About a third of Americans are working from home due to corona virus. Although technology that enables this has been around for many years, it has taken a pandemic to force companies to move to remote work.
Due to consequence and the rise in number of corona virus cases more employers have ramped up remote work plans for many or all their employees around the globe.
Companies that encourage and support remote work often report higher levels of employee retention and engagement, higher employee satisfaction, increased productivity, and autonomy.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that remote work is possible. We examined 483 occupations and found that 113 of them can be performed remotely,” says Carl Benedikt Frey, Oxford Martin Citi Fellow, and Director of the Future of Work Program at the Oxford Martin School. “Importantly though, those 113 occupations employ 52% of the U.S. workforce."
There is also a clear divide in the type of jobs that can be done remotely, with the Oxford team finding that there is a clear tendency for remote jobs to be among the best paid. They reveal that fewer than 1 in 10 of the bottom half of earners are capable of working from home, which compares to around half of higher earners.
The future of work
The question is whether this rise in remote working will endure after the pandemic, or whether we'll go back to working pretty much as we did before.
It's a situation the Oxford team believe will be more and more common in the years ahead. They argue that the tools, and perhaps more importantly the culture, are now in place to support greater flexibility in terms of both location and even work schedules.
"Technology has evolved to the point that virtual communication can substitute for face-to-face interactions," they explain. "From telehealth to business meetings, more human interaction will take place on a screen in the future."
Prevalence of virtual work will probably have a significant impact on the physical world and argue that things like business travel might reduce as the need for face-to-face meetings reduces. They suggest a reduction in business travel of up to 25% is possible, with this having a significant impact on airline revenues.