What Does the Future of Remote Work Look Like?

Before the onset of the pandemic, only about 7% of US workers with jobs that were compatible with remote work were working full time off-site, but by October of 2022, that percentage was up to 55%. 

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At that point in the fall of 2022, about 2 and a half to 3 years since the pandemic had begun and about 1 year after the rollout of the first vaccines, more than half of all remote-capable employees were doing their job from an off-site location, which seemed like an indication that remote work had established itself as a major and permanent fixture in the business operational landscape.

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In the time since, however, the percentage of remote-capable workers who are still working remotely full time has been falling fairly consistently and is now down to just 35%, meaning that nearly 2 out of every 3 workers who currently have a job that could be done remotely full-time are instead working on-location at an office or company worksite at least part-time, and that number seems likely to grow.

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For one, many employees who have worked an entirely remote schedule have acknowledged some of the perceived disadvantages of doing so, including lost opportunities for networking, collaborating, mentoring, and general career growth. That said, the benefits of working remotely are clearly substantial as well, with remote workers saving millions of hours of commute time as well as the accompanying expenses, as one example. Still, given the choice, many employees will opt for a hybrid-schedule that gives them a best-of-both-worlds arrangement over strictly on-site or strictly remote work.

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Despite the common preference among employees for doing at least some portion of their work on-site, however, remote work has become so interwoven into the fabric of business culture that companies at this point expect to face major employee pushback for abrupt changes to remote work policies and expectations.

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Even in the face of employee protestation, of course, many businesses have made significant pushes to get employees back into the office, which have returned mixed results. Further complicating the matter is the fact that there are differences of opinion as to whether remote employees are more productive or less productive than their on-site counterparts, with one recent study finding that remote data entry employees were 18% less productive that their onsite peers while a separate study out of Stanford determined that productivity was 13% better among the remote worker set, for example. 

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Also, the cost-benefit analyses surrounding remote work aren’t always so cut and dried, with one case study of a Fortune 500 firm noting that engineers working on site got more than 20% more feedback than remote workers filling similar roles, but the on-site workers also wrote a little more than 20% less code per month than those working remotely, so the trade-offs involved in crafting an optimized arrangement from the perspectives of both employers and employees aren’t exactly intuitive.

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Despite some of the uncertainties about how the advantages and disadvantages of remote work stack up, however, there is fairly clear consensus in favor of minimizing remote work among many employers and certainly those with an interest in commercial real estate, which has a role in the continuing push to get more employees back to the offices and on-site workplaces, as well.

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Given the forces at play, the trend toward back-to-office pushes seems likely to continue, although the changes will probably be more gradual and incremental to avoid the abrupt shifts and culture shock that appear correlated to the degree of employee pushback in response, especially in light of employee openness to hybrid schedules. 

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The operative question then becomes, where will remote work find its equilibrium as a stable proportion of total jobs, and the reality is that answer will likely vary considerably from industry to industry and company to company. Given the potential range of advantages that can be gained by both employees and employers, harnessing maximum schedule flexibility within the constraints and considerations specific to the relevant team, company, and/or line of work is likely the target for which most employers will be aiming. 

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In the meantime, with even video-conferencing platform pioneer Zoom currently in the process of bringing more workers back to the office, the proportion of remote work being conducted off-site will likely continue to gradually fall until that balance is found.

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