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125 Remote Work Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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Remote work has become increasingly popular in recent years, with more and more companies offering flexible work arrangements for their employees. As a result, many individuals are now able to work from the comfort of their own homes, or from any location of their choosing. This shift towards remote work has sparked a growing interest in the topic, leading to a wealth of research and discussion on the subject.

If you're a student or professional looking to explore the concept of remote work further, you may be considering writing an essay on the topic. To help get you started, we've compiled a list of 125 remote work essay topic ideas and examples to inspire your writing:

• The benefits and challenges of remote work
• The impact of remote work on work-life balance
• The future of remote work post-pandemic
• The role of technology in enabling remote work
• The psychological effects of remote work on employees
• The effects of remote work on company culture
• Remote work vs. traditional office work: a comparison
• The gig economy and remote work
• The pros and cons of working remotely as a freelancer
• Remote work and mental health: exploring the link
• Remote work and productivity: does it really work?
• The impact of remote work on employee engagement
• Remote work and the environment: a sustainable option?
• The legal implications of remote work for employers
• Remote work and job satisfaction: are remote workers happier?
• The challenges of managing remote teams
• Remote work and diversity and inclusion initiatives
• The impact of remote work on career advancement
• Remote work and the future of urbanization
• The social implications of remote work for society
• The effects of remote work on creativity and innovation
• Remote work and the gig economy: the rise of freelancing
• The impact of remote work on employee turnover
• Remote work and the digital nomad lifestyle
• The role of communication in successful remote work
• The effects of remote work on employee well-being
• Remote work and the future of workspaces
• The impact of remote work on team collaboration
• Remote work and the gig economy: a match made in heaven?
• The challenges of remote work for introverted employees
• Remote work and the future of work-life balance
• The impact of remote work on employee motivation
• Remote work and the rise of the virtual office
• The effects of remote work on employee creativity
• Remote work and the future of organizational structure
• The impact of remote work on employee engagement and retention
• Remote work and the future of office design
• The challenges of managing remote employees
• Remote work and the future of team dynamics
• The impact of remote work on employee autonomy
• Remote work and the future of employee benefits
• The effects of remote work on employee performance
• Remote work and the future of employee recognition
• The challenges of remote work for extroverted employees
• Remote work and the future of employee training and development
• The impact of remote work on employee satisfaction
• Remote work and the future of work-life integration
• The effects of remote work on employee stress levels
• Remote work and the future of flexible work arrangements
• The challenges of remote work for employees with disabilities
• Remote work and the future of remote team building
• The impact of remote work on employee burnout
• Remote work and the future of remote work policies
• The effects of remote work on employee creativity and innovation
• Remote work and the future of remote work technology
• The challenges of remote work for employees with children
• Remote work and the future of remote work culture
• The impact of remote work on employee performance and productivity
• Remote work and the future of remote work security
• The effects of remote work on employee communication and collaboration
• Remote work and the future of remote work tools
• The challenges of remote work for employees with mental health issues
• Remote work and the future of remote work trends
• The impact of remote work on employee health and well-being
• Remote work and the future of remote work training
• The effects of remote work on employee engagement and satisfaction
• Remote work and the future of remote work benefits
• The challenges of remote work for employees with chronic illnesses
• Remote work and the future of remote work performance
• The impact of remote work on employee happiness and fulfillment
• Remote work and the future of remote work management
• The effects of remote work on employee motivation and morale
• Remote work and the future of remote work communication
• The challenges of remote work for employees with caregiving responsibilities
• Remote work and the future of remote work collaboration
• The impact of remote work on employee autonomy and independence
• Remote work and the future of remote work flexibility
• The effects of remote work on employee performance and productivity
• Remote work and the future of remote work efficiency
• The challenges of remote work for employees with social anxiety
• Remote work and the future of remote work innovation
• The impact of remote work on employee engagement and commitment
• Remote work and the future of remote work sustainability
• The effects of remote work on employee communication and teamwork
• Remote work and the future of remote work culture and values
• The challenges of remote work for employees with communication barriers
• Remote work and the future of remote work benefits and perks
• The impact of remote work on employee satisfaction and well-being
• Remote work and the future of remote work technology and tools
• The effects of remote work on employee motivation and job satisfaction
• Remote work and the future of remote work training and development
• The challenges of remote work for employees with physical disabilities
• Remote work and the future of remote work policies and procedures
• Remote work and the future of remote work security and privacy
• Remote work and the future of remote work trends and predictions
• Remote work and the future of remote work benefits and incentives
• The impact of remote work on employee engagement and satisfaction
• Remote work and the future of remote work management and leadership
• Remote work and the future of remote work communication and connectivity
• Remote work and the future of remote work collaboration and teamwork
• Remote work and the future of remote work flexibility and adaptability
• Remote work and the future of remote work efficiency and effectiveness
• The challenges of remote work for employees with social anxiety and introversion
• Remote work and the future of remote work innovation and creativity
• Remote work and the future of remote work sustainability and environmental impact
• The challenges of remote work for employees with communication barriers and language differences
• The challenges of remote work for employees with physical disabilities and health conditions

These essay topics cover a wide range of aspects related to remote work, offering plenty of opportunities for exploration and analysis. Whether you're interested in the psychological effects of remote work on employees, the impact of technology on remote work, or the future trends and predictions in the remote work landscape, there's sure to be a topic on this list that piques your interest.

As you delve into your research and writing, be sure to consider the latest research, trends, and best practices in the field of remote work. By staying informed and engaged with the topic, you'll be well-equipped to produce a compelling and insightful essay on remote work that sheds light on this increasingly important aspect of the modern work environment.

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What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2,000 tasks, 800 jobs, and nine countries

For many workers, COVID-19’s impact has depended greatly on one question: Can I work from home or am I tethered to my workplace? Quarantines, lockdowns, and self-imposed isolation have pushed tens of millions around the world to work from home, accelerating a workplace experiment that had struggled to gain traction before COVID-19 hit.

Now, well into the pandemic, the limitations and the benefits of remote work are clearer. Although many people are returning to the workplace as economies reopen—the majority could not work remotely at all—executives have indicated in surveys that hybrid models of remote work  for some employees are here to stay. The virus has broken through cultural and technological barriers that prevented remote work in the past, setting in motion a structural shift in where work takes place, at least for some people.

Now that vaccines are awaiting approval, the question looms: To what extent will remote work persist ? In this article, we assess the possibility for various work activities to be performed remotely. Building on the McKinsey Global Institute’s body of work on automation, AI, and the future of work, we extend our models to consider where work is performed. 1 The future of work in Europe: Automation, workforce transitions, and the future geography of work , McKinsey Global Institute, June 2020; The future of work in America: People and places, today and tomorrow , McKinsey Global Institute, July 2019; Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation , McKinsey Global Institute, December 2017. Our analysis finds that the potential for remote work is highly concentrated among highly skilled, highly educated workers in a handful of industries, occupations, and geographies.

More than 20 percent of the workforce could work remotely three to five days a week as effectively as they could if working from an office. If remote work took hold at that level, that would mean three to four times as many people working from home than before the pandemic and would have a profound impact on urban economies, transportation, and consumer spending, among other things.

The virus has broken through cultural and technological barriers that prevented remote work in the past, setting in motion a structural shift in where work takes place, at least for some people.

More than half the workforce, however, has little or no opportunity for remote work. Some of their jobs require collaborating with others or using specialized machinery; other jobs, such as conducting CT scans, must be done on location; and some, such as making deliveries, are performed while out and about. Many of such jobs are low wage and more at risk from broad trends such as automation and digitization. Remote work thus risks accentuating inequalities at a social level.

The potential for remote work is determined by tasks and activities, not occupations

Remote work raises a vast array of issues and challenges for employees and employers. Companies are pondering how best to deliver coaching remotely and how to configure workspaces to enhance employee safety, among a host of other thorny questions raised by COVID-19. For their part, employees are struggling to find the best home-work balance and equip themselves for working and collaborating remotely.

In this article, however, we aim to granularly define the activities and occupations that can be done from home to better understand the future staying power of remote work. We have analyzed the potential for remote work—or work that doesn’t require interpersonal interaction or a physical presence at a specific worksite—in a range of countries, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We used MGI’s workforce model based on the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) to analyze more than 2,000 activities in more than 800 occupations and identify which activities and occupations have the greatest potential for remote work.

The potential for remote work depends on the mix of activities undertaken in each occupation and on their physical, spatial, and interpersonal context. We first assessed the theoretical extent to which an activity can be done remotely. This depends on whether a worker needs to be physically present on-site to do a task, interact with others, or use location-specific machinery or equipment.

Many physical or manual activities, as well as those that require use of fixed equipment, cannot be done remotely. These include providing care, operating machinery, using lab equipment, and processing customer transactions in stores. In contrast, activities such as information gathering and processing, communicating with others, teaching and counseling, and coding data can theoretically be done remotely.

Additionally, employers have found during the pandemic that although some tasks can be done remotely in a crisis, they are much more effectively done in person. These activities include coaching, counseling, and providing advice and feedback; building customer and colleague relationships; bringing new employees into a company; negotiating and making critical decisions; teaching and training; and work that benefits from collaboration, such as innovation, problem-solving, and creativity. If onboarding were to be done remotely, for instance, it would require significant rethinking of the activity to produce outcomes similar to those achieved in person.

For instance, while teaching has moved to remote work during the pandemic, parents and teachers alike say that quality has suffered. Similarly, courtrooms have functioned remotely but are unlikely to remain online going forward out of concern for legal rights and equity—some defendants lack adequate connectivity and lawyers, and judges worry about missing nonverbal cues in video conferences.

So we have devised two metrics for remote work potential: the maximum potential, including all activities that theoretically can be performed remotely, and a lower bound for the effective potential for remote work, which excludes activities that have a clear benefit from being done in person (Exhibit 1).

To determine the overall potential for remote work for jobs and sectors, we use the time spent on different activities within occupations. We find that remote work potential is concentrated in a few sectors. Finance and insurance has the highest potential, with three-quarters of time spent on activities that can be done remotely without a loss of productivity. Management, business services, and information technology have the next highest potential, all with more than half of employee time spent on activities that could effectively be done remotely (Exhibit 2). These sectors are characterized by a high share of workers with college degrees or higher.

Remote work potential is higher in advanced economies

The potential for remote work varies across countries, a reflection of their sector, occupation, and activity mix. Business and financial services are a large share of the UK economy, for example, and it has the highest potential for remote work among the countries we examined. Its workforce could theoretically work remotely one-third of the time without a loss of productivity, or almost half the time but with diminished productivity. (Exhibit 3). Other advanced economies are not far behind; their workforces could dedicate 28 to 30 percent of the time to working remotely without losing productivity.

In emerging economies, employment is skewed toward occupations that require physical and manual activities in sectors like agriculture and manufacturing. The potential for time spent on remote work drops to 12 to 26 percent in the emerging economies we assessed. In India, for instance, the workforce could spend just 12 percent of the time working remotely without losing effectiveness. Although India is known globally for its high-tech and financial services industries, the vast majority of its workforce of 464 million is employed in occupations like retail services and agriculture that cannot be done remotely.

Although India is known globally for its high-tech and financial services industries, the vast majority of its workforce of 464 million is employed in occupations like retail services and agriculture that cannot be done remotely.

A hybrid model that combines some remote work with work in an office is possible for occupations with high remote work potential

For most workers, some activities during a typical day lend themselves to remote work, while the rest of their tasks require their on-site physical presence. In the US workforce, we find that just 22 percent of employees can work remotely between three and five days a week without affecting productivity, while only 5 percent could do so in India. In contrast, 61 percent of the workforce in the United States can work no more than a few hours a week remotely or not at all. The remaining 17 percent of the workforce could work remotely partially, between one and three days per week (Exhibit 4).

Consider a floral designer. We estimate that between half and one-quarter of his job can be done remotely. He can take orders by phone or online and contract for delivery through an app, but floral arrangement itself requires being in a shop where the flowers are stored in a refrigerated case and ribbons, moss, vases, and other materials used to create a floral design are at hand. To make a floral designer’s job more remote would require dividing his various tasks among all employees in a flower shop. In contrast, credit analysts, database administrators, and tax preparers, among others, can do virtually all of their work remotely. In general, workers whose jobs require cognitive thinking and problem solving, managing and developing people, and data processing have the greatest potential to work from home. These employees also tend to be among the highest paid.

The ability to work remotely also depends on the need to use specialized equipment. According to our analysis, a chemical technician could work remotely only a quarter of the time because much of her work must be done in a lab housing the equipment she needs. Among healthcare occupations, general practitioners who can use digital technologies to communicate with patients have a much greater potential for remote work than surgeons and x-ray technicians, who need advanced equipment and tools to do their work. Thus, among health professionals overall, the effective remote work potential is just 11 percent.

Even for the same activity, the context in which a job is done matters. Consider the activity “analyzing data or information,” which can be done remotely by a statistician or financial analyst but not by a surveyor. Crime scene analysts and workers who analyze consumer trends both engage in what O*NET describes as “getting, processing, analyzing, documenting and interpreting information,” but the former must go to the location of, say, a murder while the latter can do his work in front of a computer at home. A travel agent can calculate the cost of goods or services from a kitchen table, but a grocery clerk does that from behind a counter in a store.

And then there are jobs that require workers to be on-site or in person more than four days a week. Due to the physical nature of most of their work activities, occupations such as transportation, food services, property maintenance, and agriculture offer little or no opportunity for remote work. Building inspectors must go to a building or construction site. Nursing assistants must work in a healthcare facility. Many jobs declared essential by governments during the pandemic—nursing, building maintenance, and garbage collection, for example—fall into this category of jobs with low remote work potential.

This mixed pattern of remote and physical activities of each occupation helps explain the results of a recent McKinsey survey of 800 corporate executives  around the world. Across all sectors, 38 percent of respondents expect their remote employees to work two or more days a week away from the office after the pandemic, compared to 22 percent of respondents surveyed before the pandemic. But just 19 percent of respondents to the most recent survey said they expected employees to work three or more days remotely. This suggests that executives anticipate operating their businesses with a hybrid model  of some sort, with employees working remotely and from an office during the workweek. JPMorgan already has a plan for its 60,950 employees to work from home one or two weeks a month or two days a week, depending on the line of business.

Hybrid remote work has important implications for urban economies

Currently, only a small share of the workforce in advanced economies—typically between 5 and 7 percent—regularly works from home. A shift to 15 to 20 percent of workers spending more time at home and less in the office could have profound impacts on urban economies. More people working remotely means fewer people commuting between home and work every day or traveling to different locations for work. This could have significant economic consequences, including on transportation, gasoline and auto sales, restaurants and retail in urban centers, demand for office real estate, and other consumption patterns.

A McKinsey survey of office space managers conducted in May found that after the pandemic, they expect a 36 percent increase in worktime outside their offices, affecting main offices and satellite locations. This means companies will need less office space, and several are already planning to reduce real estate expenses. Moody’s Analytics predicts that the office vacancy rate in the United States will climb to 19.4 percent, compared to 16.8 percent at the end of 2019, and rise to 20.2 percent by the end of 2022. A survey of 248 US chief operating officers found that one-third plan to reduce office space in the coming years as leases expire.

The impact of that will reverberate through the restaurants and bars, shops, and services businesses that cater to office workers and will put a dent in some state and local tax revenues. For example, REI plans to sell off its new corporate headquarters before even moving in and instead begin operating from satellite offices. In contrast, Amazon recently signed leases for a total of 900,000 feet of office space in six cities around the United States, citing the lack of spontaneity in virtual teamwork.

As tech companies announced plans for permanent remote work options, the median price of a one-bedroom rental in San Francisco dropped 24.2 percent compared to a year ago, while in New York City, which had roughly 28,000 residents in every square mile at the start of 2020, 15,000 rental apartments were empty in September, the most vacancies in recorded history.

Nor is residential real estate immune from the impact of remote work. As tech companies announced plans for permanent remote work options, the median price of a one-bedroom rental in San Francisco dropped 24.2 percent compared to a year ago, while in New York City, which had roughly 28,000 residents in every square mile at the start of 2020, 15,000 rental apartments were empty in September, the most vacancies in recorded history. Conversely, bidding wars are breaking out in suburbs and smaller cities as remote workers seek less harried, less expensive lifestyles and homes with a room that can serve as an office or gym—though it is unclear how successful companies will be with workers scattered in far-flung locales.

Remote workers may also shift consumption patterns. Less money spent on transportation, lunch, and wardrobes suitable for the office may be shifted to other uses. Sales of home office equipment, digital tools, and enhanced connectivity gear have boomed.

Whether the shift to remote work translates into spreading prosperity to smaller cities remains to be seen. Previous MGI research in the United States and Europe has shown a trend toward greater geographic concentration of work  in megacities like London and New York and high-growth hubs, including Seattle and Amsterdam . These locales have attracted many of the same type of younger, highly educated workers who can best work remotely. It remains to be seen whether the shift to remote work slows that trend, or whether the most vibrant cities remain magnets for such people.

Organizations will have to adjust their practices to capture potential productivity gains from remote work

Is remote work good for productivity? Ultimately, the answer may determine its popularity, especially given the long period of waning labor productivity  that preceded the pandemic. So far, there is scant clarity—and widespread contradiction—about the productivity impact. Some 41 percent of employees who responded to a McKinsey consumer survey in May said they were more productive working remotely than in the office. As employees have gained experience working remotely during the pandemic, their confidence in their productivity has grown, with the number of people saying they worked more productively increasing by 45 percent from April to May.

With nine months of experience under their belts, more employers are seeing somewhat better productivity from their remote workers. Interviews with chief executives about remote work elicited a mixed range of opinions. Some express confidence that remote work can continue, while others say they see few positives to remote work.

With nine months of experience under their belts, more employers are seeing somewhat better productivity from their remote workers.

One impediment to productivity may be connectivity. A researcher at Stanford University found that only 65 percent of Americans surveyed said they had fast enough internet service to support viable video calls, and in many parts of the developing world, the connectivity infrastructure is sparse or nonexistent. Developing digital infrastructure will require significant public and private investment.

For women in particular, remote work is a mixed blessing. It boosts flexibility—not needing to be physically co-located with fellow workers enables independent work and more flexible hours—as well as productivity, with less time wasted commuting. Yet remote work also may increase gender disparity in the workplace, exacerbating the regressive effects of COVID-19. The female workforce in many economies is more highly concentrated in occupational clusters like healthcare, food services, and customer service that have relatively low potential for remote work. Previous MGI research on gender parity found that jobs held by women are 19 percent more at risk than jobs held by men simply because women are disproportionately represented in sectors most negatively affected by COVID-19.

Some forms of remote work are likely to persist long after COVID-19 is conquered. This will require many shifts, such as investment in digital infrastructure, freeing up office space, and the structural transformation of cities, food services, commercial real estate, and retail. It also risks accentuating inequalities and creating new psychological and emotional stresses among employees, including from isolation. For most companies, having employees work outside the office  will require reinventing many processes and policies. How long before someone invents the virtual watercooler?

The authors wish to thank Olivia Robinson, Gurneet Singh Dandona, and Alok Singh for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Stephanie Strom, a senior editor at the McKinsey Global Institute.

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The Case for Remote Work

The shift to remote work represents perhaps the single greatest modern opportunity to improve your company's happiness, diversity, economics, productivity, agility, talent pool and environmental impact. It's easier to do now than ever, and the world's most innovative companies are adopting it at an unprecedented rate. But while this may be an incredible opportunity for companies that embrace remote work, it's also poised to become an existential threat to companies that don't.

I believe that offices are a fundamentally antiquated concept. So in 2016, I sold nearly all of my belongings, moved to Brazil , and officially started working remote. I traveled, met and worked with some incredible people, and grew dramatically as a person and professional. A few years later, I moved to Silicon Valley and returned to an office.

Through this experience of oscillating between having an office and not, I've developed a deep appreciation for the impact that flexible work arrangements can have on individuals, companies, and society as a whole. And while remote work has become a more and more common reality, it has also been met with deep resistance and misconception.

This is not a trend; it's a conscious shift

It's very easy to treat remote work like it's just another "ping pong table" or "nap room". That is to say, it's easy to view it as a trendy Silicon Valley job perk. But it's not; it is a fundamental shift in the way that humans work and live, and it's bigger than any single company or industry.

69% of U.S. companies offer flexible work arrangements today, amounting to an increase of 173% since 2005 alone. 66% of knowledge workers and 71% of Millennials believe the office will be obsolete by 2030 . This shift represents perhaps the single greatest modern opportunity to improve your company's happiness, diversity, economics, productivity, agility, talent pool and environmental impact. All in one move.

Remote work makes people happy. 71% of remote workers say they're happy in their job, compared to only 55% of office workers. Over 80% of U.S. workers say that working remotely would make them happier. 91% of remote workers are glad they went remote, citing a better work-life balance, more time with family, and no commute as major contributors to their happiness.

While studying what makes people happy, researchers at Princeton found that commutes were the biggest detractor and family relationships were the biggest contributor to general human happiness and psychological health. The top reason people move is for work , and the top reason they don't is for family . Simply put, offices separate families. They force people to move away from home and spend an unnecessary amount of time just going to and from the office.

In San Francisco, over a lifetime, if you commute 3-4 days a week, you're talking about giving up 500 days of your life to commuting. – Scott Mautz, Senior Executive at Procter & Gamble

The average commute time in the U.S. is 50 minutes , and has been steadily on the rise for the past five decades. This means the average commuter loses 9 days of their life per year to the commute. But that's not all they lose. Couples with commutes longer than 45 minutes are 40% likelier to divorce. Lengthy commuters experience more recurring back and neck pain, sleep and exercise less, and eat more fast food.

A 20 minute commute increase has the same negative effect on job satisfaction as a 19% pay decrease , and one in four people have quit their job because of their commute. Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard, estimates that every 10 minutes spent commuting results in 10% fewer social connections at work.

Remote work is inclusive. Modern companies strive to champion diversity and inclusion, but are severely limited by the office, which excludes entire populations from the workforce by imposing geographic, economic, physical and cultural restrictions, among others. "Anybody can work here, including you, so long as you live in this country, in this state, in this city, which is invariably expensive and couldn't be further away from your family and culture..."

Remote work removes these restrictions and opens doors for women, minorities, parents, people with disabilities and more. Across virtually all categories, diverse candidates say that flexible work is the top benefit they desire. Women are significantly more likely than men to prefer remote work, and they're more likely to quit a job because it doesn't offer remote work. They also experience more harassment in an office setting, and are disproportionately affected by the lack of privacy that offices afford. Minorities are less likely to live in top job markets, and are given more access to opportunities when companies support remote work. More than one-third of remote workers are parents who decided to go remote so they could care for their children.

‍ 463,000 disabled Americans currently work from home, and 83% of them wouldn't be able to work from an office. Even so, only 7.1% of disabled Americans have been able to secure remote roles, while 81% are unemployed today. Remote work makes it possible for people like Matthew Ramir, a developer with cerebral palsy who once broke his ankle while commuting, to do his job safely, comfortably and confidently.

Being able to work from home is a huge stress relief. It gives me a lot of confidence that I'm able to function as a normal employee and be able to navigate the workplace with that disability. – Matthew Ramir, remote developer with cerebral palsy

From military spouses and veterans, to senior citizens, to introverts and people with social anxiety, remote work allows for accessible, enjoyable, and personalized work arrangements which respect the nuances of the individual. It broadens the talent pool, enabling companies to hire people they never would have previously had access to, regardless of identity, socioeconomic status, physical ability or location.

Speaking of location, geographic diversity is often overlooked, but the reality is that human cognition and creativity are inextricably linked to physical environments. When everyone is in the same environment, as they are in an office, their thoughts are homogenized. Remote work allows the space for diverse and creative thought, and in doing so, helps companies develop truly global mindsets. It's one thing to empathize with someone , it's another thing to be someone . To live in the community, speak the language, and share the emotions of the people you build for. The only way to do that is with a diverse, distributed team.

Remote work enriches companies, employees & economies. Multiple studies have shown that by 2030, the US could see an economic boost of $4.5 trillion annually from flexible working alone, with much of that benefitting the people and communities that need it the most, like minorities and women, the unemployed and underemployed, and the vast number of underdeveloped rural communities across the country. But going remote doesn't just boost the economy. It also saves employees and companies a ton of money.

Apple spent $5 billion constructing Apple Park in Cupertino and Google spent $2.4 billion acquiring Chelsea Market in New York. Offices occupy 474 million square feet of space in Silicon Valley alone (a region with a housing shortage of 7:1 ) at an average cost of $158 per square foot per year, or $23,858 per employee per year. And here's the kicker: studies have repeatedly shown that, across all industries, office desks are vacant 50-60% of the time .

Even modest flexible work programs have been found to save companies an average of $11,000 per employee per year. In 2005, Aetna started allowing its employees to transition to remote work. Today, 14,500 of Aetna's 35,000 employees have gone remote, allowing them to cut 2.7 million square feet of office space at $29 a square foot, for about $78 million in cost savings per year. Amazon , American Express , General Electric , McKesson , Dell , Salesforce , Oracle and countless others have all done the same thing and saved multiple millions per year in the process.

If a Silicon Valley company with 30,000 employees were to go 50% remote, they could expect a savings of $357 million per year, on real estate costs alone.

And real estate is just the beginning. On average, it costs $97,166 to relocate an employee. Typically, they're being brought to pretty expensive and crowded places. The top job markets are almost always the cities with the highest cost of living , like New York, Seattle and San Francisco, where the average home price soars above $1 million . In Silicon Valley, you'll need a salary of more than $230,000 to afford a starter home. This has become such a problem that companies are spending billions of dollars to build housing units near their offices, in addition to inflated salaries, benefits, and tax expenses.

Then, employees spend an average of $4,000 per year commuting to the office. In the process, significant wear and tear is caused to expensive public infrastructure, like roads and train systems. Over 150 million people commute to work every day in the US. 76% drive alone , 9% carpool, 5% use public transportation, and 3% walk or cycle. In more than half of the top U.S. metro areas, more people work remote than commute by public transportation. The reduced impact on public infrastructure is so significant that the IRS created special tax deductions just for people that work from home. And at the end of all this, companies invest millions of dollars in research immersion programs to send their people back out into the world from which they came.

Productivity

Remote work improves productivity. Researchers at Stanford University found that remote workers are an average of 35-40% more productive than their in-office counterparts. Arguably, one of the most productive aspects of offices is their ability to facilitate collaboration and connection. But they can also hurt it. 70% of office workers report feeling distracted at work, citing office noise and interruptions from co-workers.

Studies have shown that office workers can lose up to 86 minutes per day because of noise alone, and 65% of creatives said that silence was the most important requirement for them to do good work. It takes the average person 23 minutes to regain focus after being interrupted. What may be a serendipitous interaction to one person could be a productivity killer to another. Additionally, studies have shown that offices are breeding grounds for sickness . Unsurprisingly, remote workers are less likely to get sick, and thus take 56% less sick days .

Offices were invented during a time when collaboration and communication could only happen in person. The office was never optimal; it was necessary. That simply isn't true anymore.

Remote work also de-biases and reduces bureaucracy by forcing companies to measure performance by results and output , and nothing else. You're probably all too familiar with the fallacy that the people who spend the most time in the office are the most productive. When companies go remote, the focus shifts from office formalities to the work itself, because the work is what's most visible. This allows people to be judged by the quality of their work, rather than their physical appearance or office mannerisms.

Remote work attracts and retains talent. 95% of U.S. knowledge workers want to work remotely, 76% said they'd be more loyal to their employer if they could, and 74% would be willing to quit their job for one that offers remote work. Perhaps most compellingly, companies that allow remote work experience 25% less employee turnover than companies that don't. They're able to hire 33% faster too. Unsurprisingly, a lot of companies are catching on to this. In the last two years alone, there’s been a 78% increase of job posts on LinkedIn that mention work flexibility.

The ability for employees to work remotely used to be a distinctive perk. Today, it’s increasingly an expectation. You might not get special attention for offering flexibility, but you will probably stand out for not having it (and not in a good way). – LinkedIn's Annual Talent Report

Remote work is inherently flexible. As organizations scale and age, it becomes harder to adapt to change. But when companies introduce work flexibility, they themselves become flexible in the process. During the COVID-19 pandemic, companies all around the world panicked to set up remote work, warning that the transition would result in reduced capacity and services . Meanwhile, remote companies like InVision, Buffer, Basecamp, Automattic and Zapier continued business as usual. Remote companies are decentralized, and decentralized companies are adaptive.

Decentralized work arrangements are a hotbed, and a forcing function , for innovation. They force companies to adopt more efficient tools and processes, communicate transparently and asynchronously, iterate rapidly and openly, and include everyone in the process. Where offices make hallway conversations possible in the short term, they become a crux for broken processes in the long term. You can get away with more inefficiencies in person, because they're less obvious. But those hallway conversations aren't inclusive, aren't documented, and aren't efficient. Yet they're typically one of the things we defend most about offices. They're a bug, and as the transition to remote work causes a company to innovate on its own culture, those bugs are fixed.

Your company is a product, and probably your most important one. It's the one you use to build your other products. You should recognize it has bugs too, and needs to be iterated on. – Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp

A company's culture is just as much a product of the company as the goods it sells. And while conversations about innovation tend to focus primarily on products, often the first step to innovating on a product is to innovate on the company which produces it. For this reason, a company's appetite for remote work can serve as a sort of litmus test for its ability to innovate.

Remote work adoption is a highly visible and unambiguous form of innovation. It's something you can ask about in an interview and get a simple "yes" or "no" answer. Often, self-innovation is the genesis for product innovation. If you want to improve the thing you make, you have to be willing to improve the thing that makes it first. The companies that lean into this innovation, rather than resist it, are the same companies that lean into product innovation.

Environment

Remote work is better for the planet. Every year, U.S. remote workers prevent 3.6 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere by not commuting. That's the equivalent to planting 91 million trees . With those savings, you could power 538,361 homes for a year. Additionally, this results in 7.8 billion less vehicle miles traveled, 530 million vehicle trips avoided, $498 million in reduced traffic accident costs and $980 million in oil savings. Those aren't projections; they're real EPA statistics representing the impact of remote work today. Simply put, commuters and offices are two of the highest contributors of carbon emissions in the US, and remote work significantly cuts down on both.

But this doesn't even have to happen at a broad systemic level to make a difference. The impact that a single company can have on the environment, simply by adopting remote work, is immense on its own. When Sun Microsystems allowed its 24,000 U.S. employees to start working remotely, they discovered they were preventing the release of 32,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide every year, reducing their carbon footprint by 98% , even after accounting for increased emissions at home. Xerox did the same thing and found that its remote workers drove 92 million fewer miles, saved 4.6 million gallons of gas, reduced carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 41,000 metric tons , and saved the company over $10 million.

Going remote

Flexible work policies are easier to adopt now than ever. The tools and processes are all in place, the cultural and individual implications have been studied in great depth, and the remaining resistance to remote work typically amounts to little more than general change aversion. My dad has worked fully remote since the '90s. If he could do it then, we can certainly do it now.

In fact, you've probably already had some degree of experience with remote work, even if not through a formal policy at your company. From staying home with the kids to taking shelter from a pandemic, many of us have benefited from flexibility at work, and in turn, we've proven that it's possible. But I want to be clear: quarantine and remote work are not the same thing. One-off experiences with flexible work are not comparable to formalized remote work arrangements.

When companies formally adopt remote work, it becomes ingrained in their culture, and the cognitive load of switching between the office and home dissipates. Remote workers become a priority, and the necessary tools and processes get put into place. But that only happens when organizations make the commitment to do so.

Furthermore, remote work isn't a panacea for your organization's problems. If it sucks to work at your company from an office, it will suck to work at your company from home. It's important to go in with the right expectations, knowing that remote work isn't perfect, but it is a critical step in the right direction. If you're ready to take that step, I have a model that I'd like to propose to you.

Hub & Spoke model

Despite the data and arguments presented here, offices (and people who like offices) aren't the problem. Rather, remote work is the opportunity. Companies can choose to go fully remote, partially remote, or simply support flexible work policies. The important thing is that they do what's right for them, within the context of their industry and corporate culture. Most will probably choose to have a little bit of both, and the data indicates that's actually the right way to approach this.

Gallup studies conducted with hundreds of thousands of employees show that the most productive and engaged workers spend 60%-80% of their time remote . They're also the most likely to have a best friend at work - even more so than office workers. Interestingly, these numbers slip as people spend more time remote, or more time in the office.

The sweet spot for productivity and relationship-building is a weekly schedule of roughly one day in the office and four days remote.

With this in mind, I would like to propose what I call the Hub & Spoke model. This is a hybrid approach to flexible work, where companies go regionally remote. Here are the core concepts:

• Reduce and distribute: Instead of having a giant HQ in a major metro area with a desk for every employee, companies open numerous collaboration hubs in cities all around the country or globe. Smaller companies achieve the same effect through co-working spaces. Now, they're able to enter 2nd and 3rd tier cities, introducing location diversity to their organization and reducing their real estate footprint in the process.
• Utilize at will: Employees may use the collaboration hub as much or little as they prefer, but the company establishes a baseline schedule where teams come together once every 1-2 weeks for collaborative work and meetings.
• Live and work anywhere: Collaboration hubs are placed in central locations, so employees can live in multiple different communities. If adopted universally, employees will experience significantly shortened commute times. Not to mention, they'll only commute a minimum of once every two weeks. This broadens the radius of communities people can live in, thus easing the real estate and traffic burden on any given place.
• Results over location: Employees are compensated based on the value they generate to the company, rather than their location or cost of living. Whether a piece of code was written in California or Nebraska makes no difference in the value it generates for the company. A senior engineer is a senior engineer, and their compensation must reflect that.

Importantly, this model is flexible and should be adjusted according to the needs and culture of each team that implements it. One could imagine numerous areas of optionality, including:

• Team collocation vs. distribution: Some teams may find it's best to base all members in the same region. For example, the Email Software team could have a hub in Atlanta, while the Video Software team has a hub in Los Angeles. Everyone still works remotely, but each team is in the same time zone, and they get together at the same collaboration hub. Other teams may find they benefit from being fully distributed. For example, the Customer Service team could be based all around the world, and thus have people online at all times of day. The result is that each team benefits from flexible work in a way that's suited to them.
• Schedule rigidity: Some teams may have no schedule requirements, others may need everyone to show up once per week, and more than likely, there will be several teams that still need to be fully onsite. Some lines of work are more fit for remote work than others. You can't maintain a data center from home, and that's alright. The key is to optimize for the unique needs of each team, and maximize the benefits they get from remote work.

Truly, optimization is at the heart of remote work. The problem isn't that companies still work from offices; it's that they only work from offices. We're taking a "one size fits all" approach to work arrangements, where the office is the only option. It isn't time to get rid of that option, but it is time to introduce a few others which fit the diverse individuals and teams that comprise a healthy company, and can adapt with the company as it grows.

De facto remote

As companies scale, remote work becomes less of a choice, and more of an unavoidable byproduct of growth. If you've ever worked at a large company, you've probably participated in countless meetings where every attendee is in an office, but nobody is together. You're all participating in a video call from multiple different offices. That's when the oxymoronic term "remote office" enters your corporate vernacular, and at that moment, you're officially de facto remote. You’re physically in an office, but you might as well be anywhere. And it happens much earlier than you'd anticipate. The tipping point is around 300-500 employees, depending on the quality of your organization design.

If you intend to scale your company, you also intend to go remote, whether it's explicitly part of the plan or not.

We recognized this at HubSpot when people started dialing into meetings from different floors of the same building. At the time, we had less than 500 people in the building, spread out across 3 floors. On a much larger scale, we've observed the same phenomena at Google , where we have teams in more than 150 cities around the world. 48% of our meetings involve employees from two or more buildings, 39% involve two or more cities, and 30% involve two or more time zones. It's unsurprising that both companies have become remote work innovators, recognizing the opportunity, and also the necessity.

Opportunity or threat

This is a defining moment for the world's greatest companies, which will be faced with the choice of adopting remote work or hemorrhaging top talent to more innovative cultures. In this way, remote work can either be viewed as a significant opportunity or a great existential threat to a company, depending on how they respond to it. The question simply isn't whether we will go remote. It's when and how, and each company's answer to that will determine whether they're thriving or dying at the end of this.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Remote Work Essay

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Communication is perhaps the most important component in creating a productive and effective workplace. Due to the fact that team communication fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange, it supports healthy working relationships. The more a company’s employees are connected as colleagues, the more effectively the work will be done. Since computers have evolved from bulky machines to compact PCs with plasma monitors, office spaces have also undergone solid technological changes. The latter has made communication between employees challenging but it has also opened up opportunities to improve team relations.

In 2020, because of the coronavirus, a period of social disunity coexisted with the emergence of effective channels of communication. With the transition of employees of different companies to the remote principle of work, there was an optimization and increase in the efficiency of electronic communications. The transition to communication through electronic channels turns almost all participants into introverts. In addition, employee meetings themselves have become more formalized, designed to exchange only business communication. On the one hand, because of the proliferation of remote work, people may begin to perform more efficiently since they are in the comfort of their homes. However, there is also a risk that such an atmosphere will relax them, and there will be an overall decrease in productivity. This ambiguity shows that the emergence of new ways of communicating is both an advantage and a disadvantage for managers.

The increasing prevalence of remote work may mean that many employees will never see their colleagues in person. In terms of communication, this can lead to more rudeness between colleagues. Certainly, this is a disadvantage for the manager because difficulties in the relationships between employees reduce their efficiency. However, it can also be seen as an advantage because trying to solve this problem can lead to improved team cohesion.

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The massive surge in the number of people working from home may be the largest change to the U.S. economy since World War II, says Stanford scholar Nicholas Bloom .

And the shift to working from home, catalyzed by the pandemic, is here to stay, with further growth expected in the long run through improvements in technology.

Looking at data going back to 1965, when less than 1% of people worked from home, the number of people working from home had been rising continuously up to the pandemic, doubling roughly every 15 years, said Bloom, the William D. Eberle Professor in Economics in the School of Humanities and Sciences and professor, by courtesy, at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Before the pandemic, only around 5% of the typical U.S. workforce worked from home; at the pandemic’s onset, it skyrocketed to 61.5%. Currently, about 30% of employees work from home.

“In some ways, one of the biggest lasting legacies of the pandemic will be the shift to work from home,” said Bloom.

Bloom shared his research on working from home at the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute ’s “The Future of Work” Winter 2023 Colloquium, which focused on how the ways we work are changing.

DCI Director Richard Saller moderated the event , which featured scholars from Stanford and beyond discussing working arrangements and attitudes, challenges to office real estate, learned lessons about the power of proximity, and more.

Below are seven takeaways from Bloom’s discussion:

• The employees. About 58% of people in the U.S. can’t work from home at all, and they are typically frontline workers with lower pay. Those who work entirely from home are primarily professionals, managers, and in higher-paying fields such as IT support, payroll, and call centers. The highest paid group includes the 30% of people working from home in a hybrid capacity, and these include professionals and managers.
• The move. Almost 1 million people left city centers like New York and San Francisco during the pandemic. Those who used to go to the office five days a week are now willing to commute farther because they are only in the office a couple days a week, and they want larger homes to accommodate needs such as a home office. This has changed property markets substantially with rents and home values in the suburbs surging, Bloom said. Home values in city centers have risen but not by much.
• The commute. Public transit journeys have plummeted and are currently down by a third compared to pre-pandemic levels. This sharp reduction is threatening the survival of mass transit, Bloom said. These are systems that have relatively fixed costs because the hardware and labor, which is largely unionized, are relatively hard to adjust. A lot of the revenues come from ticket sales, and these agencies are losing a lot of money.
• The office. Offices are changing, with cubicles becoming less popular and meeting rooms more desirable. As some companies incorporate an organized hybrid schedule in which everyone comes in on certain days, they are redesigning spaces to support more meetings, presentations, trainings, lunches, and social time.
• The startups. Startup rates are surging, up by 20% from pre-pandemic numbers. The reasons: working from home provides a cheaper way to start a new company by saving a lot on initial capital and rent. Also, people can more easily work on a startup on the side when their regular job offers the option to work from home.
• The downtime. The number of people playing golf mid-week has more than doubled since 2019. People used to go before or after work, or on the weekends, but now the mid-day, mid-week golf game is becoming more common. The same is probably true for things like gyms, tennis courts, retail hairdressers, ski resorts, and anything else that consumers used to pack into the weekends.
• The organization. More and more, firms are outsourcing or offshoring their information technology, human resources, and finance to access talent, save costs, and free up space. There has been a big increase in part-time employees, independent contractors, and outsourcing. “After seeing how well it worked with remote work at the beginning of the pandemic, companies may not see a need to have employees in the country,” Bloom said.

Interested in hearing more about the future of work? Stanford Continuing Studies will feature Bloom as he discusses “The Future of and Impact of Working from Home” on May 1 as part of the Stanford Monday University web seminar series .

Bloom is also co-director of the Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a fellow at the Centre for Economic Performance, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research .

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What to Know About Starting Your Career Remotely

• Kennedy Edgerton

Three challenges new grads may face — and how to overcome them.

Remote work can be a blessing and curse for those just starting their careers. While it has clear benefits (improved work-life balance, geographic flexibility, and eliminating commutes), it’s not without drawbacks. There are unique challenges that come with starting your career remotely: isolation, distractions, and communication gaps. Fortunately, you can overcome these obstacles. Here’s how.

• Isolation: You can eliminate or reduce isolation by visiting a coworking space or a coffee shop, joining a club or intramural sports team, or working from a friend or family member’s house.
• Distractions: Distractions can be avoided by establishing boundaries with those around you and adjusting your environment. You might also try using a dedicated workspace, removing entertainment systems from that space.
• Communication gaps: Working remotely limits communication to Slack messages, video meetings, or phone calls. To limit communication gaps, take notes, get clear directions, and review similar past projects for reference.

When I first stepped onto campus as an undergraduate student, I was determined to make as many friends and connections as possible. I wanted to form lifelong memories, and ultimately, forge professional relationships that might help my career. You could find me at almost every seminar, interest meeting, or networking event on campus (and maybe even a party or two).

• KE Kennedy Edgerton is an updates editor at Forbes Advisor , leveraging his passion for writing and personal finance to produce stimulating content that empowers readers to enhance their lives through informed decision-making. He has written for several publications, including college newspapers, websites, and blogs on politics, music, sports, and film. Kennedy is a graduate of Morehouse College with a degree in cinema, television, and emerging media studies.

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Guest Essay

Remote Work Is Failing Young Employees

By Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel

Ms. Petersen and Mr. Warzel are the authors of the forthcoming book “Out of Office,” from which this essay is adapted.

Kiersten graduated from college straight into the middle of a pandemic and a precarious job market. She managed to find an entry-level job with a government contractor that allowed her to work from the safety of her home. There was no fanfare on her first day; she simply opened her laptop and began an endless series of training sessions conducted over Zoom. The sessions were helpful, Kiersten recalls, but very formal, with little room for socializing. Even among her fellow new hires, Kiersten felt at a remove. “I just stared at their Zoom boxes and willed us to be friends,” she told us. “But we never had the opportunity to interact.”

With time, she grew accustomed to the daily cadences of her job. But she still felt like a stranger at her own company, whose remote policies were haphazard at best. To chat, employees used an outdated version of Skype; in Zoom meetings, almost all co-workers left their cameras off. Months into her job, she could identify people only by their chat avatars and voices. At one point, she says, she began “obsessively stalking” her company’s Glassdoor reviews, just to try to get a sense of the company culture. She was, by her own admission, unmoored, totally unmentored and insecure, with no way to learn from her colleagues. It’s one thing to start a new job remotely. It’s another to start your entire career that way.

“I was shocked at how all the skills I had learned on how to navigate this type of environment in person evaporated remotely,” Kiersten said. “They feel entirely inaccessible to me now.” She’s not alone. While reporting “Out of Office,” a book we’re writing on remote work, we heard similar stories from early career workers who’ve felt adrift during the Covid-19 pandemic. (The participants, concerned about retaliation from their employers, agreed to speak with us about their experiences on the condition that we withhold their last names.) All were grateful to be employed, but many felt left behind, invisible and, in some cases, unsure about how to actually do their jobs. While their companies adapted their workflows to function outside the office, few spent the time to craft policies to mentor young professionals, many of whom found themselves stuck on their couches, attempting to decipher cryptic emails and emojis sent over Slack.

Most newcomers are terrified of messing up and hesitant to ask questions that might make them sound naïve. Which, of course, means that they’re also scared that they’re already failing. “I think I’m missing out on a lot of the soft skills that one picks up in the first few years of working,” Haziq, a 22-year-old living in Ireland, told us. He’s found it nearly impossible to socialize with colleagues and lacks the confidence to casually ask a question of his manager or teammates. “If I was sitting next to my manager, I could just have a quick chat and move on,” he said. “But I’m much less likely to Slack my manager and ask something because I don’t know what they’re up to at the moment. The amount of on-the-job learning has reduced dramatically.”

For Kiersten, who had never set foot in her company’s office, professional life has come to feel like an abstraction — to the point that she’s sometimes not even sure if she’s employed. (She is.) Worse, her job feels almost completely transactional, with her conversations limited to, in her words, “exchanging information in pursuit of an immediate, work-related goal.”

You could chalk up some of these experiences to the harried nature of the pandemic, which required many organizations to build a work-from-home plane, as it were, while trying to fly it. But many of the perks of truly flexible work — a self-directed schedule, distance from overly chatty co-workers, remove from office gossip and politics — could also work against younger employees. If companies don’t create intentional, structured mentorship programs to help younger and remote colleagues with on-the-job learning, they risk leaving a generation behind.

While we believe that the spontaneous water-cooler interactions of the office are often romanticized, we also recognize the ways in which gossip, after-work drinks and even body language come together to teach new employees the standards of behavior in the office. Small talk, passing conversations, even just observing your manager’s pathways through the office may seem trivial, but in the aggregate they’re far more valuable than any form of company handbook. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be translated into a remote or flexible work environment.

Almost every story we heard from adrift and isolated employees had the same root cause: well-intentioned but frazzled managers working inside systems that adapted to the pandemic by trying to cram office work into the home. “When I joined, my manager was like, ‘Oh, if we were in the office, I would’ve taken you out to lunch and gotten to know you,’” Kiersten said. “She realized that things were missing but didn’t have any strategies to replicate that type of experience.” But Kiersten didn’t blame her manager for not doing more; it was clear she didn’t have any support or practice in remotely onboarding employees.

For Joe, a midcareer lawyer who started a government fellowship right before the beginning of the pandemic, remote work meant that his already distant manager disappeared fully. Prepandemic, he described his supervisor as “one of those people that was visibly very busy and constantly apologizing for it.” Things only got worse when they left the office. “I can’t emphasize the extent to which I felt like I fell off the face of the earth to her,” he said. Like Kiersten, Joe doesn’t blame his supervisor or have any ill will toward her, as he says she clearly struggled during the early parts of the pandemic with child care issues. But because Joe’s office made no formal plans to adapt schedules or workflows for remote work when the pandemic started, his supervisor’s struggles trickled down to him.

The first week of remote work, Joe’s supervisor canceled their check-in without rescheduling a new one. “We went months without emailing over the rest of the fellowship, and we only spoke on the phone once over that time, and weren’t in any meetings together,” he said. On his last day, there was no exit interview or procedure at all. “I sent out a goodbye email to about two dozen people right before leaving my laptop in the office on my last day and cc’d my personal email, but only one person wrote back,” he recalled.

This is a classic example of how flexible work — absent intentionally designed support systems — can hurt the most inexperienced employees in an organization. Had Joe’s office implemented a remote plan, it’s possible his supervisor could have changed her schedule to fit her needs or delegated portions of her work across other employees and departments. If she’d felt more supported, perhaps she might not have felt the need to juggle direct reports she didn’t have time to mentor. Perhaps the organization could have crafted clear H.R. policies and procedures so that employees lacking guidance could feel comfortable coming forward. Something, anything, would have been better than nothing.

We asked early career workers what resources they wished they could have had during those early pandemic months, and the responses were full of helpful ideas for any company. Most important, they wanted a clearly delineated mentor who — crucially — was not also their supervisor or in charge of evaluating their performance. One person suggested a dual mentor program that paired new employees with a co-worker in a similar position in the company who could offer advice on more quotidian concerns, as well as a more senior employee who could provide longer-term career advice.

Others wanted more scheduled sessions for employees to come together and bond. “Zoom meetings are not enough,” Joe told us, though he struggled to articulate exactly what kind of bonding might work. “Maybe take something that people already do and bring it into the workplace — pub quizzes, pen pals, video games, a book or movie club. I feel stupid writing those! But you have to try something.”

Kiersten, for her part, eventually found camaraderie in her company’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. “We just spent most of the first session doing introductions and talking about quarantine work-life balance,” she said. “But it was still really nice to have a dedicated time and space to meet people not from my project team and learn about them personally and not just via their deliverable output.” Importantly, these sessions were presented as safe, off-the-record opportunities to connect but also to vent and commiserate, which is often the primary (if unacknowledged) value of in-person co-worker interactions.

But that early professional hunger for structure extended far beyond Zoom meetups. People wanted opportunities to sit in on calls with senior members of different teams — the equivalent of silently sitting in on an in-person meeting — if only to get a better sense of what others’ jobs entailed. They wanted access to email templates for specific kinds of intra-office and out-of-office outreach. They wanted to know what time was normal to reply to emails. In short, they wanted to be told what they were supposed to be doing at work and how to do it successfully. Even those who admitted that such guidance could quickly become stifling agreed that it was better than flailing around with vague expectations and zero guidance.

Speaking to those who feel left behind by remote work, we realized there’s no one template for creating mentorship opportunities and support. For organizations with a hybrid approach, where employees split time between home and the office, some of these problems may quickly abate. A few days in the office won’t fix these larger issues. But intentional design could. Truly flexible work may seem breezy and carefree, but it’s actually the product of careful planning and clear communication. It requires peering around corners and attempting to identify needs and problems before they fester. It may seem onerous at first, especially when “Let’s just go back to the way things were before” seems like such a clear option.

But it’s not. We’ve moved past that point. If we’re serious about building a sustainable future of work, we can’t leave a whole swath of employees behind. They’ll just develop bad habits and waste endless hours trying to piece together the rules of the game when someone could’ve just told them. Businesses have to decide: Are you going to pretend the problem doesn’t exist, allowing it to tax your organization in all sorts of tangible and intangible ways, or are you going to invest in the sort of intentional mentorship and structure that will yield dividends down the road?

Anne Helen Petersen writes the newsletter Culture Study. Charlie Warzel writes the newsletter Galaxy Brain for The Atlantic, where he is a contributing writer. They are the authors of the forthcoming book “Out of Office,” from which this essay is adapted.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Currently, remote working is on the rise with an increased interest of employees to work outside of a corporate office. Remote working style provides a humble opportunity to work outside a traditional office setting. The style is based on the principle that work can be done anywhere without specifically doing it from one location. Other departments within the company are already using the style, and the latest employees evaluation released by the executive reports improved performance among individual employees. The employees at my department are seeking to be given the same opportunity to express their potentials in diverse working environments that promote flexibility.

Creating a connection

The organization requires maximum employee input to be able to compete effectively with other firms in the industry. The marketing team has complained claiming that working within the premises of the company does not give them an opportunity to meet the potential customers and share the experiences of our products and services (De Menezes & Kelliher, 2017). Within our organizational industry not only has other companies introduced remote working but they have also provided employees with transportation allowances.

Employees believe that when they get the chance of remote working, they will be able to differentiate their personal and professional lives accordingly. A remote job can take place in cafes and from home, but the employees will still have to attend staff and executive meetings to receive appropriate directions (Felstead & Henseke, 2017). Other employee prefers co-working spaces where they can network connect with employees who work in a multitude of industries.

Better health and wellness

Remote working employees are less stressed and have improved morale as compared to their counterparts in the office environment. The department of public health in the UK reported that 55% of employees feel stressed as a result of their commute (Felstead & Henseke, 2017). It is also said that 69% of remote workers reported reduced absenteeism as compared to the non-remote employees.

Flexible lifestyle

Remote working offer people the chance to live a more flexible life.  When employees are not needed in the office, the employees can focus on other things that are important outside the office (De Menezes & Kelliher, 2017). Remote working can dedicate their time to their children and also attend to doctor’s appointment at the hospital. Remote employees can also enhance their career through furthering in their education.

Higher productivity

Remote working is accompanied by increased productivity due to its flexibility. Remote employees can add extra efforts in their jobs, and this is slightly higher when fellow in-office employees.  According to the report on work productivity, 65% of in-office employees working full time believe that working remotely increases productivity (De Menezes & Kelliher, 2017). It is also reported that two-thirds of managers think that when their employees work outside the office, there is an increase in overall productivity.

Remote working among the employees in my department will require a network connection with other professionals in the same field. The departmental team will require computers which will be used to update and store data on the daily progress of the outside office activities. The executive leaders will also need to get information on the progress of individual employee’s performance on specific tasks (Felstead & Henseke, 2017). The report will be sent through a computer application as data on present market analysis and findings. Transport allowance is also requested from the organization to allow employees to move around and interact with other workers through information sharing.

Remote working is essential and introducing it to our department will yield positive results on our employees. The employees will be motivated towards excellent performance when they work outside the office and can dedicate their time to other personal life issues. The organization will benefit from diverse employee experiences obtained from the sharing of ideas with other professionals. Remote working keeps the employee healthy since they are less stressed and can perform under any condition.

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Want to work from home? A hefty paycheck may be out of reach as high-wage remote jobs fade

Higher pay requires higher commitment, and that includes showing up at the office every day, according to high-paying jobs site Ladders.

After looking at more than a half-million jobs posted over the past year, Ladders found remote and hybrid jobs paying at least $250,000 annually plummeted by 95% and 60%, respectively. Only about 4% of these quarter-million-dollar jobs are fully remote , down from 10% a year ago. Less than 1% are now hybrid, down from 6% last year.

Return-to-office is a rude awakening for millions of Americans who were forced to go remote or hybrid during the pandemic and discovered the benefits of work-from-home status. Ladders declared in December 2021 , “Remote work is here to stay.”

It turns out that “managers prefer in-person supervision and visibility,” said John Mullinix, Ladders director of growth marketing who led the latest research. If managers are going back, so will most everyone else who have even less say in compensation and benefits, he said.

Very remote work: More workers are living 50 miles from the office

Why do companies want employees in the office?

Reasons companies are demanding workers return to the office vary. Some say remote work hinders innovation, cohesion among workers and mentorship , Mullinix said.

On Friday, Bloomberg said Citi, HSBC and Barclays are ordering more staffers to report to company offices five days a week as regulatory changes make it trickier for Wall Street to allow employees to work from home.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), an industry watchdog, is set to reinstate rules that banks monitor staff and facilitate inspections at workplaces, which would include home offices. FINRA denied that its rule requires people to work in the office five days a week.

“There are all sorts of reasons to rationalize the decision, but honestly, I think it’s people like the control, to supervise and are really attached to how things were in past,” he said.

What if I don't want to return to the office?

You may have to find another job.

A whopping 90% of 1,000 companies surveyed by Resume Builder last August expected to return to offices by the end of this year.

JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon told The Economist last July : “I completely understand why someone doesn’t want to commute an hour and a half every day, totally got it. Doesn’t mean they have to have a job here either.”

This sets up an interesting path for companies and employers, Mullinix said.

“Studies indicate employees are willing to take a pay cut for work-from-home flexibility so it’ll be interesting what smart companies do to leverage their talent pool,” he said. “Will smaller companies with smaller budgets offer remote or other bonuses to get a better candidate pool?”

High-paying jobs also require more credentials

To earn $250,000 or more annually, job seekers won’t just need to show their faces. They’ll also have to show a lot of credentials, Ladders said.

“It’s absolutely a myth that you can earn this type of job income without making some serious sacrifices to get there,” said Mullinix. “We’re talking advanced degrees, specialized residencies, certifications, and substantial experience.”

Most of the highest paying jobs require at least five to 10 years of experience and the highest require 15 or more, Ladders said.

Eight of the top 10 jobs that pay at least $250,00 a year are positions in the medical field, like primary care, medical director, dentist, surgeon, and veterinarian. These professions require some sort of medical degree, board certification or license, and years of experience, Ladders said.

The remaining two non-medical related, quarter-million-dollar jobs are:

• Principal software engineer , coming in at number 4. This job involves high-level software development, system architecture, and can often demand a team leadership role. Requirements typically include a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science or a related field, along with extensive experience.
• Chief Financial Officer (CFO) , sixth on the list, which manages the financial actions of a company. This job typically requires an advanced degree in finance, accounting, or business, along with extensive experience.

Medora Lee is a money, markets, and personal finance reporter at USA TODAY. You can reach her at [email protected] and subscribe to our free Daily Money newsletter for personal finance tips and business news every Monday through Friday morning.   

A millennial who made over $300,000 secretly working 2 remote jobs says he'll do whatever he can to ensure he never has to commute to work again

• A US millennial made more than $100,000 last year secretly working multiple remote jobs. 
• But hiring slowdowns and return-to-office mandates have made it harder for him to find new roles. 
• He said he'd do whatever he could to avoid commuting to an office for work. 

Charles is willing to go above and beyond to make extra money — except by going into an office .

Back in 2019, the consumer product professional, who's based in the New York tri-state area, had a friend who needed some help with some freelance work , he told Business Insider.

Charles took on the side gig, figuring he could use the extra income to save up for a Tesla . Since his main job was remote, he said, pulling off the side gig wasn't difficult.

After doing this for about two years, the work ended, but Charles had grown used to the extra income — so he decided to look for other remote opportunities. It was fortunate timing for Charles, as the pandemic had forced many companies to pivot to remote work . He said he had little trouble finding work-from-home positions.

"There were times when I was just sitting around with nothing to do at my main job for weeks," said Charles, whose identity is known to BI — he asked to use a pseudonym because of his fear of professional repercussions. "So I'm either going to stay productive by finding other remote work or just wasting time and leaving money on the table. Why wouldn't I take on more responsibilities if I can manage them?"

Charles, who's in his 30s, is among the Americans secretly working multiple jobs to boost their incomes. Over the past year, BI has interviewed roughly 20 job jugglers, many of whom are in the IT and tech industries, who've used the extra money to pay off debt , save for retirement , and afford weight-loss drugs . While some employers may be OK with their workers having a second job , doing so without employer approval could have repercussions .

Over the past few years, Charles has worked a mix of remote full-time and contract jobs simultaneously while keeping his overemployment a secret from his employers. Job juggling helped him earn more than $300,000 in 2021, more than $200,000 in 2022, and more than $100,000 in 2023, according to documents viewed by BI. Charles said this money made it possible for him to pay off debts, make home improvements, buy a rental property, invest in a personal business venture, and purchase a new car.

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But over the past year, he said, the job market for the types of roles he was interested in had "dried up." That's because some companies in his industry have scaled back hiring while others are mainly recruiting for in-person or hybrid roles. It's left him clinging to his two remaining remote jobs, which have allowed him to not only bring in extra income — but avoid the dreaded work commute .

"Why would I leave the good job that I have where I'm 100% remote still and I don't have to go into the city?" he said. "I'd be getting up at 6 a.m. in the morning and not getting home until 6 or 7 p.m. if I'm lucky. No thanks."

Charles added that commuting to work could cost him several hundred dollars a month.

While juggling multiple full-time jobs can be very lucrative, fierce competition for remote gigs has made this unattainable for many workers. For example, the share of US fully remote job postings on LinkedIn fell from more than 20% in April 2022 to about 10% in December 2023. Hiring slowdowns in industries such as tech — in which remote work and overemployment are more common — and shifts to hybrid working arrangements have both played a role in this decline.

But despite this drop-off, job seekers' demand for remote roles remains strong — LinkedIn said fully remote jobs accounted for nearly half of all applications in December.

Charles said that he understood why some companies had shifted to a hybrid model — he presumed it was to keep closer tabs on workers — but that he'd do everything he could to avoid a commute.

Charles said that to prevent his employers from suspecting his job juggling, he was using separate laptops, phones, and calendars for each job. He said he was typically able to complete his tasks for both jobs without having to put in extra hours.

"If I am in a meeting with one job that doesn't require me to speak up, I will be doing work on the other laptop for the other job," he said.

If an employer were to discover his overemployment, he said, he wouldn't simply give it up.

"I do my work from home, and people are happy with what I do," he said. "If a company wants to come after me for extra earned income because of some anti-overemployment policy, I'll fight it."

Are you working multiple remote jobs at the same time and willing to provide details about your pay and schedule? If so, reach out to this reporter at [email protected] .

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Banks don’t want to inspect your home office, so they’re forcing hundreds of employees to come in five days a week

Work-from-home regulations for banks are changing, and some of the industry’s biggest players would rather bring employees in five days a week than make the effort to comply—including making regular inspections of workers’ homes.

During the pandemic, brokerage industry watchdog the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), suspended rules on workplace inspections to make it easier for banks to allow their employees to work from home. The agency is now set to move back to its pre-pandemic requirements for monitoring workplaces, meaning some home offices will have to be registered with regulators and remotely inspected at least every three years under a new pilot program.

Now, some of the banks that had been most flexible with their work-from-home policies, including Citigroup , Barclays , and HSBC, have decided complying with the renewed rules isn’t worth the effort, Bloomberg reported . Between them, the three banks are bringing thousands of their workers back to the office five days a week.

Citigroup said on Thursday that it is requiring 600 employees previously eligible to work from home to come into the office five days a week, although it said in a statement that most of its staff can still work remotely two days a week, per the outlet. Barclays cited “new regulatory policies” in a Thursday memo as part of why it is bringing thousands of its investment banking employees worldwide back to five days a week in person. And 530 of HSBC’s New York workers may need to change their remote-work habits soon as well, Mabel Rius, head of human resources for the U.S. and Americas, told Bloomberg. 

Michael Roberts, HSBC CEO of the U.S. and Americas, told Bloomberg that while the bank will comply with the FINRA regulations, he wants employees to want to come back to the office. 

“What we did not want to do is to force people to come back simply out of decree,” Roberts told Bloomberg in a Thursday interview.

Part of enticing workers to work in person means listening to why employees like coming to the office at all. Roberts said the bank has incorporated much of that input at its new U.S. headquarters in New York City’s Hudson Yards, to make it “conducive to people coming back.”

“We will adjust to the FINRA rules. We’ll make sure that whoever needs to be there five days a week will be here five days a week, but I don’t want to decree people coming back,” Roberts said. “I want them to come back because they want to come back.”

Meanwhile, some of the industry’s other giants, including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs , have already handed down mandates for five-day in-person weeks. 

And JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, perhaps the best-known CEO on Wall Street, has long been critical of remote work . Last year, the bank instituted mandatory return-to-office policies for senior employees, and Dimon said earlier this year that about 60% of the bank’s workers were on-site full-time. 

FINRA, for its part, disputed that its renewed policies were to blame for stricter work-from-home policies by banks. In a Wednesday statement the regulator said that some of its rules weren’t any stricter than they were prior to the pandemic, and that, in fact, it adjusted some rules, including allowing remote workplace inspections. Those changes “provide member firms greater flexibility—not less—to allow eligible registered persons to work from home,” FINRA said. 

“FINRA has seen recent statements from firms stating that new, stringent rules from FINRA will require them to bring their workforce back to the office full time,” it wrote in the statement. “This is incorrect.”

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