On today’s Business Beat, Jeff discusses the uptick in workers’ desires of working from home permanently after the COVID-19 pandemic moved the world to remote work.
According to an in-depth look at remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic from the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, around 21% of total work hours post-pandemic will be working from home, nearly four times as high as the level of those working from home pre-pandemic.
Tune in to the Business Beat, below, to learn more about this desire to continue working from home:
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Good morning, Paul!
We’re hearing it more and more: time to head back to the office to go back to work, right? But as companies put out the clarion call to their teams, they’re getting met with some resistance. You see, many employees find working at home more convenient and even more productive. Some employees feel so strongly about continuing their work from home that they’re willing to take a pay cut to do it, some as much as 7%, just to have two or three days in any given work week working from home.
To further put this in perspective, well, companies are listening and, in certain cases, accommodating. According to an in-depth look at remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic comes from the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, and they find that the desire to continue working from home is nearly universal, cutting across age, education, gender, earnings and family circumstances.
In fact, the findings project that around 21% of total work hours post-pandemic will be working from home, nearly four times as high as the level of those working from home pre-pandemic. Now, certainly this hybrid work from home model does give companies some concerns, specifically as it relates to potential degradation in company culture or breakdown in the critical nature of collaboration between team members or even tracking and accountability of employee performance.
Nevertheless, the overarching conclusion of these studies and others is that some level of working from home will become a permanent part to the fabric of American work going forward. So, if you’re a company or an employee thinking about working from home instead of going back to the office, talk to your employer and see what’s possible. The doors are being swung open to all kinds of creative models combining both work in the office and from home.
I’m Jeff Sloan, founder and CEO of StartupNation.com, and that’s today’s Business Beat on the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, WJR.
