One change
that is all but certain to last is employees spending more of their time
working at home. The Glassdoor report finds that less commuting has improved
employee health and morale. Splitting the week between the home and the office
is also overwhelmingly popular with workers: 70% of those surveyed wanted such
a combination, 26% wanted to stay at home and just 4% desired a full-time
return to the office. Perhaps as a consequence, remote work has not dented
productivity—and indeed improved it in some areas. Flexible work schedules can
be a cheap way to retain employees who have child-care and other home
responsibilities.
Telecommuting
offers other potential cost savings, and not just the reduced need for office
space. Remote workers do not need to live in big cities where property is
expensive. If they live in cheaper towns and suburbs, companies don't need to pay
them as much. Glassdoor estimates that software engineers and developers who
leave San Francisco could eventually face salary cuts of 21-25%; those quitting
New York could expect reductions of 10-12%. As the report points out, remote
employees are, in essence, competing with a global workforce and are thus in a
much weaker bargaining position.
Despite its advantages, a remote workforce brings challenges for managers, as the third report demonstrates. The CMI surveyed 2,300 managers and employees. The survey shows that the experience of remote working has not been uniform. Of those working virtually, 69% of women with children want to work at least one day from home when the pandemic ends, compared with 56% of men with kids.
The results highlight just how important effective communication is to good management. They also unearthed an interesting
difference of perspective: nearly half of senior executives thought they were
engaging employees more in decision-making since the pandemic, but only 27% of
employees agreed.
Ironically, though managers may have feared that
remote working would allow employees to slack, it may be that managers have not
been up to the challenge. Bosses may have spent too much time videoconferencing
and not enough speaking directly with subordinates.
In a world
of remote working, employees stress how the employer communicates with them.
Not so much “management by walking around” as management by phoning—or
Zooming—around. It is time to get dialing.
From The Economist (edited)
