essay on remote working

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

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.

Partner Center

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.

Related Topics

More publications, recovery.gov: using the internet to accelerate and improve fiscal stimulus, collusion in college sports: edward c. o'bannon, et al., v. ncaa, et al. (2015), safe assets, collateralized lending and monetary policy.

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.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

What 800 executives envision for the postpandemic workforce

Ten things to know about gender equality

The future of work in America: People and places, today and tomorrow

Presentations made painless

• Get Premium

125 Remote Work Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

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

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

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

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

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

Want to create a presentation now?

Instantly Create A Deck

Let PitchGrade do this for me

Hassle Free

We will create your text and designs for you. Sit back and relax while we do the work.

Explore More Content

• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service

© 2023 Pitchgrade

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.

Desire Paths and Real World UX

• Book a Speaker

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus convallis sem tellus, vitae egestas felis vestibule ut.

Error message details.

Reuse Permissions

Request permission to republish or redistribute SHRM content and materials.

How Different Perspectives Affect the Debate on Remote Work

Are workers back in the office 'suckers'? Are those still working from home 'slackers'?

​Technology developed in the past two decades has enabled many employees to work from home or other remote environments. In particular, laptop computers and wireless Internet connections with virtual private networks (VPNs) have created opportunities for people to complete their tasks in many different physical locations.

Despite this, remote work had not been the norm prior to 2020. Even when some high-profile companies ventured down this path, the experiment often ended on a CEO's whim. As one example, the work-from-home program at Yahoo lasted from 2007 until 2013. And importantly, the decision to scrap it did not appear to be based on evidence of the program's failure, but on a belief in the intangible benefits of in-person interactions.

Regardless of these early setbacks in the movement toward remote work, continued advances in technology and more frequent (though brief) employee experiences (e.g., while on sick leave) positioned the workforce for early 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced a rapid, large-scale experiment with the practice. By October 2020, Pew Research determined, 71 percent of employees with jobs that could be done remotely were working from home all or most of the time—a marked increase from the 23 percent who worked remotely before the pandemic.

Because the threat from COVID-19 has waned, some employees have returned to normal onsite work, many have partially returned (e.g., with limited specified days in the office) and some have not returned at all. According to the Kastle Back to Work Barometer , the U.S. weekday building access rate for September 2022 was less than half the rate prior to March 2020. It remains to be seen if employees will ever come back in numbers similar to pre-COVID-19 days.

Objective Versus Subjective Factors

Despite the movement toward remote work for many employees, lots of jobs cannot be done remotely. For example, blue-collar and health care workers, as well as others deemed "essential" during the pandemic, never got the opportunity to be away from their normal work environments, even as they saw friends and family have that experience.

It is tough to make a strong objective argument against remote work. Indeed, most studies indicate improvements in job performance and productivity during remote work. See, for example, a meta-analysis of telecommuting before the pandemic (Gajendran and Harrison, 2007), as well as gains measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the pandemic struck.

Subjective factors—organizational culture, strategic issues, employees' and other stakeholders' perceptions—are also important and should be considered in discussions of remote work. Many people have strong feelings and beliefs about its appropriateness and viability, whether based in objective research or not.

Surveying Employees' Perceptions of Remote Work

A SHRM survey on remote work from April 2022 found that there are huge differences in how remote work is generally perceived by other employees, depending on their own work situation. The findings represent an evaluation of these perceptions. The study involved 1,702 participants from a broad range of jobs and industries, of whom 457 were fully remote, 510 were fully onsite and the rest were some combination of remote and onsite.

When asked about how many hours remote employees work, 44 percent of onsite workers believed remote employees work fewer hours than onsite workers; however, only 8 percent of remote workers shared that belief. Similarly, when asked about remote workers' productivity, 35 percent of onsite workers believed remote workers are less productive than onsite workers; only 5 percent of remote workers shared that belief.

These differences are massive and reveal major disconnects in how remote workers are viewed—employee perspectives largely unstated until now.

Slackers or Suckers?

To put it in clear language, these results indicate that traditional onsite workers see remote workers as "slackers" who don't put in the same time or effort required to do a good job. On the other hand, the vast majority of remote workers surveyed—82 percent—believe that the requirement to work in an office makes no sense when work can be done remotely. These remote workers view onsite workers as "suckers" who are forced into positions that waste time and money, minimize their flexibility, and harm their quality of life.

The different belief systems revealed in the research findings seem to be playing out in both boardroom and lunchroom discussions. Organizational leaders and executives are likely members of the group of survey participants working fully onsite, whose perceptions are that remote work does not equate to hard and productive work.

More Research Needed

It is important to note that real (versus perceived) differences in job performance for remote workers have not been established. It could be that traditional in-person work environments are more conducive to effectiveness and success for job roles that rely on such factors as brainstorming and close teamwork. But we need to know for sure. Good empirical research can address this important topic. It will take some time. SHRM hopes to figure out the truth by highlighting such studies and ensuring that the public finds out about the results.

Another source for guidance on remote work is the SHRM Body of Applied Skills and Knowledge (SHRM BASK), the foundational document of SHRM certification, particularly the Relationship Management and Consultation behavioral competencies. Workforce Management and Managing a Global Workforce , two functional areas of the SHRM BASK's technical competency, HR Expertise , are also relevant. 

Mark Smith, Ph.D., is director of HR Thought Leadership for SHRM Research.

Related Content

Rising Demand for Workforce AI Skills Leads to Calls for Upskilling

As artificial intelligence technology continues to develop, the demand for workers with the ability to work alongside and manage AI systems will increase. This means that workers who are not able to adapt and learn these new skills will be left behind in the job market.

Employers Want New Grads with AI Experience, Knowledge

A vast majority of U.S. professionals say students entering the workforce should have experience using AI and be prepared to use it in the workplace, and they expect higher education to play a critical role in that preparation.

Advertisement

Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace

​An organization run by AI is not a futuristic concept. Such technology is already a part of many workplaces and will continue to shape the labor market and HR. Here's how employers and employees can successfully manage generative AI and other AI-powered systems.

HR Daily Newsletter

New, trends and analysis, as well as breaking news alerts, to help HR professionals do their jobs better each business day.

Success title

Success caption

Remote Work Essays

Managing information systems & technology, managing virtual and global teams, technological transformation among corporations, examining factors that may influence the productivity of business managers in the it industry working from home during the covid-19 pandemic, work-life balance among the millennials, geographically dispersed teams, business application of mis, remote working in the post-covid period and implication on leadership, is it ethical for companies to monitor employees who are working from home, work-from-home and employee motivation during the covid-19 pandemic, popular essay topics.

• American Dream
• Artificial Intelligence
• Black Lives Matter
• Bullying Essay
• Career Goals Essay
• Causes of the Civil War
• Child Abusing
• Civil Rights Movement
• Community Service
• Cultural Identity
• Cyber Bullying
• Death Penalty
• Depression Essay
• Domestic Violence
• Freedom of Speech
• Global Warming
• Gun Control
• Human Trafficking
• I Believe Essay
• Immigration
• Importance of Education
• Israel and Palestine Conflict
• Leadership Essay
• Legalizing Marijuanas
• Mental Health
• National Honor Society
• Police Brutality
• Pollution Essay
• Racism Essay
• Romeo and Juliet
• Same Sex Marriages
• Social Media
• The Great Gatsby
• The Yellow Wallpaper
• Time Management
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Violent Video Games
• What Makes You Unique
• Why I Want to Be a Nurse
• Send us an e-mail

The Benefits of Remote Working: Essay Plan Coursework

The persuasive essay will be dedicated to the topic of the benefits of remote working within the framework of support for my argument. My argument is the following: it is better to work from home financially, mentally and in relation to productivity. This argument relates to my field of work in operations management as well. In general, the responsibilities of an operations manager include the coordination of production processes and service provision. In addition, this specialist plans a budget, monitors business operations, and formulates strategies for the improvement of a company’s efficiency and profitability, the quality of products and services, and employees’ productivity. At the same time, the nature of an operations manager’s responsibility allows him to work from home. In this case, this opportunity relates to the topic of remote working, as particular experience in this field allows us to make a previously defined argument and provide substantial evidence in its support.

My topic may be regarded as debatable as it has several perspectives in accordance with people’s attitudes to it. In other words, it is possible to agree with my argument or be against my viewpoint – thus, the purpose of this essay is to persuade its readers to understand and accept the writer’s position. Moreover, average readers are the essay’s target audience. However, they are able to form their opinions opposite to my argument, that may be defined as potential challenges with which I may encounter.

In particular, some people do not like to work from the home environment as they see multiple drawbacks of this format. For them, working from home negatively impacts concentration due to multiple temptations and the sources of attention distraction at home and contributes to poor balance between working and private life. In addition, isolation and the feeling of disconnectedness from coworkers may affect a worker as well – in this case, he may face misunderstanding in relation to work processes and a lack of creativity due to the inability to cooperate and communicate with colleagues. However, the essay aims to provide strong evidence in support of my argument and prove that working from home have more advantages than drawbacks, and my goal is to win over readers and make them accept my point of view.

As previously mentioned, working from home is better for the average person and better for business. It is better financially as an employee spends less money outside of the house while an employer spends less money on the management of the workspace. At the same time, it is better mentally as an employee has more opportunities to release stress being at home rather than in the workplace and avoid burnout. Moreover, by working at home, an individual avoids time-consuming and stress-related daily commutes. In addition, in his own house, a person may create a more comfortable work environment depending on his unique needs and preferences. Finally, working at home is better for both an employee and a company in relation to productivity as the former has more flexibility that allows him to do more tasks, ensuring the organization’s growth. Using relevant and reliable data, statistics, and simple persuasive writing, I am planning to develop and prove these key points.

In addition, I am planning to integrate evidence into my essay by making statements and providing evidence from particular sources related to my topic in its support. Thus, there are several sources that I will use in my work. The first one is an article “9 Best Benefits of Working from Home (and 5 Potential Drawbacks)” written by Sondra Wolfer. In it, the author provides essential arguments in favor and against working at home, and every point is supported by data from various studies and surveys (Wolfer). In general, these source contain information on the basis of which I may construct my persuasion.

The second source is the report of Pew Research Center “How the Coronavirus Outbreak Has – and Hasn’t – Changed the Way Americans Work” written by Kim Parker, Juliana Horowitz and Rachel Minkin. On the basis of surveys’ results, it demonstrate that although the use of telework was forced by the pandemic and 71% of workers are currently doing their job from home, more than a half of them report that they wish to keep working all the time remotely due to an adequate workspace, motivation, and productivity (Parker et al. 4). In addition, this source proves that people with high income-related occupation and higher educational attainment have more opportunities to work from home and find it satisfying.

Finally, the last source is a peer-reviewed article “Work-Life Balance Among Newly Employed Officers – A Qualitative Study” written by Emma Oskarsson, Johan Österberg, and Joel Nilsson. It will be used in order to support my argument in relation to the ability of remote work to provide work-life balance. According to the source, a high workload and stressful working conditions may lead not only to burnout but to a lack of time for family and friends (Oskarsson et al. 44). At the same time, working at home allows an employee to spend more time with beloved people.

Working on my essay, I will consider my instructor’s feedback on previous assignments as well. In particular, I will pay particular attention to the structure of my work to make it more comprehensive and logical. In addition, I will consider the standards of academic writing to provide a high-quality paper. In general, feedback plays an essential role in my education as it has influenced my progress moving forward and contributed to my experience.

Works Cited

Oskarsson, Emma, et al. ” Work-Life Balance Among Newly Employed Officers – A Qualitative Study.” Health Psychology Report , vol. 9, no. 1, 2021, pp. 39-48.

Parker, Kim, et al. “How the Coronavirus Outbreak Has – and Hasn’t – Changed the Way Americans Work.” Pew Research Center, 2020, pp. 1-31.

Wolfer, Sondra. “ 9 Best Benefits of Working from Home (and 5 Potential Drawbacks) .” The Muse, Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, April 28). The Benefits of Remote Working: Essay Plan. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-benefits-of-remote-working-essay-plan/

"The Benefits of Remote Working: Essay Plan." IvyPanda , 28 Apr. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/the-benefits-of-remote-working-essay-plan/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'The Benefits of Remote Working: Essay Plan'. 28 April.

IvyPanda . 2024. "The Benefits of Remote Working: Essay Plan." April 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-benefits-of-remote-working-essay-plan/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Benefits of Remote Working: Essay Plan." April 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-benefits-of-remote-working-essay-plan/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Benefits of Remote Working: Essay Plan." April 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-benefits-of-remote-working-essay-plan/.

• The Notion of the Work-Life Balance
• Benefits of Work-Life Balance
• Microsoft Teams, Discord, Skype, and Google Workspace Comparison
• The Importance of Work-Life Balance
• Work-Life Conflict
• Improving Work-Life Balance During Distant Work
• Work-Life Programmes in Business Strategy
• Work-Life Balance: A Comparison of Policies in the UK and Australia
• Work-Life Conflict and Performance
• Micro-Organization Within the Workplace
• Building a Culture of Innovation
• Diversity Among Directors and Stakeholders
• The 8-Step Change Model in Business
• Managerial Competencies: Skill Sets Analysis
• Analysis of Lando's Business Plan

• Publications

Realizing the Potential of Global Digital Jobs

This white paper builds on the January 2024 paper The Rise of Global Digital Jobs , identifying ways to make global digital jobs a reality.

Written in collaboration with Capgemini, the paper explores how global digital jobs can alleviate labour shortages and connect skilled workers from regions with surplus to those with labour shortages. It identifies key challenges – technological infrastructure, policies and perceptions, and workforce skills – and offers strategies to overcome these barriers, including public-private partnerships and technology investments. Additionally, it outlines risks like technology malfunctions and work conditions, proposing solutions to facilitate a sustainable global digital job market.

Aimed at policymakers, business leaders, and stakeholders, this paper serves as a guide to capitalizing on global digital jobs to enhance economic growth and employment opportunities worldwide.

World Economic Forum reports may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License , and in accordance with our Terms of Use .

Further reading All related content

These sectors are suitable for remote working digital jobs

The growth in remote working digital jobs can close skills gaps – but there will be challenges, according to the latest World Economic Forum white paper.

Fortune’s first century was tied to purpose. Its second century will be too

Good morning. This will be my last day writing this newsletter, so allow me a few words of reflection. I joined Fortune a decade ago as editor-in-chief and began writing the essays for this newsletter not long after. Five years later, I became CEO, as Fortune spun out of Time Inc. and into the hands of a new owner. My goal from the beginning was to ensure that this proud media brand, nearly a century old, would survive a second century. 

It begins with purpose.  Fortune’s very first issue, published in February of 1930, came on the cusp of the Great Depression. And from the beginning, Fortune was forced to develop a social conscience.  Fortune editor James Agee and photographer Walker Evans best captured the soul of that difficult time in their Pulitzer Prize winning book,  Let Us Now Praise Famous Men . That DNA later led to the creation of the Most Powerful Women list and the 100 Best Companies to Work For list , both first published in 1998, and both drivers of necessary change.

We doubled down on that history in 2015 with the Change the World list , in 2016 with the Fortune Global Forum at the Vatican, and in 2017 with the creation of the CEO Initiative , a forum to share best practices on maximizing companies’ positive impact on society. Today, that purpose is embedded in our mission and our actions. I like to think we have played a small part over the decade in making business better.

But of course, purpose without profit passes quickly. That’s why we have worked hard over the last five years to complete the transition to digital at Fortune , to vastly expand our leadership audiences, and to diversify our revenues. We’ve seen 50% growth during that time and have recorded three straight years of profit. There is still much to be done, but I have every confidence that our new CEO Anastasia Nyrkovskaya , in partnership with editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell, can build a great edifice on that foundation. They are two very powerful women.

As for this newsletter, Diane Brady, editorial director of the CEO Initiative, will be taking over, assisted once a week in Europe by Peter Vanham and in Asia by Clay Chandler. So keep opening this email; it will be an important window into the global business world.

Meanwhile, I will be taking the summer off—biking, kayaking, reading, and enjoying my first extended sabbatical in four decades—before starting a new venture in the fall.

I want to thank all of you who have allowed me to invade your inboxes each morning. It has been an honor, a privilege, and I hope I’ve not been too much of nuisance. Please keep striving. I am convinced the challenges of our future must be conquered not just by new technology, but by new leadership. And the readers of this column remain my best hope.

More news below.

Alan Murray @alansmurray [email protected]

Deleting chats

The Federal Trade Commission wants Amazon to explain why the company told leaders to use Signal, the encrypted messaging app. The FTC made the demand as part of a lawsuit that alleges the e-commerce company maintains an illegal monopoly. The agency previously accused Amazon executives of using Signal’s disappearing-messages feature to destroy evidence. Fortune

Alphabet surges

Alphabet shares rose 11% in extended trading after the Google parent announced a $70 billion stock buyback and its first-ever dividend. The company beat expectations on both the bottom and top-line, reporting $80.5 billion in revenue and $23.7 billion in net income. Ad sales on Google grew at their fastest pace for over a year, helped by a surge in spending from Chinese e-commerce companies like Temu. The Wall Street Journal 

Biden’s EV incentives risk ‘collapse’

South Korea’s industry minister warns that China’s control of graphite—a critical material in batteries—will make it impossible for any EV maker to qualify for U.S. subsidies. The Inflation Reduction Act does not offer subsidies to EVs with components made in “countries of concern” like China. “Unless they make some kind of exemption or transition period, the whole regime will collapse,” Ahn Duk-geun says. Financial Times

AROUND THE WATERCOOLER

Netflix will spend ‘vast majority’ of its $17 billion content budget on originals in 2024, despite a deluge of licensed hit shows up for grabs by Rachyl Jones

SEC sued over Ethereum, crypto firm asks court to state token is not a security by Jeff John Roberts

How the ordeal of getting an ear piercing pushed a 34-year-old mom to ditch her law career to launch the adult version of Claire’s by Jane Thier

Sam Altman’s Worldcoin eyeing partnerships with PayPal and OpenAI by Niamh Rowe

Meet the ‘professional namer’ who directed Accenture’s $100 million name change: ‘It’s the best job in the world’ by Jasmine Li

It’s not just investors watching the Fed: Central bankers across Southeast Asia are trying to time rate cuts to ensure their currencies don’t collapse by Lionel Lim

T his edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon. 

This is the web version of CEO Daily, a newsletter of must-read insights from Fortune CEO Alan Murray. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.

Latest in Newsletters

• 0 minutes ago

Big Tech is pouring hundreds of billions into AI. Should it also get to decide if the technology is ‘safe’? 

Social networks have too much political influence, Americans tell researchers

Binance’s founder will follow Bankman-Fried to prison—but their fates couldn’t be more different

Bumble relaunches app with a new tool to relieve the ‘burden’ of women making the first move

Forget the RTO debate—after a youth-defining pandemic, here’s what Gen Z workers actually want in a job

Here’s more details about the access ByteDance had to U.S. TikTok user data

Most popular.

Gen Z job seeker refused to do 90-minute task because it ‘looked like a lot of work’—now the CEO who complained about it is being slammed

Elon Musk publicly dumped California for Texas—now Golden State customers are getting revenge, dumping Tesla in droves

The 5 best supplements for healthy aging, according to a longevity expert

Elon Musk reportedly sacked Tesla’s entire Supercharger team, including his top female manager

Elon Musk says any company that isn’t spending $10 billion on AI this year like Tesla won’t be able to compete

Climbing stairs could help you live longer—and experts say it only takes a few flights a day