Remote Work Won’t Die When Offices Re-Open

Offices will reopen post-COVID. So what?

Hi,

Welcome to Remotely Inclined, a newsletter about running a business remotely. If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. Want to share your feedback? Respond to this email (or send me one) Or just read on…

First: Welcome to all new subscribers (we’re almost at 600!). I’d love to get to know you. Can you respond to this email (or send me one) with your biggest question about running a business remotely?

Second: I add a comment to the Remote Work Announcement Tracker article every time a company announces permanent remote arrangements. So far I’ve added Quora and Bryn Mawr Bank. Know of a company? Leave a comment.

Today: I’m talking about the future of (remote) work and what it means that companies are announcing office-return plans. I hope you like it.

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Remote work and COVID are intricately tied together. While the remote work movement has been going on for years, COVID was the first time millions of people tried working remotely. Some loved it. Others hated it (which we knew would happen for some).

But as some countries are reopening economies and there’s “cautious optimism” that a COVID vaccine will be ready in the next 6-8 months, a new class of op-eds has appeared, all too ready to claim that remote work is over. Think tank bigwigs are writing scathing pieces about how the future of work is in the office (with very little irony considering the author wrote the article successfully from home). Others talk about the virtues of the office and how excited they are to get back to it - and that remote work is certainly over for them as soon as possible. 

Reading all of these pieces, I have one overwhelming thought: So what? 

These authors seem to think they have taken a dig at remote. A “we’ll show you” to the kind of work they don’t feel is more productive (no matter what Stanford and Harvard say!). So what? 

Big debates rage about whether remote work is “here to stay” for hundreds of millions of workers around the world that went remote due to COVID, with many journalists gleefully citing one opinion study that remote work is less productive for 30% of people (despite more credible studies suggesting the opposite). So what? 

A new study found that 71% of companies don’t have specific plans yet for post-COVID work, but of those companies, more than 50% will have less than half of their employees working remotely. Only 8% plan to have mostly or entirely remote workforces. So what?

From a movement perspective, remote work saw a massive acceleration in awareness, support, and studies. Remote work will still be a reality for millions more people around the globe even post-COVID. That’s a win no matter how you slice it. 

(Side note: I’d be so grateful if you shared this content with your networks and friends interested in remote work)

A study by Citi analyzed over 480 professions and found that 113 of them can be done entirely remotely. The kicker? Those 113 professions account for 52% of the United States labor force (around 85 million people). That leaves 48% of the labor force needing to return to the office - which is totally fine. That’s still a huge growth in the number of remote workers, which normalizes the concept that value can be delivered remotely. 

The companies that have already announced permanent remote work plans are not only large employers but also trendsetter brands. When companies like Twitter, Shopify, and UBS take action, smaller companies pay attention. These companies are mostly using a hybrid remote work arrangement, which further shows that the office and remote work can mix quite well. 

From a business perspective, companies have invested in the infrastructure of remote work already, meaning there’s a lower cost to continuity. There used to be an uphill battle where employees would have to create a two-tiered system so they could be remote while everyone else was in the office. This is something that Andre-Paul Johnson, the head of growth at video game studio Breaking Walls, talked about with me on Remotely Inclined Chats. The culture piece is still going to be a challenge, but we can look to companies that have already built healthy cultures remotely for inspiration to solve this across more companies. 

Now that the investment has been put in, companies will be looking to get the highest ROI possible from those dollars. Especially if the pandemic creates the lasting global recession that some believe it will, companies won’t like the idea of spending all that money on remote just to spend it again on office reintegration. But pandemic aside, once the infrastructure has been set up and people are used to it, the barriers to remaining remote (or using a hybrid arrangement) are significantly lower. This will - as it already has - lead to more companies staying remote / hybrid remote. 

Employees are also getting the benefit of choice here. The more companies choose hybrid arrangements or keep offices open for employees, the better. The idea that a company has to be fully-remote for it to be a “win” is a misnomer on two levels: first, remote work isn’t about winning against the office. And second, having more choice for employees is a win all around and every company - remote or not - should celebrate that. 

Beyond the strictly business side of remote work, companies choosing to stay remote or leverage a hybrid arrangement with more flexible options for employees is a massive win for society as a whole. 

First, we have the environmental impact. Looking again at that Citi study, Elizabeth Curmi, Director Sustainable Finance, Citi Global Insights, assesses that "using a scenario analysis, if 52% of U.S. workers worked just 1 day from home, annual CO2 reductions could be 20MT annually, a 2.5% decrease and the equivalent of taking 4.3 million cars off the road annually.” That’s it - one day of working from home per week with four days in the office - could have a massive lasting impact on environmental sustainability.

Then we have the impacts on diversity and inclusion. I wrote about this briefly in my essay Remote Work Can Heal America, but remote work removes some fundamental barriers to inclusion such as office accessibility and geographic discrimination. It also gives people who have caregiving duties the opportunity to earn a good wage and work a good job without having to choose between work and care. While remote work is certainly not going to solve the inclusion puzzle, it makes work a little more accessible for a lot more people, and that’s a very good thing. 

From here, add the impacts on local economies. If more people work from home, there will be greater demand for local entrepreneurship, whether in sections of large cities or in small towns. This isn’t to say the commuter town or “bedroom community” will instantly become a thing of the past, but we have an opportunity with remote work to reimagine communities for better living experiences.

Further, there’s a massive cultural opportunity: in a remote work world, we won’t have to question whether tearing down historic monuments or paving over parks for the sake of building an office tower is necessary. Our world can preserve its history, its stories, and its landmarks far more effectively when the impetuous march of progress isn’t demanding their removal, but supporting their preservation. 

And then let’s talk about geographic mobility. On a local level, remote work means more choice in where you live, whether that’s going to (or leaving) the city or leaving (or staying in) a small town. This is a massive shift from the ever-increasing work inequality that rages in the developed urban versus rural world. On a global level, countries are using remote work as a competitive advantage, with digitally-forward Estonia leading the way. The small EU nation is now launching a remote worker visa, making it easy for people with remote work to live in the country while working elsewhere. The drive, pushed by digital organization e-Estonia, wants to make Estonia the top destination in the world for remote workers. No word yet on whether other countries will follow, but this is a large first step.

Remote work naysayers seem to believe that advocates of remote won’t stop until every business shuts down their office. That’s just not the case. So as debates rage about whether remote work is “over” or not, millions of people found a new sense of freedom and control in how they work. Businesses around the world learned a new way of work that for some has been amazing. I just don’t see how people who like working from offices going back into offices is a death knell to remote work. It must just be people craving the comforts they are used to, and I don’t blame them for that. 

For now, though, whether millions of people go back to the office post-COVID or not, one thing has been made irrevocably clear: working remotely works if you want it to.