The pushback against remote employment is in full force. The video conferencing startup Zoom has requested that staff come back to the workplace, which seems like an oxymoron to come to reality.
The two businesses are the latest to have a bad attitude toward work from home (WFH), but does this indicate that WFH as we know it is about to end? According to reports, Amazon is watching employees to make sure they are at their workstations.
Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford and an expert in remote employment. WFH is here to stay for workers who can do at least some of their work from home, and it is being bolstered by some key changes in the labor market.
One way that the epidemic has changed the workplace is In the US, about half of all employees spend at least a portion of their workweek working from home.
All frontline employees, including those in retail, food services, cleaning, security, or other occupations that are challenging to do remotely, are physically present at their places of employment. But in general, everyone who has the option works from home, at least occasionally.
This is a major change.
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Work Evolution
Bloom and his co-authors discovered that before the epidemic, individuals were working from home for roughly 5% of their workdays in a working paper that was published last month. At least 25% of workdays are now affected.
According to Bloom, “that is significant because it doubled roughly every 15 years before the epidemic, so in essence, you’ve grown by 40 years in just over two years, a growth of almost 50 years in working from home.”
The epidemic occurred at the same time that two technologies that make working from home considerably simpler were widely adopted: cloud storage and video conferencing platforms. Going to the office five days a week before the epidemic, he added, “was clearly a mistake,” given how much work can now be done from home thanks to this technology.
In 2015, we had the option to change what we were doing in 2020; in 2010, we probably couldn’t have accomplished it, he said. Returning to the workplace five days a week will remain a thing of the past for many Americans with desk employment.
The majority of businesses simply demand that workers report to work two or three days a week, usually Tuesday through Thursday, with Monday and Friday serving as traditional WFH days. These hybrid policies benefit both companies and employees.
Employee happiness and productivity are unaffected, which helps businesses with hiring and retention. According to Bloom’s research, the ability to work from home has a similar value to an 8% salary raise for employees.
Source: theguardian
