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The Remote Results Are In
Four percent. That’s the share of employed Americans who worked exclusively from their homes in 2019. If you’re reading this from a home office/guest bedroom-hybrid setup that didn’t exist four years ago, that number might seem inconceivable.
2020 brought numerous changes to everyday life, but none more abrupt than a wholesale shift to remote work—with the share of employed Americans working exclusively from their homes jumping to 54% during the early days of the pandemic.
Since then, economists, sociologists, and other researchers have been feverishly gathering data to determine the results of the most significant work-related experiment since the 40-hour workweek. And the early results are in.
Productivity
Studies of productivity in work-from-home arrangements are not aligned. Some papers have linked remote work to declines in productivity between 8% and 19%. However, other research has found productivity gains of up to 24%, while one study shows that remote employees work harder and for longer hours.
Hybrid Work
What researchers do agree on, however, is that hybrid work is here to stay. According to a recent survey conducted by Owl Labs, globally, 16% of the total employees are working remotely, whereas 62% have opted for working hybrid. Only 22% of all employees surveyed work full-time from an office.
Speaking of “the office”... Offices are at about half their pre-pandemic occupancy levels, and about a quarter of American workdays are done from home, according to new data from Kastle Systems—an office security company that tracks badge swipes and keycard usage at more than 2,600 buildings across 47 states. These numbers indicate remote work isn’t going anywhere in the short term.
Working Women
Even before the pandemic, remote work has helped many working mothers maintain two full-time jobs: their professional careers and being a mom. In 2022, women spent 1.74 hours per day caring for children, about twice the time men spent on primary childcare.
In a recent study from the University of Virginia and the University of Southern California, researchers looked at fields like computer science, marketing, and communications, which were more inclined than others to allow remote work from 2009 to 2019. They found that when remote work rose 2%, there was a 2% increase in mothers’ employment. Notably, there was still a gap between employment rates of mothers and those without children. But, remote work helped close that gap.
While some working women (particularly mothers) may benefit from being remote, women tend to experience greater penalties when they do. In a study of engineers at a Fortune 500 company, women working remotely received pronouncedly less feedback on their work than men working remotely.
"Proximity has a bigger impact on women's comfort with asking follow-up questions," said Emma Harrington, an economist at the University of Virginia, who worked on the remote work feedback study as well as the mothers' workforce participation study.
Why you should care: It’s been a little over three-and-a-half years since the pandemic sent millions of employees to work from home offices, dining room tables, and even a few closets. So, there is nothing remotely new about remote work. But the results are starting to show, and it’s important to reflect on how remote and hybrid working arrangements have affected employees as well as your organization’s reaction (both conscious and unconscious) to this shift.
