Is teleworking the future of your employment? Office work is not dead yet

There is speculation about how Covid is changing work. However, the jury is still beyond the scale of the telecommuting transition, and many white-collar workers will probably return to their offices.

There are speculations about how Covid is changing work as the pandemic intensifies, and many claims Permanent transition to work from home.. But don’t sell a second car or throw in a commuter pass yet. The jury is still beyond the scale of the telecommuting transition, and many white-collar workers will probably return to their offices.

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Some studies suggest a move to larger household chores driven by Covid. MIT researchers Used google

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A study to conclude, “From February to May 2020, over one-third of the workforce switched to remote labor, and about half of American workers now work from home.”

About half of American workers? This estimates the University of Chicago’s “feasible upper bound” to37% work In the US you can do it entirely at home. If the MIT survey is correct, more work is actually done at home than Chicago researchers have found possible.

Second, both of these estimates are very large when compared to the more comprehensive pre-pandemic data source. In 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau Only 5.3% of workers I worked at home. (Other federal sources find a slightly higher number, but the differences are at least partially How to ask.. )

The MIT results could be inflated by a measured reaction in the midst of a pandemic when the economy was virtually at rest. A better way to think about this issue is to identify work and industries that both teams can do at home. The Chicago study uses 22 distinct occupational clusters. Bureau of Labor Statistics Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system, Enables more detailed analysis.

Not surprisingly, different occupational clusters have different possibilities for working from home. These include 10 job groups with a lower bound of 6% or less, including zero jobs for “construction or extraction” or “preparing and delivering food service”. At the high end, more than 87%, including legal, 97%, education, training and libraries, 98%, and computer and mathematics, 100%, and more than 50%, 9 There is a cluster. )Profession.

Jobs that may be telecommuting also pay higher median wages. And while these high-capacity metropolitan areas are associated with workers with higher household incomes and college degrees, there is a negative correlation between home ownership and the subway, which has a percentage of white residents.

But just because you can work at home doesn’t mean it will happen, especially in the long run. US workers are slower to return to their offices, but countries that manage pandemics report much higher returns. Guardian Report Survey from Morgan Stanley

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AlphaWise found “83% of French office staff returned, followed by 76% in Italy.” This is partly due to the successful virus control in these countries.

There are many reasons why both employers and employees work together. First, as mentioned above, many professions simply cannot be done from home. And analysts are worried about productivity, even if they can. Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom He is worried that the rapid increase in teleworking “will cause productivity problems for companies.” (Bloom 2014 Harvard Business Review An article titled “Allow more employees to work from home to improve productivity.”

The difference is that pandemic-led work from home is often unvoluntary or unplanned, often reducing productivity. Especially for families with school-age children, the working environment is out of control due to noise and confusion. Work at home exclusively, not as part of a planned strategy, to reduce innovations that many analysts feel are coming from sustainable ones Face-to-face interaction..

Face-to-face communication also builds a network to support people’s career advancement. That’s why women professionals are afraid to hit the “mama truck” when they take childcare leave.

So Economist Heather Shake As shown by, poor public policy on our casework means that women are compelled to provide care for their children with older people and other dependents. .. This means their careers suffer with overall productivity and innovation. Therefore, working from home may add new lanes to your Mama Truck.

Another barrier to work on the go is the need for managers to manage their work. Marxist economist Harry Braberman, book Labor and monopoly capital, Showed how modern management practices have evolved from the need to train workers for maximum productivity. When I was writing a study of the financial services industry in New York, senior management explained this point. “You’ll have to go down the hall and yell at someone, so office work won’t be relocated too far.”

Clearly, many employees want to work at home, at least sometimes. Forbes contributor John Kezier You told me. However, it is unlikely that the employer will allow it on a large scale. Yahoo In 2013, we had a big turnaround and brought staff back to the office to improve productivity.

Thanks to Covid, companies Google And Facebook Inform workers that they can work remotely until mid-2021. But Facebook recently Large new office location Mid-Manhattan. They are trying to put someone in there.

Therefore, the spikes from Covid you see when working from home will probably recede. It could be a new perk for highly skilled or very popular workers. But even if many white-collar workers want it, it’s unlikely to be a “new common sense.” Innovation, productivity, networking, and business management are all against it.