Jobs As We Knew Them Are Over

We are discovering many things as a result of the corona virus and its impact. Among them are that work and jobs centralized in office buildings and business parks are over.

Prior to 2020, only about 8 percent of wage and salaried employees in the U.S. worked remotely at least one day a week according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Then the virus hit and so did the landscape of work within our country as millions of Americans employed by thousands of companies were told they had to work from home. Now, depending on which surveys you look at, between 54 and 62 percent of workers don’t want to return to the office at all, and 70 percent want employers to at least offer a work-from-home option.

Benefits to having employees work from home are myriad. Among them are elimination of physical commuting, which allows workers to recover an average of one to two hours a day – hours than could be spent with family or non-work activities and hobbies. Gone would be traffic jams and associated aggravations, and fewer cars on the road would make vehicles last longer due to less start-and-stop daily grinds. Environmental benefits would include cleaner air and less consumption of fossil fuels.

The jury is still out on worker productivity, but many employers say they’ve discovered remote workers are more productive. Why? Fewer workplace distractions, for one. Less time is lost to personal conversations, gossip, office politics and useless group meetings when people can work remotely. But metrics will have to be redefined to properly measure productivity and, going forward, they should exclusively be outcome-oriented.

If an employee needs to work in and office setting eight hours a day to meet productivity goals but can prove he/she can meet or surpass those goals working six hours a day at home, why would an employer even consider cutting benefits or wages based hours worked per week? What idiot manager would risk losing such a productive employee if the company’s goals are met? Indeed, remote work could mean the end of the five-day, 40-hour work week, and I say good riddance!

In the new virus-risk world, you can say goodbye to the open floor plan in office settings. Employees of companies insisting workers come in to the office will demand costly safety considerations including barriers, masks, sanitizing equipment and more.

Don’t even mention liability if an employee is infected at work.

Say farewell to office buildings, and watch the business real estate market collapse. We now know stacking large numbers of people on top of one another in small areas is not smart. I predict many office complexes will be repurposed to apartments and condominiums.

Companies such as Zillow, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Capital One are already shifting gears to accommodate a future where remote work dominates. Some have told workers to plan to work remotely at least until the end of this year. And while those working manual labor, service industry, manufacturing and similar jobs demanding physical presence won’t yet be able to enjoy remote work, at least they’ll have shorter commute times.