The Rise of Working From Home | The Economist

This article highlights the implications of remote work at scale and what they mean for organizations. These impacts range from how managers interact with their workers, employment law changes, and deepening the political and cultural divide between knowledge workers (whose work supports remote work) and other worker segments. The authors first depict how many of the workplace predictions from early in the pandemic will not sustain in the long term despite the rise in remote work, such as remote-only companies will become a majority, firms will “onboard” new staff through video links rather than in-person, and will swap their full-time staff for freelancers, to name a few. One change that remote work will bring for the longer term is the blurring distinction between work and home will require managers to communicate more effectively and frequently with their teams, and “place more trust in technology that lets workers communicate and collaborate effectively.” While managers have made improvements in these areas since the start of the pandemic, firms will need to invest in developing this capability within their manager population. Several other ideas are discussed. In case the hyperlink cuts off the article, you can try this PDF version.