2022: Looking back and looking forwards

According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), in February 2022, 84% of workers who had to work from home because of the pandemic planned to continue hybrid working (working at home and in their place of work). The most common pattern that hybrid workers were planning involved more time working from home and less time at their usual place of work (roughly 3 days at home and two at work), with 42% reporting this pattern, compared with only 30% in 2021. Although the trend towards remote working is fairly widespread the opportunity and take-up varies across countries and cultures. CEPR estimates that around 30% of North American and Western European workers are in occupations that allow home-based work, as opposed to only 6% of sub-Saharan African and 8% of South Asian workers. Latin American and Eastern European workers fall somewhere in between at 23% and 18%, respectively. Even in countries where opportunity is high there are variations. For example, according to a Credit Summit report over 50% of Americans are working remotely at least part-time. The same report also notes that remote working is not spread evenly across the workforce in terms of income, education or employment sector. In the USA, approximately 67% of higher-income employees work from home. In contrast, only 56% of middle-income and 53% of lower-income employees can work remotely.

Working from home (either hybrid or full-time) can bring productivity improvements but it is not without risks for employees and raises challenges for managers. A large-scale Microsoft survey reveals that 85% of leaders say the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive. The report notes that many leaders and managers are missing the old visual cues of what it means to be productive because they can’t “see” who is hard at work by walking around. Hybrid managers are more likely to say they struggle to trust their employees to do their best work (49% vs. 36% for in-person managers) and report that they have less visibility into the work their employees do (54% vs. 38%).

For employees, working from home blurs the boundaries between personal and professional lives. People respond to this blurring of boundaries in different ways but given the long-term prevalence of remote working, in 2023 organisations will need to ensure that the impact of softer boundaries is positive rather than negative. In the same way that managers are concerned about productivity for remote workers, the workers themselves may feel the need to demonstrate that they are busy.

Some research has demonstrated that remote working may have a detrimental effect on collaboration and communication (Yang et al., 2022). Data on the emails, calendars, instant messages, video/audio calls and workweek hours of 61,182 US employees over the first six months of 2020 showed that remote work caused the collaboration network of workers to become more static and siloed, with fewer bridges between disparate parts. Furthermore, there was a decrease in synchronous communication and an increase in asynchronous communication. Unless issues like this are dealt with the concerns of managers about productivity may be valid.

As noted above, there is a clear and permanent move towards remote working. Some people will undoubtedly prefer full-time remote working, but the general trend is towards a hybrid model. During 2022 the proportion of hybrid workers has been rising but the proportion of those working from home exclusively has fallen (ONS data). In fact, increased demand for flexible working goes alongside increased interest from workers in the full range of flexibility, equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Glassdoor and indeed’s 2023 Hiring and Workplace Trends report reveals that workers would consider turning down a job or leaving an organisation if they felt that their manager would not support diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives. In particular, younger people were more concerned about these issues. Over 70% of workers aged 18- 34 said they would consider turning down a job offer or leaving for these reasons, compared to 63% of respondents aged 35-44, 60% of respondents aged 45-54, 52% of respondents aged 55-64, and 45% of workers aged 65 plus.

It seems likely that, as they enter the workforce the norms and expectations of Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2010) will make significant demands of employers. Already this generation accounts for a fifth of the UK workforce. Through 2023 and beyond, progressive organisations will find ways of responding to the changing requirements of the workforce. Simply ticking the wellbeing box with an app and a counselling service or merely paying lip service to diversity and inclusion issues is unlikely to meet the expectations of this generation and those that follow them.