strain on public transport, easier parking, and less money on expensive infrastructure. Now that more people have experienced teleconferencing, organisations could also save huge amounts of money by reducing their business travel.

So what’s holding organisations back? Labour economist Julia Pollak says that companies are typically reluctant to allow employees remote work flexibility because of inertia and entrenched norms. But now both parties have experienced it. And many might not want to give it up.

There is research to suggest that once people experience perks from their job, they tend to value those perks more than they used to. When life returns to normal, it seems likely that many employees will push to retain some flexibility. Will employers trust their staff enough to provide it?