Hindsight is 20/20 in 2020. It’s a year we couldn’t have seen coming. (Well, public health experts did, but that’s another conversation.) In March, when the whole world moved to work-from-home status due to the pandemic, I admit to being a little smug. Workers loved not having a commute and employers loved saving on rent. “It’ll never stick,” I thought. Having worked from home since 1995, I suppose I considered myself an expert of sorts (oh, the hubris).
My thesis was that working from home requires a certain type of personality, though not necessarily a “better” one. I believed that few are suited to working alone for much of the day, or are able to work productively without the moment-to-moment accountability of others’ presence. So I predicted that the WFH boom would fade to a whimper. I was wrong.
Instead, what’s ahead? Based on a recent survey, Global Workplace Analytics estimates 25-30% of employees will continue to work from home multiple days each week after the Covid-19 crisis subsides. This is compared to 3.6% of the workforce pre-pandemic. They believe the uptick will be due to employee demand, the reduced fear from managers about oversight, cost savings, disaster preparedness, and the benefits of not commuting on time and environment. It should be noted that an estimated 56% of the U.S. jobs are considered remote-compatible. Also, pandemic circumstances affected workers unevenly, such as for those with small children homeschooling versus without.
I got my own WFH forecast wrong for a few reasons:
- Technology. Widespread adoption of and innovation in virtual meeting and communication tools has changed work forever. Everyone has gotten comfortable with video and how to get work done virtually.
- The sheer length of the pandemic has acclimated us to the concept of working from home. Right now it is the norm, not an exception. And the work is getting done. This has reduced fear from managers and executives.
- We’ve all gotten creative about meeting the need to develop relationships and “watercooler” moments virtually. From virtual happy hours to remote team-building games, every company and every manager has worked hard to create opportunities for human-to-human connection, even when not in the physical office space.
I believe the pandemic has hastened change that needed to happen and exposed vulnerabilities that needed exposure. The WFH trend exposed the toll that commuting takes, both on the employee and the planet. Employers are examining the value of high-rent offices. Working from home has also forced many to take another look at productivity. Are you really productive just because you’re in the office? Finally, management faults are now glaringly obvious, and those who were ineffective in setting up clarity practices such as KPIs and performance reviews found themselves in a WFH environment without the tools to measure performance.
There are many more tensions ahead as businesses sort out how to manage mixed remote/nonremote teams productively. Fully distributed companies—Basecamp, Buffer and Atomattic come to mind—have it easiest. Everyone gets equal treatment. But tech companies are already trying to sort out how to make this pivot equitable. Levers in play:
Hiring – With remote work, the hiring pool just got quite large. But are long-term plans to move back to offices? If so, should the company only hire candidates who say they would be willing to relocate eventually?
Pay – Should cost-of-living in a remote employee’s city be a factor in compensation? Very tricky to pull off. This is especially important for companies based in pricey Silicon Valley and New York, for example.
Power – Will those working remotely be disadvantaged in advancement if they don’t have physical interactions with the power structure?
Management – How will teams best work together and managers effectively manage teams where some employees are remote and others aren’t?
The pandemic and the forced WFH experiment has cleared the way for many more people whose jobs and personalities are well suited to working from home to capitalize on the benefits. That’s a silver lining to the pandemic, and an outcome I’m happy to have been wrong about.