(p. B5) Studies show that when employees have the choice to work remotely, “business is a whole lot better” for “people, the planet and profit,” said Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, a consulting firm that focuses on emerging workplace trends.
Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report, released in February [2017], showed that more American employees were working remotely and for longer periods. The “sweet spot” was employees who spend three to four days a week off site; they reported feeling most engaged at work.
Mohammed Chahdi, global human resources services director for Dell, said a large percentage of its 140,000 employees already worked remotely and the goal was to have 50 percent do so by 2020. The strategy has helped the company “grow smart,” he said, by reducing its real estate and environmental footprints and retaining talented employees.
“We have data that show employees are more engaged when they enjoy flexibility,” said Mr. Chahdi, who works remotely from Toronto. “Why insist that they be in an office when it simply doesn’t matter?”
A new study, Future Workforce, released in February [2017] by Upwork, a marketplace for online work, surveyed more than 1,000 hiring managers in the United States. It found that only one in 10 believed location was important to a new hire’s success; nearly two-thirds said they had at least some workers who did a significant portion of their work from a remote location, and about half agreed that they had trouble finding the talent they needed locally.
“Remote work has gone mainstream,” said Stephane Kasriel, Upwork’s chief executive. On-site work between the hours of 9 and 5 “is a remnant of the industrial era.”
For the full story, see:
TANYA MOHN. “ITINERARIES; Digital Nomads Wander World Without Missing a Paycheck.” The New York Times (Tues., APRIL 4, 2017): B5.
(Note: bracketed years added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 3, 2017, and has the title “ITINERARIES; The Digital Nomad Life: Combining Work and Travel.”)
And there will be unicorns. So we’ll have some remote working, but we’ll be jailing ever more techies in a few obscenely overcrowded, otherworldly-expensive megacities. Just as Microsofties once told us wasting two days on the now-infamously godawful airlines just to physically attend an hour meeting was going away, but both the meetings and the airlines only got worse and worse.
So not really a big deal, just another stylistic business fad. Those come and go like mayflies – while being crammed, confined, and nailed down, remains eternally.