working remotely essay

The bright future of working from home

There seems to be an endless tide of depressing news in this era of COVID-19. But one silver lining is the long-run explosion of working from home. Since March I have been talking to dozens of CEOs, senior managers, policymakers and journalists about the future of working from home. This has built on my own personal experience from running surveys about working from home and  an experiment  published in 2015 which saw a 13 percent increase in productivity by employees at a Chinese travel company called Ctrip who worked from home.

So here a few key themes that can hopefully make for some good news:

Mass working from home is here to stay

Once the COVID-19 pandemic passes, rates of people working from home will explode. In 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics  figures show  that 8 percent of all employees worked from home at least one day a week.

I see these numbers more than doubling in a post-pandemic world.  I suspect almost all employees who can work from home —  which is estimated  at about 40 percent of employees ­— will be allowed to work from home at least one day a week.

Why? Consider these three reasons

Fear of crowds.

Even if COVID-19 passes, the fear of future pandemics will motivate people to move away from urban centers and avoid public transport. So firms will struggle to get their employees back to the office on a daily basis. With the pandemic, working from home has become a standard perk, like sick-leave or health insurance.

Investments in telecommuting technology

By now, we have plenty of experience working from home. We’ve become adept at video conferencing. We’ve fine-tuned our home offices and rescheduled our days. Similarly, offices have tried out, improved and refined life for home-based work forces. In short, we have all paid the startup cost for learning how to work from home, making it far easier to continue.

The end of stigma

Finally, the stigma of working from home has evaporated. Before COVID-19, I frequently heard comments like, “working from home is shirking from home,” or “working remotely is remotely working.” I remember Boris Johnson, who was Mayor of London in 2012 when the London Olympics closed the city down for three weeks, saying working from home was “a skivers paradise.” No longer. All of us have now tried this and we understand we can potentially work effectively — if you have your own room and no kids — at home.

Of course, working from home was already trending up due to improved technology and remote monitoring. It is relatively cheap and easy to buy a top-end laptop and connect it to broadband internet service. This technology also makes it easier to monitor employees at home. Indeed, one senior manager recently told me: “We already track our employees — we know how many emails they send, meetings they attend or documents they write using our office management system. So monitoring them at home is really no different from monitoring them in the office. I see how they are doing and what they are doing whether they are at home or in the office.”

This is not only good news for firms in terms of boosting employee morale while improving productivity, but can also free up significant office space. In our China experiment, Ctrip calculated it increased profits by $2,000 per employee who worked from home.

Best practices in working from home post pandemic

Many of us are currently working from home full-time, with kids in the house, often in shared rooms, bedrooms or even bathrooms. So if working from home is going to continue and even increase once the pandemic is over, there are a few lessons we’ve learned to make telecommuting more effective. Let’s take a look:

Working from home should be part-time

I think the ideal schedule is Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the office and Tuesday and Thursday at home. Most of us need time in the office to stay motivated and creative. Face-to-face meetings are important for spurring and developing new ideas, and at least personally I find it hard to stay focused day after day at home. But we also need peaceful time at home to concentrate, undertake longer-term thinking and often to catch-up on tedious paperwork. And spending the same regular three days in the office each week means we can schedule meetings, lunches, coffees, etc., around that, and plan our “concentration work” during our two days at home.

The choice of Tuesday and Thursday at home comes from talking to managers who are often fearful that a work-from-home day — particularly if attached to a weekend — will turn into a beach day. So Tuesday and Thursday at home avoids creating a big block of days that the boss and the boss of the boss may fear employees may use for unauthorized mini-breaks.

Working from home should be a choice

I found in the Ctrip experiment that many people did not want to work from home. Of the 1,000 employees we asked, only 50 percent volunteered to work from home four days a week for a nine-month stretch. Those who took the offer were typically older married employees with kids. For many younger workers, the office is a core part of their social life, and like the Chinese employees, would happily commute in and out of work each day to see their colleagues. Indeed,  surveys in the U.S.  suggest up to one-third of us meet our future spouses at work.

Working from home should be flexible

After the end of the 9-month Ctrip experiment, we asked all volunteers if they wanted to continue working from home. Surprisingly, 50 percent of them opted to return to the office. The saying is “the three great enemies of working from home are the fridge, the bed and the TV,” and many of them fell victim to one of them. They told us it was hard to predict in advance, but after a couple of months working from home they figured out if it worked for them or not. And after we let the less-successful home-based employees return to the office, those remaining had a 25 percent higher rate of productivity.

Working from home is a privilege

Working from home for employees should be a perk. In our Ctrip experiment, home-based workers increased their productivity by 13 percent. So on average were being highly productive. But there is always the fear that one or two employees may abuse the system. So those whose performance drops at home should be warned, and if necessary recalled into the office for a couple of months before they are given a second chance.

There are two other impacts of working from home that should be addressed

The first deals with the decline in prices for urban commercial and residential spaces. The impact of a massive roll-out in working from home is likely to be falling demand for both housing and office space in the center of cities like New York and San Francisco. Ever since the 1980s, the centers of large U.S. cities have become denser and more expensive. Younger graduate workers in particular have flocked to city centers and pushed up housing and office prices. This 40-year year bull run  has ended .

If prices fell back to their levels in say the 1990s or 2000s this would lead to massive drops of 50 percent or more in city-center apartment and office prices. In reverse, the suburbs may be staging a comeback. If COVID-19 pushed people to part-time working from home and part-time commuting by car, the suburbs are the natural place to locate these smaller drivable offices. The upside to this is the affordability crisis of apartments in city centers could be coming to an end as property prices drop.

The second impact I see is a risk of increased political polarization. In the 1950s, Americans all watched the same media, often lived in similar areas and attended similar schools. By the 2020s, media has become fragmented, residential segregation by income has  increased dramatically , and even our schools are starting to fragment with the rise of charter schools.

The one constant equalizer — until recently — was the workplace. We all have to come into work and talk to our colleagues. Hence, those on the extreme left or right are forced to confront others over lunch and in breaks, hopefully moderating their views. If we end up increasing our time at home — particularly during the COVID lock-down — I worry about an explosion of radical political views.

But with an understanding of these risks and some forethought for how to mitigate them, a future with more of us working from home can certainly work well.

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More publications, the economics of online postsecondary education: moocs, nonselective education, and highly selective education, four policy briefs by public policy students, beyond gdp welfare across countries and time.

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The Realities of Remote Work

• Laura Amico

Work-life boundaries are blurring and managers worry about productivity. What can be done?

The Covid-19 pandemic sparked what economist Nicholas Bloom calls the “ working-from-home economy .” While some workers may have had flexibility to work remotely before the pandemic, this unprecedented shift to remote work looks like it could be here to stay in some form.

• Laura Amico is a former senior editor at Harvard Business Review.

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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.

Nope, Dark Patterns Never Work

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Impacts of Working From Home During COVID-19 Pandemic on Physical and Mental Well-Being of Office Workstation Users

To understand impacts of social, behavioral and physical factors on well-being of office workstation users during COVID-19 work from home (WFH).

A questionnaire was deployed from April 24 to June 11, 2020 and 988 responses were valid. Linear regression, multinomial logistic regression and chi-square tests were used to understand factors associated with overall physical and mental health statuses and number of new physical and mental health issues.

Decreased overall physical and mental well-being after WFH were associated with physical exercise, food intake, communication with coworkers, children at home, distractions while working, adjusted work hours, workstation set-up and satisfaction with workspace indoor environmental factors.

Conclusion:

This study highlights factors that impact workers’ physical and mental health well-being while WFH and provides a foundation for considering how to best support a positive WFH experience.

Learning Objectives

• Discuss the negative aspects of full-time work from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the potential benefits for employees and employers.
• Summarize the sample characteristics and variables assessed in the survey of workers who had transitioned to WFH.
• Discuss the effects of WFH on physical and mental well-being and the risk and protective factors associated with WFH-related declines in well-being.

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered every aspect of our work and life. In response to the national and local containment policies, companies, organizations and institutions encouraged their employees to work remotely at home to stay safe. Work from home (WFH) emerged in the early 2000s, when telecommuting technologies started to develop and workers could WFH to avoid commuting, provide flexibility in schedules, and achieve a better work-life balance. 1 , 2 During the COVID-19 pandemic, many workers were advised to WFH full time, which redefined the conventional concept of WFH that was typical only for certain types of work, on an occasional basis, or given unique employee circumstances. Many companies believe that WFH will become more common after the pandemic due to the fact that employers have already paid the fixed cost to set up remote work systems for their employees. 3 Companies are now determining if operational costs could be dramatically decreased by reducing the required office space. 4 , 5

In addition to companies seeing benefits of WFH, there are noted direct benefits to employees. Most significantly, WFH saves daily commuting time and offers more flexibility for workers to take care of their families. 1 WFH allows employees to choose working at times when they are most productive, and WFH can be beneficial for avoiding distractions from coworkers, especially in open plan offices. 6 With options to WFH, workers can take a break from their offices and focus on organizing an individualized approach to their work-life balance that can promote a healthier lifestyle, a benefit for both physical and mental health. Finally, workers may have more control of environmental factors when WFH; indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors (eg, lighting, temperature, humidity, air quality, noise, ergonomics, etc) are important for physical and mental health of workers. 7 Specifically, IEQ factors influence a workers’ comfort, which in turn impacts satisfaction. 8 Unlike in conventional offices, where the workspaces are usually arranged by employers, during WFH, workers have full autonomy and the responsibility of setting up their workspaces at home, being able to work in a location at home that may have better IEQ conditions as opposed to being in a fixed cubicle or open-plan offices. 6 In fact, research has found that home offices might provide better air quality conditions compared to traditional offices. 9

While there are benefits to WFH, numerous negative aspects of full time WFH have also been described. Employees who are at home do not have the opportunity to socialize with colleagues and may have decreased physical movements, such as loss of walking between different meeting locations. 1 Moreover, extended hours of screen exposure due to full time computer work can lead to fatigue, tiredness, headaches and eye-related symptoms. 10 For individuals who live alone, full time WFH without face-to-face interactions and social support everyday could contribute to mental issues such as social isolation and depression. 1 , 5 For others, blurred work-life boundaries can make it difficult to detach mentally from work 11 which can increase stress and anxiety. 12 A common area of concern in work-life boundaries is balancing work schedules around other family members, where, for some parents, work time becomes “porous” 13 as they might need to take care of house chores and run errands in between their work meetings. In some cases, parents might choose to sacrifice their sleep hours and work at nights or early mornings since these are the only quiet hours where they could concentrate on work and avoid frequent interruptions. 14 Ongoing work-family conflict can lead to emotional exhaustion. 11

The abrupt shifts to WFH and other factors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic provide a unique context for exploring the relationship of WFH on physical and mental well-being. Most apparent impacts on health are due to social and behavioral factors. In particular, the extended stay at home mandates during the pandemic may contribute to general depressed and anxious feelings, often leading to changes in routines and eating habits. 15 These changes in physical activities and food intake can interact with other stress related to WFH that together will likely directly impact physical and mental well-being. 16 , 17 Moreover, these behaviors are likely further impacted for workers who have children, as the closure of schools and day care centers, require working parents to also perform home schooling for their kids, as well as to managing a more chaotic working environment with increased distractions. 18

In addition to behavioral and social changes, WFH during the COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted areas of need for the physical space in home office environments. Of note is that not all workers have access to dedicated workstations in their home, which can result in sharing of their workstations, such as with children who have to attend school remotely, 2 setting up make shift desks, such as the dining table, 14 or working in a variety of places throughout the day, such as kitchen counters, sofas, coffee tables and beds. Moreover, during the pandemic, workers can spend longer hours at their desks in the absence of commuting, limited business traveling, and increased use of computers to conduct meetings rather than holding face-to-face meetings at various different physical locations. 9 , 19 Increase stress due to sharing of workspaces, poor body mechanics due to lack of proper physical workstation, and prolonged sedentary activity can all lead to increased discomfort and pain. 20 Furthermore, unlike office work environments where central heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems are available, workers may not pay as close attention to managing the IEQ environment at home. Specifically, working in a location that is not designed for work can lead to unsatisfactory IEQ conditions that can have detrimental effects on both physical and mental well-being, while also decreasing overall work performance. 21

In total, the pandemic has created a new environment for considering both work and home life within the discussion of WFH. A detailed understanding of the factors in this new environment that relate to physical and mental well-being is instrumental to ensuring positive impacts for office workers who might WFH in near future. Specifically, employers and employees alike require insights on how to provide the best work conditions for workers who either decide or are asked to WFH such that negative health impacts are minimized. In this paper, we present findings of a survey that aimed to understand the relationships of many of these social, behavioral, and physical factors on the physical and mental well-being of workers who switching to WFH during the COVID-19 pandemic. The goals of this study were to (1) understand the overall change of physical and mental well-being after WFH, (2) identify how the changes in lifestyle and home environment after WFH influence physical and mental well-being, and (3) investigate how the occupational and home office environments affect physical and mental well-being during full time WFH.

Participants and Procedure

Data were collected through an online, anonymous questionnaire deployed via Qualtrics from April 24, 2020 to June 11, 2020. Participants were recruited through emails, social media platforms and newsletters, with snowball sampling used to extend the recruitment process. Eligible participants were identified by an initial screening question (inclusion criterion) that asked if the participant spends most of his/her work time at an office desk and had transitioned to WFH due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 1409 responses were received, of which 91 did not meet inclusion criterion and 330 were incomplete, having not responded to at least 25% of the questions. The questionnaire included a total of 32 Likert-type, categorical, and open-response questions. Participants responded to questions for demographics, lifestyle and home environment factors, occupational environmental factors, and home office environmental factors, as well as information relative to primary dependent variables related to work performance, physical and mental well-being. Data reported here are focused on factors associated with changes in physical and mental well-being; whereas, analysis of data related to work performance are reported elsewhere. Additionally, data obtained from open-response questions were analyzed and are reported separately. The questionnaire was reviewed and approved by the university's institutional review board as exempt research activity due to the anonymous nature of the methods.

Lifestyle and Home Environment

Multiple lifestyle factors were measured using a 5-point Likert-type scale, from 1 (much lower) to 5 (much higher) with 3 indicating the same as prior to WFH. Lifestyle factors included ratings of overall physical activity, such as standing and step count; physical exercise, such as exercise classes, walking, running, biking; overall food intake; “healthy” food intake; and “junk” food intake. Participants reported the number of other people in the home across the following categories: independent adults other than the respondent, dependent adults with special needs or geriatric care, teenage children (13 to 18), school-age children (6 to 12), toddlers (2 to 5), and infants (<2 y). The number of pets (large or small) was also reported. Given significantly skewed data, all counts were categorized as none or at least one.

Occupational Environment

Participants rated their current communication with coworkers compared to prior circumstances using a 5-point Likert-type scale, from 1 (much lower) to 5 (much higher) with 3 indicating the same level of communication as prior to WFH. The same scale was used for reporting changes in workload expectations and distractions while working. Participants indicated the number of hours they engaged at their workstation during a typical workday before and after transitioning to working at home. The difference in number of hours was calculated by subtracting the prior from the current number of hours at their workstation. Participants indicated (yes or no) if their work schedule was “same as before” or if their routine had changed due to WFH in one or more of the following ways: I have adjusted… “my work hours,” “workdays per week,” or “duration of time working before doing non-work tasks.” Respondents also indicated (yes or no) potential reasons for making adjustments: I have to schedule work hours around others due to… “sharing of resources (eg, computers, internet bandwidth, physical workspace)” or “non-work activities (eg, home schooling, pet care).” Finally, participants indicated (yes or no) if at least one other person is usually present in the same workspace while working from home.

Home Office Environment

Satisfaction with seven IEQ factors related to the home workspace were rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1 (extremely dissatisfied) to 5 (extremely satisfied). Using Cronbach alpha, interrelated items were identified to reduce individual factors into four IEQ categories. Satisfaction with the visual environment included averages across ratings of natural lighting, electric lighting, and glare. Satisfaction with the thermal environment was the average of ratings for indoor temperature and humidity. Ratings of satisfaction with air quality and noise remained as individual factors. A general description of the physical workstation was obtained by participants selecting from among the choices: “I have a dedicated room for work activities,” “I created a dedicated workspace in a room with other uses,” or “I work in a variety of places, rooms, or locations around my home.” Participants were asked how they felt about their workstation relative to health, well-being and productivity by responding to multiple items (yes or no) including: (1) workstation set-up is good and requires no adjustments, (2) knowing how to adjust the workstation if necessary, and (3) knowing how the workstation affects health, well-being or productivity. In addition, respondents reported if they had sought professional advice for workstation adjustments.

Physical and Mental Well-being

Participants reported their physical and mental well-being two ways. As a general measure, participants rated their overall physical and mental well-being relative to their health status prior to WFH on a 5-point Likert-type scale, from 1 (much lower) to 5 (much higher) with 3 indicating the same as before WFH. To explore primary contributors to these ratings, participants indicated what type of new physical and mental health issues they were experiencing. Nine types of physical issues were provided as options: musculoskeletal (discomfort, injury); cardiovascular (chest pains, blood pressure, heart rate); chest/lung (shortness of breath, chest tightness/pain); digestive (appetite changes, abdominal discomfort, irregularity); eye-related (burning, blurry and/or dry); fatigue or tiredness; headaches or migraines; nose/throat related (dry, runny, or bloody nose; hoarseness); and skin related (chapped, itchiness, redness). Eight types of mental health issues were also provided as options: anxiety or nervousness; depression, sadness, or feeling blue; insomnia or trouble sleeping; low motivation or slowed actions; mental stress, rumination, or worry; mood swings; social isolating or decreased interest in social engagement; and trouble concentrating, maintaining attention or focus. As a means for exploring the scope and magnitude of impacts on health, participants were categorized by the number of new physical or mental health issues as none, one issue, or two or more issues.

Data Analysis

Descriptive statistics were calculated for all lifestyle and home environment, occupational environment, home office environment, and physical and mental well-being variables. Pearson correlation analyses were performed to examine individual associations among all continuous variables, including between the primary outcomes of physical and mental well-being. Meaningful correlations were identified as weak (0.30 to 0.50), moderate (0.50 to 0.70) or strong (>0.70). Independent sample t tests were used to test the significance of difference in physical and mental well-being status across groups based on dichotomous questions. Linear regression models were constructed to understand how worker demographics, lifestyle and home environment, occupational environment, and home office environment factors affected overall physical and mental well-being statuses. Modeling was conducted in two steps, first to identify any effects of demographics on the primary outcomes and second to examine effects across all variables while controlling for each demographic factor. All dependent variables were dummy coded. Reference categories for demographic variables were “business and office” for occupation (most frequent category) and “less than 50k” for income (median earnings for full-time workers 22 ). The reference category for the multi-level home office environment variable was “I have a dedicated room for work activities” since this is the ideal WFH condition for a workspace. After examining factors related to overall physical and mental well-being, an exploration of potential associations with the number of negative health issues was conducted. Multinomial logistic regression and chi-square tests were used to examine relationships for all continuous and categorical variables, respectively, as predictors for the number of new physical and mental health issues. Statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS v. 26 (IBM) and significance was set at.05.

Participant Characteristics

The 988 valid responses were from individuals with an average age of 40.9 (SD = 13.1) years, and gender split of 56.5% female, 32.1% male, and 11.4% who preferred not to say or did not answer. The race or ethnicity of the respondents included Caucasian (60.9%), Asian (24.6%), Hispanic or Latino (9.3%), African American (2.8%), and mixed race or another ethnicity (2.4%). Approximately one-third of respondents reported having either a doctorate (34.1%) or graduate/professional degree (37.2%), while the remaining respondents had either a 4-year degree (22.1%) or a 2-year degree or less (6.5%). Most respondents had an annual income of between $50k and $100k (40.6%), with the remainder approximately equally distributed among those making less than $50k (19.0%), $100k to $150k (21.7%), and more than $150k (18.8%). Respondents worked across a variety of occupations including those in business and office (29.1%), engineering and architecture (24.6%), education and arts (22.1%), healthcare and social services (9.3%), computer sciences and mathematics (8.2%), basic science (4.2%), and service and physical occupations (2.6%). Across these occupational categories, the vast majority of respondents were full-time employees (82.8%), while the remaining respondents were students (8.7%), part-time workers (5.9%), or contractors (2.6%). Reponses were primarily received from individuals working in California (47.3%), with additional responses received from 39 other states in the U.S. (35.8%) and countries outside of the U.S. (6.4%), and the remaining 10.5% of respondents preferring not to answer.

Descriptive Statistics

The average ratings for our dependent variable of overall physical and mental well-being were both decreased as compared to prior to WFH, at 2.84 (SD = 0.87) and 2.70 (SD = 0.93) respectively. Averages and frequencies of responses across all independent variables are reported in Table ​ Table1. 1 . Lifestyle changes were noted as decreased overall physical activity and physical exercise, combined with increased overall food intake, despite the average amount of healthy and junk food intake remaining about the same across the sample. The vast majority of respondents (84.2%) had another independent adult living with them, while approximately half had a pet (50.2%), and up to 21.5% had at least one dependent or child in the home. As compared to pre-pandemic levels, work expectations and distractions were increased, communication with coworkers was decreased, and the time spent at the workstation increased by approximately 1.5 hours. Nearly three-fourths of participants (73.4%) had adjusted their work hours and more than one-third of participants (37.4%) reported scheduling their work hours around others. Only one-third of respondents (33.0%) had a dedicated room for their work at home, while approximately half of the respondents indicated their workstation was in a space with other uses (50.3%) and that other people are present within the workspace (47.6%). The fewest respondents (16.7%) work in a variety of places around the house, such as couch, bed and dining tables. Respondents were generally satisfied with IEQ factors (all > 3.5); however, less than one-third of respondents indicated having a good workstation set-up, and only 11% of respondents knew if and how their workstation was affecting their health, well-being, or productivity. Of those individuals who indicated knowing how to adjust their workstation, only one-third (32.5%) reported that they had a good workstation set-up.

Average (SD) and Frequency (%) Across Responses to Each Individual Variable Within Lifestyle and Home Environment, Occupational Environment, and Home Office Environment

Rating of 3 on all [1–5] scales indicate levels the same as before working from home or neutral satisfaction.

Associations Among Individual Variables

Correlations among all continuously rated variables, including the primary outcomes of physical and mental well-being status, are shown in Table ​ Table2. 2 . Overall physical activity was strongly correlated with physical exercise ( r  = 0.73, P  < 0.01) and weakly correlated with communication with coworkers ( r  = 0.30, P  < 0.01). Junk food intake had a weak positive association with overall food intake ( r  = 0.42, P  < 0.01) and moderately negative association with healthy food intake ( r  = −0.56, P  < 0.01). Weak to moderate positive correlations were noted among all of the IEQ factors (all r  > 0.30, P  < 0.01), but no other meaningful associations of IEQ to other factors were noted. Physical and mental health well-being were moderately correlated such that better physical well-being was related to better mental well-being ( r  = 0.52, P  < 0.01). Better physical well-being as compared to prior to WFH was moderately associated with higher physical activity ( r  = 0.50, P  < 0.01) and exercise ( r  = 0.58, P  < 0.01), as well as weakly associated with higher healthy food intake ( r  = 0.34, P  < 0.01) and lower junk food intake ( r  = −0.36, P  < 0.01). Weak positive associations with mental health status were also noted with increased physical activity ( r  = 0.36, P  < 0.01) and exercise ( r  = 0.33, P  < 0.01), while increased distractions while working was associated with decreased mental well-being ( r  = −0.30, P  < 0.01).

Correlations Among Individual Lifestyle, Occupational Environment, Environmental Satisfaction, and Physical and Mental Well-Being

Bold indicates values that have meaningful interpretation as weak, moderate, or strong correlations.

Differences in the average physical and mental well-being status between groups were small between groups in all dichotomous questions. The largest and only difference approaching a meaningful difference in physical well-being status was between respondents who reported knowing how to adjust their workstation (2.93, SD = 0.87) and respondents who do not indicate having such knowledge (2.80, SD = 0.87; P  = 0.04). A similar small, but statistically significant difference was noted in mental well-being between respondents who reported knowing versus not knowing how to adjust their workstation (2.84, SD = 0.96; 2.65, SD = 0.91; P  < 0.01), as well as for individuals who reported having versus not having a good workstation set-up (2.83, SD = 0.82; 2.66, SD = 0.97; P  = 0.01). Numerous additional statistically significant differences in mental well-being were noted. The average mental well-being status for respondents who adjusted their work hours was lower (2.65, SD = 0.95) than respondents who did not adjust their work hours (2.86, SD = 0.87; P  < 0.01). Similarly, reduced mental well-being was noted for individuals who reported needing to schedule work hours around others (2.59, SD = 0.95) compared to respondents who were not impacted by other individuals (2.77, SD = 0.92; P  < 0.01). Conversely, the average mental well-being status of respondents who reported having somebody present in the same workspace while working from home (2.64, SD = 0.95), was slightly but significantly lower ( P  = 0.04) than respondents who reported having a solitary work environment (2.78, SD = 0.90).

Regression Analysis for Physical and Mental Well-being

Results of the two-step linear regression analyses for factors affecting physical and mental well-being status are shown in Tables ​ Tables3 3 and ​ and4. 4 . An annual income of 50k to 100k as compared to less than 50k per year was the only factor significantly associated with either outcome; specifically, a 50k to 100k salary range was predictive of higher mental well-being. Combining all variables resulted in a strong significant model for predicting overall physical well-being ( F (38, 350) = 11.462, P  < 0.001, R 2  = 0.561). Improved well-being was predicted by higher levels of physical exercise, healthy food intake, and communication with coworkers; lower levels of overall food intake and junk food intake; and positively affected by having a toddler at home. Improved mental well-being ( F (38, 351) = 5.306, P  < 0.001, R 2  = 0.371) was similarly predicted by increased physical exercise, increased communication with coworkers, and decreased junk food intake, along with being positively affected by having an infant in the home and negatively affected by increased distractions while working.

Relationship of Demographic Variables to Physical and Mental Well-Being Status

Regression Model for Independent Variables on Physical and Mental Well-Being Status

Exploration of Associations with the Number of Physical and Mental Health Conditions

Approximately two-thirds (64.8%) of respondents reported new physical health issues and approximately three-fourths (73.6%) of participants reported new mental health issues arising since WFH. Two or more new physical health issues were reported by 41.7% of respondents compared to 23.1% who reported one new physical health issue. A majority (55.1%) of respondents reported experiencing two or more new mental health issues, while one new mental health issue was reported by 18.5% and no new issues were reported by 26.4% of respondents. Factors associated with increased numbers of new physical or mental health issues were generally similar (Tables ​ (Tables5 5 and ​ and6) 6 ) and tracked with overall rating of physical and mental well-being. Female respondents and those in the lowest two income groups (ie, annual salary <50k and 50k to 100k) reported having new issues in two or more categories more frequently than males and those in higher salary categories. Increased physical activity, exercise, and healthy food intake, along with lower junk food intake were all associated with fewer issues; while, increased overall food intake was associated with more physical and mental health issues.

Relationships Between Independent Variables and the Number of New Physical Health Issues Reported Since Transitioning to Working from Home

Relationships Between Independent Variables and the Number of New Mental Health Issues Reported Since Transitioning to Working From Home

Multiple additional factors were associated with the number of physical and mental health issues in ways not associated with overall well-being status. A statistically significant predictor that was novel to this analysis was that living with at least 1 teenager lowered the chance of reporting new issues, while living with at least 1 toddler increased the chance of reporting new health issues. Moreover, despite having an infant at home predicting better overall mental well-being, having an infant was associated with reporting of one new mental health issue. Additionally, respondents who had to adjust their work hours, schedule work around others, and had more distractions were more likely to report 2 or more new physical or mental health issues. Respondents who had a dedicated room for their workstation and reported having a good workstation set-up had fewer new issues, while increased time spent at the workstation, higher workloads, and lack of knowledge for adjusting the workstation were all associated with new physical issues, but not with new mental health issues. Finally, higher satisfaction with workspace IEQ factors reduced the chance of respondents reporting new physical or mental health issues.

We aimed to examine the effect of lifestyle, home, and occupational factors on physical and mental well-being in individuals who had transitioned to WFH due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results indicate overall decreased physical and mental well-being status and an increased number of physical and mental health issues following the transition to WFH. Reduced physical well-being was moderately correlated with reduced mental well-being, each directly impacted by gender and income level. Additionally, both statuses were primarily predicted by lifestyle factors, such as physical activity and eating habits, and social aspects of WFH including who is living in the home, distractions while work, and communication with co-workers. The number of new health issues was associated with various physical aspects of the home workspace.

Female workers and workers with annual salary less than 100k reported having two or more new physical and mental issues more often than male workers and workers with higher income. Our finding aligns with another recent survey which noted that female workers have a higher risk of depression while WFH during the pandemic. 23 Working from home may be more challenging for women, since females tend to be more responsible for household chores and other home activities, and working mothers can feel double the pressure at home due to lack of support with home schooling and taking care of children. 19 Similarly, individuals with lower income often lack job security, something that has been made even more tentative during the pandemic, which can directly increase anxiety and manifest as other physical and mental health issues. 24

The contributing effects of various lifestyle factors on physical and mental well-being is consistent with prior findings in the literature. On average, respondents reported decreased overall physical activity and exercise, which may have been due to stay-at-home restrictions and overall disruptions of individual routines. However, regular physical activity can boost the body's metabolism and circulation, as well as release endorphins and other positive hormones, all of which is beneficial for both physical health and mental well-being. 25 Even though restricted from many activities, continuing moderate exercise while WFH, such as walking, take active short breaks, and playing with children, can be beneficial for health and well-being. 17 , 26

While participants tended to report decreased physical activity, there was only a slight increase in overall food intake with essentially no change in the amount of junk food or healthy food that our respondents reported eating on average. However, decreased physical and mental well-being was noted in those individuals that reported increased overall food intake or increased junk food intake. These findings follow the previous research that eating unhealthy foods is significantly associated with stress and depressive symptoms. 27 Moreover, increase in food take, especially junk food, can result in weight gain and other physical health issues, such as fatigue and digestive symptoms. 10 While decreased mental well-being can be predicted by eating habits, it is likely that anxiety and stress due to the pandemic or other WFH factors was in fact a contributing factor to increased snacking or cravings for junk food. 15

In addition to the pandemic contributing to a shift in behaviors, the stay-at-home orders also led to a unique WFH situation for individuals who live with others. Having an infant at home predicted better overall mental well-being but was also related to a higher chance of reporting one new mental health issue. Similarly, having a toddler at home was a positive predictor of physical well-being but was also associated with more physical and mental health issues. It is reasonable that working parents were having better physical and mental well-being status since they were spending more time at home with their kids; however, a simultaneous increase in new physical and mental issues is likely due to the work-life strain caused by increased distractions and a lack of support from day care centers or babysitters during working hours. 2 This relationship may be informed by our data that indicate increased distractions were associated with reporting two or more new physical or mental health issues. In fact, previous research found that it is difficult to minimize distractions from children while WFH, and it is recommended to have a separate environment for WFH, especially for demanding work tasks. 28 Our data further support this inter-relationship among variables, as we found that living with at least one teenager lowered the chance of experiencing new health issues. While teenagers can certainly can be a source of distraction, they are much more independent, require less supervision, and can assist in household duties. 29

Beyond the individual lifestyle and home environment, numerous additional considerations related to the work and physical workspace were important contributors to physical and mental well-being. Under normal circumstances, sufficient communication with coworkers can ensure workers are active participants in decision making, 11 can provide opportunities to take breaks from work, 1 and can be a source of social support. 30 Together, promoting effective communication among co-workers can help to maintain a better mental health status, 31 thus it follows that decreased communication with coworkers in our sample was a significant predictor of decreased well-being.

In addition to changes in communication with co-workers, the respondents reported a higher workload and increased time spent at the workstation, both of which were associated with new physical issues. A previous study showed that the average length of a workday has been longer (+48.5 min) and the number of meetings per person has increased 12.9% since WFH. 9 Consecutive online meetings make it difficult for workers to take health breaks between meetings and at the same time increases the intensity of their work. These intense and extended hours at the workstation without proper breaks might be directly linked to increased musculoskeletal discomfort and other negative physical health effects. 1 Furthermore, respondents who had to adjust their work hours or schedule work around others were more likely to report multiple new physical or mental health issues. Although flexibility may be seen as a benefit of traditional WFH, the abrupt shift and other pandemic-related factors likely increased the challenges faced in addressing work-life boundaries among numerous other stressors in attempting to schedule work time. 1

Finally, there are multiple considerations for the health impacts of the physical workspace in a WFH environment. Specifically, having a dedicated room for work, having an ergonomically correct workstation, knowledge of how to adjust a workstation, and increased satisfaction with IEQ factors in the workspaces were associated with lower chance of experiencing new health issues. Working in a dedicated room minimizes the chance of being distracted and interrupted, 28 and likely increases the chance that the workstation is well-designed to support work. Those who do not have a dedicated space are therefore more likely to be spending extended periods of time at workstation without appropriate adjustments, increasing the odds of bodily pain and other physical health conditions. 20 In particular, home workers mainly reported to be less productive, with lower job satisfaction and increased neck pain. 32 Unfortunately, a previous survey found that more than half of the respondents reported not paying attention to ergonomics while WFH. 13 In addition to the workstation itself, WFH allows workers to adjust the lighting, temperature and ventilation according to their personal preferences. Previous research has found that good IEQ a ta workspace helps to improve workers’ comfort and reduce distractions to achieve higher productivity at work, 7 which in turn can affect health and well-being of occupants. 8

While our study provides insight into numerous important factors to be considered in supporting the physical and mental well-being of workers who are WFH, multiple limitations should be acknowledged in the interpretation and use of these findings. First, it is important to note that these data were obtained within the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic; therefore, the findings are not meant to directly represent traditional WFH circumstances and may not represent the health status or experiences once the restrictions and WFH became increasingly routine. Secondly, our sample included over-representation from workers in California, who were Caucasian, and who had higher levels of education and annual income than the average worker in the U.S. While the implications of the data are valid, application of the findings may not be widely generalizable across different regions or countries and may differ from the experiences of individuals with different backgrounds. Finally, while the respondents represented a wide range of occupational categories, these categories are not representative of all job categories, nor do these data completely represent at all jobs that are included within each category.

CONCLUSIONS

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many workers were abruptly asked to WFH due to stay-at-home mandates to meet social distancing requirements. These workers reported a decline in overall physical and mental health status and an increased number of new physical and mental health issues. Significant predictors of decreased physical and mental health status included decreased physical activity, increased junk food intake, lack of communication with coworkers, and having a toddler at home. Additionally, having more distractions was a significant predictor of decreased mental well-being. Around two-thirds of respondents reported having one or more new physical health issues, and nearly three-fourths of respondents experienced at least one new mental health issue. Female respondents and respondents with annual income of less than 100k reported health issues compared to male respondents and respondents with higher incomes. Respondents reported increased physical and mental health issues with less physical exercise, more junk food intake, having at least one infant at home, being distracted while WFH, decreased communication with coworkers, higher workload, increased work hours and adjusting work hours around others. Respondents who lived with at least one teenager, had higher satisfaction over IEQ factors at home, had a designated workspace, and had a good workstation set up, all had lower chance of experiencing new physical and mental health issues. This study highlights factors that impact workers’ physical and mental health well-being while WFH and provides a foundation for considering how to best support a positive WFH experience.

The results reported herein correspond to specific aims of grant no. 1763134 from National Science Foundation; investigators are Burcin Becerik-Gerber, Gale Lucas, Shawn C. Roll, Francesco Anselmo. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This study was approved as exempt research by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Southern California (UP-20-00339 IRB study number).

Becerik-Gerber, Xiao, Lucas, and Roll have no relationships/conditions/circumstances that present potential conflict of interest.

The JOEM editorial board and planners have no financial interest related to this research.

Clinical significance: Factors related to new work and life environments had significant impact on workers’ physical and mental well-being during COVID-19 pandemic. A detailed understanding of these factors is instrumental to avoid decreased physical and mental well-being in workers who might start or continue to work from home in the future.

58 Remote Work Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best remote work topic ideas & essay examples, 🥇 simple & easy remote work essay titles, 📃 interesting topics to write about remote work.

• Advantages and Disadvantages of Remote Work 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.
• Remote Working: Impact of Technological Development Remote working is a form of arrangement where the employee does not have to commute to the workplace. The number of telecommuters increased to 2,000 in 1983, and the figure continued to grow in the […] We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Remote Working: How COVID-19 Escalated the Shift Within the Job Market The researcher from the Institute of Technology and Business in Ceske Budejovice has conducted a literature review and content analysis to fulfill the objective of determining the savings opportunities correlating with E-working.
• Systematically Reviewing Remote E-Workers A study by Maria Charalampous sheds light on the subject matter, outlining the challenge associated with the transitioning to the remote work context.
• The Remote Work Option: Key Disadvantages Nevertheless, a larger body of research points to the disadvantages of remote work for employees and, by extension, employers. Home life constraints and the absence of adequate tools for work can adversely impact one’s ability […]
• Management of Remote Work Teams These strategies help recognize remote working teams to keep them glued to the mission of the organization. Lastly, rewarding remote work teams is a crucial way of ensuring they are motivated to complete their tasks […]
• ”Remote Work Incivility” Article by Reilly & Warren One of the unique aspects of remote work is the fact that many operate in a work-unfriendly environment. The presence of new sources of incivility in remote work does not mean that it is unsolvable.
• Remote Working: Human Resource Development According to Fan and Moen, the concept of remote working existed and was accelerated in 2020 when the global coronavirus pandemic forced organizations to invest in remote working to protect their employees from the pandemic.
• Benefits of Remote Working to a Company As a result, the primary goal of this article is to examine and identify the possible benefits of remote working for businesses that adopt it.
• Remote Working at the Parallel Universe Firm It considers training employees to work in the new conditions and the security of the IT infrastructure in the new conditions.
• Ten Tips for Managing Remote Workers The original goal of the article was to provide useful tips for managing remote workers, and in that regard, it does the job quite well.
• Leadership in a Remote Working Environment The autocratic leadership style is inapplicable in a remote working environment because it disregards the quality of decisions as a criterion for leadership effectiveness.
• The Concept of Remote and Office Working A remote job is an opportunity to work from anywhere worldwide, contributing to the employee’s freedom and flexibility.
• Infrastructure for IT Security Policy: Remote Workers The purpose of the research paper is to analyze the security policy for remote workers in Dubai, define its requirements and methods of protection, and give recommendations regarding the existing security holes.
• Remote Learning and Work in the UAE During COVID-19 In the face of what is quickly becoming the global CoronaVirus health crisis, the UAE Government has been a reassuring presence to many; ensuring that the country’s economy is impacted as little as possible and […]
• Why More Companies Should Allow Employees to Work Remotely? The main criteria I used to analyze whether working from home is effective or not is the performance of companies that got back to the office environment, and which allowed employees to keep working remotely.
• Remote Working and Its History in the United States By the start of the 1970s, there was a need to revisit commuting to work due to the enactment of the Clean Air Act.
• Retention and Financial Benefits of Remote Working Brian Christensen who is one of the employees Cisco System Inc, which is a computer networking firm, recalls how he was forced to move from his home in San Francisco to be near the company’s […]
• Dropshipping With eBay: Decent Remote Work or Another Hoax?
• Must-Have Remote Work Skills for Workers Nowadays
• Find How Mom and Housewives Can Do Remote Work
• Create Your Own Shopping Mall and Do Remote Work
• Remote Work: Why Tech Professionals Are the Only Ones Who Can Choose Where to Work?
• Remote Work vs. Telework: What’s the Difference?
• How Can Affiliate Marketing Enable You to Do Remote Work?
• Best Remote Work Companies for Developers in the Past Few Years
• Advice for People Who Do Remote Work
• Does Remote Work Improve or Impair Firm Labor Productivity?
• Remote Work Tools and Business Continuity Solutions
• Employees Should Not Do Remote Work: Why or Why Not?
• The Big Winners and Losers From the Remote Work Revolution
• Remote Work and Spending Quality Time With Family
• Are You Really Ready to Do Remote Work?
• Remote Work: Definition, Concept, Jobs, Tipps
• Remote Work Employees: Challenges and Issues They Face
• Best Remote Work Job Nailing It in No Time
• How to Work Remotely: The Ultimate Remote Work Guide
• Companies That Switched to Permanent Hybrid or Remote Work Style
• Decoding the Remote Work Culture in India
• Remote Work or Back to the Office: The Statistics Just Shifted Again
• Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding From Anywhere
• Why Won’t Yahoo! Let Employees Do Remote Work?
• Getting Your Own Boss, Do Remote Work, and Spend More Time Doing the Things You Love
• How to Make Remote Work Work for Everyone?
• Remote Work: Guidance and Resources for Employees
• Keeping Your Children Busy When You Do Remote Work
• The Cities Best Facilitating Remote Work
• Remote Work Is Killing Big Offices: Cities Must Change to Survive
• Remote Work Influence on Future of Office Life
• Remote Works Facts and Statistics You Need to Know
• Elon Musk’s Thoughts on Risks Remote Work Can Face
• The Best Sites for Finding Remote Work Online in 2022
• Genuine Remote Work That Does Exist
• Why Remote Work Became Popular Only During COVID-19 Pandemic?
• Reasons Why Remote Work Is Still Important Nowadays
• The Mystery of Remote Work Listings That Aren’t Actually Remote
• The Phenomenon of Remote Work Analysis
• Is the “Remote Work Window” Privilege About to End?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Who Is More Productive: Remote or Onsite Employees?

​A recent Microsoft study on hybrid work and productivity revealed a stark divide between leaders and employees. Although numerous studies have shown that employees are often more productive when they have the option to work remotely, more than three-quarters of the leaders surveyed by Microsoft remain skeptical, a phenomenon that the researchers dubbed "productivity paranoia."

If unresolved, this paranoia can lead organizations to restrict or even terminate their remote-work options, which may, in turn, impact HR's ability to recruit, retain and engage talented employees. The following four steps can help you determine what works best in your organization.

Step 1: Do a Reality Check

The first step to determine if remote workers are less productive within your organization is to gauge whether that premise has any basis in reality.

As the former vice president of a global learning company with more than 3,000 employees—many of whom work remotely—John Arendes had trouble convincing his CEO that their remote employees were being productive.

"He was making judgments without data based on preconceived ideas," said Arendes, who is now CEO of the compliance training company Traliant in Manhattan Beach, Calif. Then reality intervened to change the CEO's mind. After the company was forced to move to fully remote work during the pandemic, leaders saw a 37 percent increase in productivity based on key metrics such as course development, product development and sales, which demonstrated the importance of using data to make decisions.

"There's a solution to every problem," Arendes said, "but you can't solve the problem until you understand what it's really about."

One approach is to pinpoint the source of leadership's resistance to remote work, said Ken Matos, director of people science at Culture Amp, a New York City-based employee experience platform. This can be done by: 

• Asking leaders to define what they mean by productivity.
• Establishing productivity metrics for each role.
• Analyzing the data.

"Work your way through the explanations starting with the most obvious," Matos said. "If you show leaders the metrics and it doesn't move the needle, the resistance is about something else. It's not about the numbers."

Step 2: Develop Meaningful Metrics

Ben Loring, a senior principal at Gartner HR in Washington, D.C., identifies what he considers to be the three most important productivity metrics:

• Activity metrics to measure how many hours are spent on various tasks.
• Outcome metrics to measure results.
• Predictive productivity metrics to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of processes. 

"If you measure productivity by activity, you end up rewarding people who aren't achieving goals and results," Loring said. "If you define productivity based on outcomes, the focus is more on results than just the fact of being present."

The traditional view of productivity usually focuses on tasks, volume or busyness rather than quality outcomes.

Many experts believe a meaningful assessment process includes both qualitative and quantitative measures. Topia, for example, uses the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework to set quarterly goals and measure progress. "It takes away the need to monitor what employees are doing," said Jacky Turnbull, chief people officer at the global talent mobility platform. For example, one of the HR team's year-end OKRs is to revamp Topia's remote-work policy and meet diversity, equity and inclusion goals. But the assessment goes beyond the numbers because the OKRs are closely aligned with the company's core values, Turnbull said. Employees are evaluated both on what they accomplish and how they accomplish it.

Effective communication can also have a significant impact on productivity when used to build trust, transparency and accountability. "Proper and consistent communication is a key factor to assure leaders that employees are working," said Laith Masarweh, founder and CEO of Assistantly in Irvine, Calif., a 350-employee virtual recruitment and staffing company. "If you don't have communication, there's no trust. And if you don't have trust, things break down."

Although Assistantly prides itself on its flexibility, the company also values communication and collaboration. It maintains regular business hours (approximately 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT), and everyone is asked to check in with their manager first thing in the morning and at the end of each day. There's a virtual all-company meeting once a month, and in between staff rely on Slack and Zoom to stay connected.

Several experts emphasized the importance of managers meeting regularly with team members one-on-one to set goals, clarify expectations and troubleshoot productivity deficits.

"Employees who know what's expected of them from management, the metrics they are going to be measured against and how their individual role contributes to the organization's mission will be the most successful," said Katherine Loranger, chief people officer at Safeguard Global, an employment outsourcing company in Austin, Texas. Once clear key performance indicators and measurable objectives are established, she recommends that managers leave it up to individual employees to determine how the work gets done.

"When managing remote or hybrid employees, it's important to have clear goals and expectations around response times, availability and standards," said Jennifer Donnelly, senior vice president at Segal, an HR consulting firm in Buffalo, N.Y. 

Step 3: Trust but Verify

"The No. 1 thing we instill in all of our leaders is trust. You need to trust your employees until they prove otherwise," Arendes said. Since he took over as CEO of Traliant 18 months ago, Arendes said, he has seen the impact of that trust on both the culture and growth of the company. Although the firm has nearly doubled in size, only four employees have left voluntarily.

"Trust building is relationship building," explained Turnbull, adding that trust breaks down when leaders are isolated from the people they are supposed to lead.

"Senior leaders are often removed from their front-line employees and don't really know what they do," said Erin Dertouzos, vice president of people strategy at StrongDM, a remote security software company. "There's a false belief that if they can't see their employees, they aren't really working."

Dertouzos sees the widespread movement to adopt remote and hybrid business models as an opportunity for HR to be a true business partner to help company leaders develop a more thoughtful approach to leadership and management.

"The hourly approach of tracking professionals is archaic," she said. "The mission is to create an environment where people can do the best work of their lives."

Donnelly also encourages HR leaders to be more thoughtful and intentional about how they implement remote and hybrid work processes and policies. "Look at collaboration tools and the meeting environment to make sure it includes remote employees and gives them a way to participate," she said. "Make sure the technology you choose supports remote work and the way it fits into the work culture."

When considering new technology to aid remote work, many HR leaders are unaware of the full menu of options. So it's important to invest in the software that best suits the culture and needs of the business, said Adam Riggs, CEO of Frameable in Washington, D.C., an online workplace platform. He cautions against the common tendency to conflate transparency with visibility.

"The right technology can be used to show leaders that employees are really working," Riggs said. Not surprisingly, Frameable uses its own platform to create a virtual infrastructure that maps to physical infrastructure.

"It allows us to see where everyone is, what they are working on and who they are working with," he explained. "It takes away the need for monitoring because we see from their avatar exactly where they are and what they are doing. It offers the benefits of in-person work without the commute."

Step 4: Prioritize Employee Well-Being

In an analysis of 339 independent studies originating from 230 independent organizations across 49 industries in 73 countries, London School of Economics researchers found a direct correlation between employee well-being, productivity and company performance. This dovetails with Masarweh's belief that "employee well-being is the key to productivity" and that "a healthy employee is a productive employee." He recommends that HR implement regular anonymous employee satisfaction surveys to see what employees want and need.

"Find out what would make them more productive and then show that data to the leaders," Masarweh said. "This will force them to confront what's best for the business, not just what they personally prefer."

When he realized that employees were often unproductive on Fridays because they were making plans for the weekend, Masarweh decided to give everyone Fridays off. "It's been great for morale and productivity because people are motivated to get their work done in four days," he said.

"Many executives don't really know what their employees do," Culture Amp's Matos added. "They need to recognize that people are human beings, not just extensions of the business."

Turnbull agreed. "Productivity paranoia is a reflection of leaders' discomfort with not being in control," she said. "We need to treat each other as adults and as human beings. The other side of the productivity conversation is burnout."

Arlene Hirsch is a career counselor and author based in Chicago.

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Working Remotely – Essay 1

Everyone is talking about this topic.

I will too now.  My focus is somewhat different.  I have two aims, mostly.

1. Help you (me) become better doing to get work done well.

2. Help the Team work remotely, together.

What is our goal?

I think our goal or ambition is to be able to work so well remotely, that we achieve almost the same benefits as working in a collocated way, working side-by-side.

One of the key aspects of this is to collaborate, to draw and write and think and talk together.

There are many things that make a small team able to do that.

Why is it so hard to do?

There are many reasons. Let us list a few.

1. Disorientation 2. De-personalization 3. Time zone differences 4. Unable to relate to the other people 5. Lack of knowledge of the “remote tools” (these tools are quite various, so this is a big topic, in a way) 6. Cultural differences 7 Inability to see or trust that the other people are gunning for the same goal as you, that we are all in this together

That will be enough for now. Let’s deal with them one at a time.

But first, what can we do well already working remotely?

Or at least, ok.

Well, we have been doing it some for ages.

We used emails. We used phone calls. About everyone now in their family has tried FaceTime or Skype or something like that. About everyone has done a Webex or Zoom call or GoToMetting or something like that. And been frustrated at being slowed down by “minor” things. We have sent files. We have shared files. We have shared our screen or watched another’s screen. We have been sent picture or drawings or movies.

Have we done these really well?

In my opinion, NO.

As one example, our ability to use email effectively is notoriously bad.  My saying: “If I want to have some one misunderstand, I send one email. If I want to be sure that person mis-understood, I send two email.”

But we have done them, and sometimes we have done them well enough. The project succeeded, at least in someone’s estimation.

What other things do we not do very well?

Some people, at least some of the time, can do the following. But mostly we do not do them well or they are not working well.

We do not have a good team with a clear goal and a desire to succeed at the mission. Or, maybe there is some desire, but it is not clear.

We have not established a personal, trusting relationship with each remote person (in the toughest case, every person is remote from all the others).

We do not identify and address cultural “bridges” well. (This is based on the idea that there is a cultural bridge between people in NYC and people in New Jersey. And that it is awkward to talk about cultural differences, but that with effort and compassion, cultural differences can be “bridged” and even appreciated.)

We do not let them know us, and we do not do everything we can to know them. And establish a good relationship with them.

The theory is that good communication requires a good relationship and some common goals.

We do not have fairly equal communication from each of the team members.

We do not know our tools (speaking of many of them) well. Nor do we use them as well as we should.

We do not accept that working remotely together is tiring (for many reasons), and we do not take good accommodation for that.

When working remotely, we do not tend to emulate the hallway conversations, the coffee breaks, and the meals together that we get with collocated teams. This informal conversation is enormously rich, in two ways. It allows us to get to know each other in a low stress situation. And it allows for feedback from the “main” sessions.

People have said that all the important work is done in the hallway conversations.

We are poor, as I usually see, at using the virtual whiteboard or the virtual stickies or any kind of tool that allows many people to work together at the same time. We do not know these tools well (Mural.co is one example), we do not study and train our people on them, and then we do not use them well.

We do not make accommodation that many things done remotely take a bit more time. So, many of us find this frustrating and spoil the remote experience by unrealistic expectations.

Let me end for now by saying this.

Remote work is hard, and takes a lot of skill. It can never be as good as collocated work. BUT, the tools and techniques one is forced to learn to do remote work well can make it very good , and will make your collocated work better.

One learns better balance by being blind.

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Remote Working

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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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Remote Work Vs. In-Office Work: Which is Better?

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Financial Impact

Money is the most influential factor to check when considering remote work vs. in-office work and how that financially impacts employees and employers alike . 

Remote Work Pros:

• No sitting in traffic means more time that could be spent earning money
• No temptation to go out for happy hours or spontaneous lunches with coworkers
• Spend less money on “work” clothes
• Lower operational costs for employers (office rent, purchasing and maintaining office technology and furniture)
• Use savings to scale your business (hire more help, give more employee bonuses)
• No physical barriers to company growth (new hire placement, building space)
• Access to remote talent can stabilize costs (hiring costs based on locations vary, Ohio marketing manager vs. New York marketing manager)

Remote Work Cons:

• Personal utility costs increase
• Must invest in quality internet connection
• "Start up costs" for telecommuting technology
• Some typical WFH expenses include: desk, chair, network routers, monitors

In-Office Work Pros:

401k investment options

Insurance benefits

In-Office Work Cons:

• Commuting (gas, parking maintenance expenses, or public transit costs)
• Employees are more likely to pick up lunch vs. packing
• Conveniently grabbing a coffee on the way to work 

Productivity and Efficiency

The nature of remote work doesn’t encourage chatting with coworkers

Heightened autonomy for employees over daily tasks and schedule

When employees are happy (work-life balance), they are more satisfied with their work, which increases employee retention 

An increased need for self-discipline for remote employees

Research proves that work-from-home employees work more hours than onsite workers.

Hiring can be strenuous for managers with the inability to gauge remote work skills separately from individual employee skills

Employees will have to use technology and software that is new to them (a simple learning curve, but technological adaptability is crucial for each individual)

An increased turnaround time on any IT issues due to dispersed team members

• Management oversees most of the day-to-day operations ensuring productivity remains high

The office space contributes to many distractions (commute, coffee breaks, longer lunch breaks, etc.)

A wider candidate pool enables you to find people with skills and knowledge that might not be common in your area

Diversification of personnel 

Increased cultural literacy 

Various regional and cultural backgrounds help promote creativity and innovation

The global reach that helps promote brand recognition 

Ensuring subordinates will work efficiently

Employees tempted to work more than one job

Managers are concerned because they’ve never had to manage a remote workforce

As a manager, the temptation to micromanage may still exist when employees work from home

In-Office Work Pros: 

Easier to check in on employees onsite

They can go up and ask questions face-to-face

Daily check-ins to support employees

Whiteboard meetings to keep everything and everyone on track

Conversely, hiring from different areas means ensuring your business complies with legal requirements.

Minimum wage rates and payroll requirements vary.

Micromanagement of employees (lack of autonomy) can lead to employee frustration, leading to an increase in employee turnover

Harder for managers and supervisors to assess which employees deserve a raise or a promotion 

Collaboration

Work from anywhere

Believed in delivering a more dynamic kind of teamwork

Less likely to have "office" drama 

Less time spent commuting means more working hours for employees

F2F is the preferred communication method (insert stat), and the lack of this communication can harm workers’ mental health (and the ability to collaborate efficiently)

Harder to communicate and bond when dependent on technology

No spontaneous interactions

Technical issues with communication platforms can hinder productivity 

The conversational tone is tough to decipher online

A reduction in teamwork due to the team being split across various locations

In-office events (birthday parties, happy hours)

More brainstorming and exchanging ideas

Increasing team strength and openness

Normal day-to-day operations of an office can cause drama 

Ex., one department has to work every day until 5 while another department leaves work early every Friday

Employees' motivation to work with team members could be negatively impacted due to increased by response time due to waiting for a response

Mental Health/Flexibility

No commute stress and more quality time for yourself as a remote worker (sleep a little longer, hobbies, exercise, able to get an early jump start on work, if you need to take off a little earlier)

Unlimited PTO (most of the time)

Tailor your day to your specific needs (work and personal life)

Work from any location with a good internet connection

Able to keep up with household chores eases the stress of having to do them on the weekend or in the evenings

Must adopt a new regime for morning/evening to switch in/out of work mode 

With no commute, employees are logging longer working hours which can lead to burnout

Commuting to work can serve as a mental transition period for employees when they work in the office

Set schedule by management ensures productivity remains high

Separation of work and home contributes to a healthy work-life balance

Others packing up to leave signals to you that you should also be wrapping up/shutting down for the day

Many companies offer some form of company-sponsored health programs to help with insurance rates (classes, on-site workout facilities)

Most modern-day employees expect some form of remote work, which means companies must remain flexible and be willing to adapt work policies to incorporate remote work options 

Work Environment 

Remote Work Pros: 

Enables you to set up your optimal home office or workstation (comfort)

More casual (comfortable) work attire is acceptable

Employees will opt for cheaper office equipment if they are responsible for setting up their home office themselves, which may lead to long-term ergonomic challenges

Employees have reduced interactions which leads to boredom and feelings of loneliness 

In-consistent work environments for employees

Potentially unsecured wi-fi network

An internet connection issue at home can cause interruptions to work

No staff on-site to assist with technology or equipment malfunctions

Power outages leave many people unable to work or connect with the team

Being surrounded by colleagues can build cohesion and more company attachment

Office basics are usually provided (desk, chair, computer, mouse, keyboard, etc.)

No FOMO (fear of missing out) because everyone is in the same place with the same opportunities 

Office work provides real-time feedback directly from your supervisor

The office (can) offer a stimulating environment where employees enjoy spending time which can lead to more creative engagement

Employees don't have a personal choice in the office setting or work environment

More formal work attire or work-approved clothing for workers can cause financial and mental stress

Employees have less ability to decrease distractions in an office environment

Written by The Office Oasis August 23, 2022

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More From Forbes

Remote vs. in-person work: pros and cons to weigh as a business owner.

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Founder/CEO of  Rankings.io , an SEO agency that helps elite personal injury law firms dominate first page rankings. 

We’re heading further into Q4 2021, and many companies have already decided whether they’ll remain remote, return to in-person work or take on some form of a hybrid model moving forward. Some companies, however, might not yet have decided how their employees should “show up” for work in the future. 

As a business owner who has run a remote company for almost a decade, I’ve made several observations on the pros and cons of remote work over the years. If you’re a business owner still weighing what’s next for the future of your company’s working model, here are some pros and cons of remote work you should consider. Note: in this article, I’m focusing on the binary of remote versus in-person work, not on hybrid models. 

Pro Of Remote Work: Access To Remote Talent

One of the most significant benefits remote work has given me as a business owner is access to talent from around the country. 

A wider candidate pool enables you to find people with skills and knowledge that might not be common in your area. Access to remote talent can also help you keep your costs more stable. For example, hiring a marketing manager based out of Houston will likely cost you less than hiring a marketing manager based out of New York City, due in large part to the major difference in the cost of living between the two cities. 

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Con Of Remote Work: Navigating Different Legal Requirements

The flip side of the ability to hire employees from different areas? Having to make sure your business is in compliance with different legal requirements. 

Minimum wage rates and payroll requirements are just two things that can differ by state. Consider this: according to the U.S. Department of Labor , the frequency of payday in California and Michigan “depends on the occupation” of the employee, whereas the frequency of payday in Arizona must be “two or more days in a month, not more than 16 days apart.”

Pro Of Remote Work: Lower Operational Costs 

A major benefit of remote work is that it helps you lower your operational costs. Without a physical office, you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars in rent per year, buy and maintain office technology and furniture, pay for Wi-Fi and more.

Instead, you can take those savings and use them in other ways to scale your business and make life better for your team, like by hiring more help and giving more employee bonuses.  

Con Of Remote Work: Inconsistent Work Environments

However, without a physical office, your employees won’t have consistent work environments. When you operate from a physical office, you can set everyone up with similar technology and furniture. You’ll know your employees are using your secure Wi-Fi network, surrounded by other company personnel. 

Operating remotely, you can give your employees technology stipends or ship them equipment, but there’s no guarantee they won’t just use their personal laptops. Additionally, your employees can work from different types of locations. This is great for employees but can make work more challenging — for example, the employee might not hear important information in a Zoom call due to loud background music at a coffee shop. 

Pro Of Remote Work: Easier Business Growth 

When you run a company from a physical office, each time you prepare to hire a new employee, you have to figure out where in the office they’ll sit. 

You’ll eventually hit a point where the growth of your business will be confined to the space you have left in the building. If you can’t squeeze in new employees, you might have to pause hiring while you look into a new office or see if your current office can be remodeled. However, with remote work, there are no physical barriers to your company’s growth. 

Con Of Remote Work: Harder To Bond And Communicate

Not having physical barriers to your company’s growth enables you to hire more people but makes it harder for employees to bond and communicate with each other. 

For one, interactions aren’t as spontaneous with remote work. There aren’t water cooler chats or spur-of-the-moment lunch gatherings. Day-to-day communication takes a hit, too. It can be tricky to comprehend communication over mediums like Zoom and Slack. After all, tone can be notoriously tough to decipher online. 

Pro Of Remote Work: Less Likelihood Of Turbulent Drama

While communication and bonding are tougher in remote work settings, there’s a silver lining. When your business is remote, there’s less likelihood of turbulent office drama. 

You don’t have to organize events like office birthday parties and happy hours, which can be ripe grounds for drama, or worse, employees getting harmed. Even day-to-day operations at an office can cause drama. For example, employees in one department might get upset if they see employees in a different department typically walking out of the office an hour earlier. 

That’s not to say that drama and gossip won’t happen with remote work. But, in many ways, remote work makes it harder for that drama and gossip to take place. 

Remote Versus In-Person Work: Other Considerations  

As you can see, many of the arguments surrounding remote versus in-person work have pros and cons. The pros and cons I’ve explored are by no means exhaustive. Other factors to consider include: 

• Work-Life Balance: In some ways, remote work encourages better work-life balance, like empowering employees to feel more comfortable taking breaks. In other ways, remote work fogs the boundaries of work and life. 

• Interruptions And Distractions: Interruptions and distractions are inevitable regardless of the work setting; it’s just a matter of the kind of interruptions and distractions. At home , employees might get interrupted by a pet or distracted by the sound of their neighbor mowing the lawn. At the office , they might get interrupted by a coworker or distracted by their desk buddy’s loud music. 

• Mental Health: Remote work can improve mental health in many ways, such as by giving employees more flexibility. However, remote work can also harm mental health in some ways, such as by making employees feel isolated.

For me, the pros of running a remote company outweigh the cons. However, ultimately, it’s up to you to consider the pros and cons of remote work from the lens of your company’s unique circumstances and make the best decision for you and your team. 

Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Workplace — Working from Home vs. Working in an Office

Working from Home Vs. Working in an Office

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Published: Sep 7, 2023

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Table of contents

Productivity: working from home vs. working in an office, work-life balance and distractions, communication and collaboration, health and well-being, personal and professional life.

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Working Remotely (Essay Sample)

What is reomote working and its impacts in a business

Working Remotely NAME INSTITUTION PROFESSOR COURSE DATE Working Remotely The advance in technology and the change in corporates operation styles have created the opportunity for remote working. The term can be defined as working away from the office through telecommunicating with other employees. Corporates that are trying to create flexibility amount their workers have considered this new mode of work and with some considering its benefits, others are considering its disadvantages. The undisputed fact that working from offices is more effective as it creates room for supervision and easy contact with workers is one that remote working is trying to eliminate. Remote working can only be achieved by utilizing telephones, video conferencing technology, and online meetings to convey and ensure the flow of information (Tavares,2017). Remote working requires workers with exemplary qualities ranging from self-motivated, high skills and knowledge in their areas of expertise, high skills in performance with minimal supervision, good time management skills with exemplary organization skills, workers with the ability to work in solitude and at the same time with great communication skills to create a flow of data and lastly workers who are trustworthy and can be relied upon to complete tasks independently (Pyoria, 2011). Remote working has its advantages and disadvantages. Remote working increases the level of flexibility in employees by allowing them to work on their on-time schedule and this allows them to create time for personal life and even extend working hours. Remote working has increased rates of productivity due to the reduced levels of distractions from office premises. Remote working creates an environment that is not characterized by office politics of power influence and struggles to build relationships, by eliminating this factor, workers are more focused on their performance and output while isolated. Remote working also has its disadvantages: remote working is faced with technical issues ranging from inadequate equipment’s to establish the flow of information, it can also affect the mental health of wor

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Global HR — 8 min

12 remote working contract clauses for employees

A detailed work contract is especially important in a remote work setting. Employees and employers can get confused about their professional boundaries without clear descriptions. On top of that, the smallest incorrect detail in a contract can land your business in a heap of legal trouble. 

Fortunately, employment agreements for remote working don’t have to be difficult to create. Read on to learn the most important contract clauses for employees to make sure your global workforce is healthy, happy, and compliant.

What is a remote working contract? 

Why do you need a remote working contract , 12 clauses to include in a remote working contract, stay compliant with remote.

A remote working contract is an employment agreement between a remote employee and their employer. It not only outlines the way the employee is expected to act, but it also clearly defines the responsibilities of the employer and the employee's role within the organization. 

A remote working contract should at least contain the following: 

Salary or hourly rates and overtime 

Processes and workflows 

Information security, confidentiality, and device protection 

Employee support 

The primary goal of a remote work contract is to provide clarity for both the employee and the employer. That way, there’s little chance of discrepancies and disputes arising down the line.

Remote employees enjoy a flexible work style compared to in-office employees. Employers need to trust their remote employees to effectively manage a remote team, while providing clear guidelines on work expectations.

That's where remote employment contracts come in. Remote employment contracts should help remote employees know exactly how to fulfill their roles. For example, remote employment agreements could outline working hours during which remote employees need to be available for meetings or client communications.

At the same time, remote working contracts place boundaries on what the employer can expect from employees. For instance, a contract might stipulate that the employee won’t be expected to work beyond normal office hours. In fact, this is a legal requirement in some countries. These rules help to prevent burnout and ensure each employee maintains a healthy work-life balance.

Every company is unique, so there is no uniform remote contract that's suitable for all remote companies. Still, there are clauses that will build a strong remote working contract.

Most remote working contract cover the following:

1. Place of work 

In many cases, the first part of a remote working contract is the place of work. Even if the employee works remotely full-time, their legal address must be on file. 

This address lays the groundwork for the rest of the contract. Different locations have their own laws and regulations businesses must adhere to. A common practice in one country, for instance, could be illegal in another. By establishing the place of work, you know the employment relationship has to respect the laws that are in place in that location.

2. Responsibilities 

A remote contract should specify the employee’s job title and description in stone, outline their job responsibilities, and communicate any expected work deliverables.

Check if your remote contract includes a detailed description of the role the employee is taking on. This includes the employee's typical workload and core work hours, collaboration processes, company policies, and mandatory meetings.

3. Working hours 

Almost every country has regulations that limit employees’ working hours and describe how often they take breaks throughout the work day. Your working contract should match or better these laws in your employee’s country of residence. 

Many remote employees work flexible hours, shuffled around personal appointments or home responsibilities. If you require employees to be online at certain times, their contract must reflect this expectation. 

The employee’s contract should also clearly explain whether you expect a certain number of hours of work to be done per week or if the employee simply needs to stay on top of their tasks and deadlines. If their hours are set, then the contract should also outline when the employee can take breaks and how long those breaks can be. 

4. Compensation and benefits

It’s important to confirm an employee’s base salary and pay rate before they begin working for your company. Outline these details in their contract, along with their overtime rates.

Include a section that describes when and how the employee can expect payment. This is particularly important for businesses with international teams, since the employer needs to work with different currencies and payment methods. 

This section is also where you’ll describe the specifics of any benefits plans the employee is entitled to. For example, your company could offer dependent care or have a company insurance policy.

5. Well-being

Describe any measures in place that support employee well-being. A remote contract can outline how the company promotes a healthy work-life balance. For example, specify how employees can take time off or delegate work during extended leave .

6. Equipment provisions

Some remote positions require specialized equipment or software. To make sure that employees have the tools that they need, remote contract should break down 1) what the employee needs and 2) who is responsible for fulfilling those needs. If there are any limitations in using certain equipment, clarify that in the remote contract as well.

For example, let's say an employee is given a company laptop to use for work. The remote contract should specify whether the employee can let family members use the device, whether there are any restrictions on apps they’re allowed to install, and whether they will be responsible for replacing the laptop if it’s damaged or stolen.

7. Confidentiality 

Confidentiality is an important part of a remote employee’s contract because it’s difficult for an employer to monitor and guide an employee’s behavior when they’re working from a different location.

A confidentiality clause tells the employee everything they’re not allowed to talk about or share outside of appropriate business settings. It can include personal information about their colleagues, client data, information about upcoming projects or products, and sensitive business information, such as financial statements. 

The confidentiality clause can also explain best practices for internet and data safety if the employee has access to sensitive information. These could include not working via public wifi connections or using a personal device to handle finance-related tasks. 

8. Expense reimbursements 

Remote employees will sometimes incur expenses for their home office setup of remote work responsibilities.

A remote employment agreement should include a clause outlining what the employee is allowed to claim. This can include travel costs when visiting a client or attending a work-related event. 

Along with describing what costs the employee can claim, the expense clause should outline how the employee can request and receive reimbursements from the company.

9. Intellectual property 

An intellectual property (IP) clause outlines the rights your employee has over the content they create or the ideas they produce during work hours and projects. 

For example, does your company’s copywriter own the blog posts they write for the website? Are they allowed to share this content on other platforms? Are they allowed to use this content in their personal portfolio when seeking future employment? 

Specifying IP rights in remote contracts helps both employees and employers protect intellectual property and avoid future disputes.

10. Data security 

A data security clause describes how the employee should keep personal and professional data secure .

If your company uses a specific data security method or platform, the working contract should explain what that means for the employee and how you expect them to handle data safety. It can also touch on virtual private networks and other best practices for internet safety.  

This clause outlines the way your company handles taxes to keep your business compliant in the employee’s country of residence. You’ll explain whether taxes and other deductibles are automatically deducted from their salary, as well as the amounts you’ll withhold. 

Since different countries have unique tax laws, each contract should comply with the laws in the employee’s specific region. A global HR partner with in-depth knowledge of taxation systems around the world like Remote can help you stay compliant. 

12. Termination 

Finally, a remote working contract should always define termination terms so the employee and employer are both protected from unlawful or improper termination.

Within the contract, define when and how both parties can go about terminating the contract. This includes notice periods on how soon terminations should be communicated, and all grounds for fair contract termination.

Your employees need to comply with the contracts they sign, and your business needs to comply with the law. The challenge lies in knowing whether the contract you’ve put together is legal in the employee’s country of residence. 

Fortunately, Remote can help. With extensive knowledge of labor laws around the world, we make it easy for businesses to grow while remaining compliant. 

With employer of record services and intuitive HR Management software, Remote can help you manage the entire employee lifecycle. Chat with Remote today.

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