Remote work — or telework or work-from-home, as it’s also commonly called — is a work trend that’s been steadily on the rise for years now.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies that previously didn’t offer remote work opportunities to experiment with letting their employees work from home in order to continue business operations. This has caused a mass shift in society from co-located work to remote work. This is a shift that I believe is going to be permanent.
It’s true that more and more offices around the world are opening back up and people are going back to in-person work. But, with the coronavirus pandemic seemingly far from over, what does the future of remote work look like for 2022 and beyond?
More People Than Ever Will Regularly Work Remotely in 2022
Based on recent data from around the world, more people than ever worked from home at least some of the time in 2021, and this is a trend that I think will continue.
For example, in the US, more than 40% of the workforce is now teleworking full or part time. Many European countries are experiencing similar levels of telework, with some Western European countries reporting more than half of their workforces working from home regularly. In fact, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands are the countries with the highest numbers of remote workers worldwide.
Will people return to in-office work after the pandemic?
Though people in some types of professions will certainly return to working full time in brick-and-mortar offices after the pandemic, we are likely to see most people and companies continuing to use some type of hybrid work model. This means that many employees will work online from home either full or part time, and will have the option to be co-located in offices only if they want to.
Why is this? Well, the “forced experiment” with remote work caused by COVID has led many companies and individuals to realize what many of us remote workers have known for years now — that they can achieve the same levels of productivity (or even better ones) using a teleworking business model as they can with a traditional co-located working model.
Over the past year, many employees self-reported higher levels of productivity when working from home, and companies reported noticing short-term productivity increases when they switched to fully remote or hybrid teleworking business models.
Not only that, but remote work also offers many other benefits for employees and employers, especially in terms of mental health, work-life balance, and spending. In other words, both workers and their employers will be hesitant to return to the old way of doing business, even when social distancing is no longer a big concern.
Other Factors Driving the Shift To Remote Work
Besides the need to change the way we work during a global pandemic, there are other reasons why the shift to seeing large parts of the workforce working from home in certain countries is something that I think is going to be permanent. These reasons include:
- Communication and collaboration are easier than ever
- Strong Internet infrastructures
- Largely tech-based workforces
Ease of communication and collaboration
One reason why many companies have been traditionally hesitant to offer their employees the option to work remotely is that they fear it will hurt their ability to communicate and collaborate.
However, the abundance of team communication platforms (like Zoom, Slack, Google Meet, and similar tools) means that remote communication is really a non-issue. In fact, if you’ve worked in an office setting over the last few years, you were probably just as likely to send a co-worker a message via one of these platforms as you were to talk to them in person, right?
Additionally, collaboration tools, especially project management platforms like Monday.com and Trello, make it easier than ever for remote teams to keep track of all their projects and tasks and hold everyone accountable for their work.
In short, there is nothing to indicate that teams who meet in person and work together in a traditional co-located office setting communicate or collaborate more efficiently than those who work remotely.
Good Internet infrastructure
Something that all the countries with large numbers of people working from home have in common is that they all have very strong Internet infrastructures.
Although this isn’t a reason for the mass shift to teleworking in these countries, it has made the transition possible. Remote workers need higher Internet speeds and bandwidths to run all the apps, programs, and systems they need to do their jobs. Thus, a good national Internet infrastructure is required to ensure smooth operations with a higher volume of remote workers than ever connecting to the Internet via home networks.
Countries leading the way in remote work, such as the US and various Western European countries, are among those with the world’s best Internet infrastructures. So, I think there is a clear connection to be made here between the numbers of people working remotely in these countries and how robust their Internet connectivity is.
Highly tech-based workforces
Another thing that countries with the most remote workers have in common is that they tend to have highly tech-based work forces.
In countries where large portions of the workforces are employed in the tech industry or in highly tech-dependent sectors, the transition to teleworking is much easier. This is because individuals who work in these sectors already spend most of their time working on a computer, and there’s no difference whether they do it from a company office or a home office.
For instance, Finland is a major European tech hub, and it is also among the European countries with the highest percentages of their workforces working remotely. Many people in the country work in IT companies, tech start-ups, game development companies, and digital financial service businesses, all of which are types of employers that it’s easy to work from home for.
Similarly, the US is home to some of the world’s largest tech companies, including Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, and others. As a whole, the US tech industry employs more than 12 million people, and I think it’s safe to say that most of those people will continue to work from home at least some of the time in 2022 and beyond.
Final Thoughts on the Future of Remote Work Worldwide
With higher productivity rates and all the other benefits of remote work, as well as fewer barriers to working from home, I’m confident that fully remote and hybrid teleworking business models are here to stay.
We may see a post-pandemic dip in the number of people working remotely worldwide as employees in certain professions (e.g., health care, social work, and other community-facing roles) return to in-person work, but I think that the percentage of people working from home in other sectors will continue to grow in the years to come.
What I’m sure of is that we will never see a return to pre-pandemic levels of co-located working, and that both employees and employers are going to keep unlocking and appreciating the many benefits of remote work when it comes to efficiency, opportunities, finances, health, and more.