Remotely interested
If bosses are finding it tricky to convince their employees to return to the office, they might not have any more luck with new recruits either. In fact, search interest for remote work is still hovering around all-time high levels according to Indeed data from June.
In a recent Pew Research Center survey, some 71% of US teleworkers said that logging in from home was helping them better manage their work and personal lives, while 56% said they were better able to get the job done and meet deadlines too. While working out where exactly the post-pandemic work culture will eventually settle feels impossible (though many tried at the time and continue to try) for now, at least, it seems that many are sticking to the new setups that were afforded by the pandemic, when they can.
That may be to the chagrin of some employers who’d rather staff return to the office full-time, especially in light of a slew of new studies debunking the claims of the efficiency of remote work. One study, which randomly assigned data-entry workers to either at home or the office, found that the office workers were ~18% more productive.
Putting practice
Of course, most of us don't want to hear stats like "18% more productive" when evaluating whether to work from home or not. The liberation from commuting, the extra minutes in bed and the ability to balance family responsibilities are hard to beat. And, remote work also makes clocking off an hour or two early a lot easier. Indeed, employees have reshaped the structure of their workdays, giving rise to a trend that the NYTimes called "afternoon fun" — as workers start to indulge in leisure activities, even lengthy ones like golf, in the middle of the week.
Par for the course
A record number of people are fitting in a round of golf between Zoom calls, according to a pair of researchers from Stanford. They analyzed geolocation data from over 3,400 golf courses, and found a staggering 83% surge in midweek golf trips in August 2022 compared to August 2019. Notably, Wednesday afternoons at 4pm witnessed an astronomical surge of 278% in golf games played between 2019 and 2022.
Crystal ball
So, what does the future of work look like? Well, unsurprisingly, we all want to have our cake and eat it too. If we can work remotely, many of us want to. If we can add a little leisure into our daily routine, we will. Indeed, we seem to be entering a phase in which remote work is just another benefit to be negotiated over between workers and employers, like health cover, vacation days and pay. As Carrie Fisher reportedly said: "Everything is negotiable. Whether or not the negotiation is easy is another thing".
Currently, those negotiations have taken us to ~50% of the way back to "normal". We wouldn't want to guess on where things are in 10 years — 60%, 70% or 80% all seem plausible — but all the way back to 100%? That seems a very big stretch — particularly as I write this final paragraph with a cup of coffee on Sunday morning... from home.
