What is the Future of Remote Work?

As we have entered a new year, there high hopes for a better and a brighter future, or anything relatively better than 2020. At the start of the pandemic, thousands of companies had to adapt and accumulate to their company transitioning from an office setting to working at home. For some companies, working from home has been one of the best things to happen. While others experience communication problems. The question stands, what is the future of working remotely, and will companies continue to work from home in 2021?

Productivity when WFH

In the world of advertising and marketing, agencies almost always require in-person with at an office. Large agencies throughout the globe have moved to remote work and are seeing the rates of success. The initial fear with any company when transitioning from working is a decreased level of productivity. 

This year tested our ability to work through distractions as we worked from home with our family members and our loved ones. Distractions could stem from other people talking on the phone, working with others in a confined space, taking care of children, etc. Along with distractions comes more downtime to get chores and errands done. When people are not working physically in an office where they cannot monitor employees, it creates uncertainty surrounding productivity. 

Before the rise of the coronavirus pandemic, Stanford conducted a study on 16,000 workers to test their productivity while working from home compared to an in-office setting. From this study, we learned that “over 9 months found that working from home increase productivity by 13%,”.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Prodoscore found evidence that compared to March 2020 from April 2019, there was an increase in productivity by 47%, despite the effects of the pandemic. However, not everyone at home had the same resources, including poor internet connection and phone service/reception. 

There are many reasons why working from home increases productivity, and one of the reasons is the lack of a commute into the office. With more time in the day, people have been using that time to sleep more, exercise more, and fewer distractions with people during “water-cooler talk”. 

Hybrid 

The new year is promising, with millions of Americans already receiving a vaccine. Unfortunately, the vaccine isn’t being distributed as fast as initially thought, which raises the question about remote working for 2021, and if companies will start a transition. 

Currently, most agencies and in-house offices are working remotely, and there has been an increase in hiring remote employees larger than ever. The increase in remote employees from across the country also raises the question of the necessity of commuting to an office. 

From what it looks like, most agencies will transition to a hybrid work week. Some days will be working remotely/at home, and some days in the office. Now that companies see the benefits of working from home, most companies will continue to offer that as an option, differentiating from business to business. 

Remote employees will likely continue to be fully remote, and companies will continue to consider and hire remote employees that are out of a commutable range. 

Overall, it seems that the future of remote work is here to stay. Ultimately, remote work in the future is dependent on the type of company you work for and whether it’s an agency or in-house, the size of your company, and where your company is located.