The coronavirus pandemic has meant huge swathes of the population have been working from home for the last few months.  As workplaces begin to re-open, the question turns to whether this shift is temporary, or whether those of us who have been advocating remote working for many years might finally see a more permanent change.

New research from Harvard Business School suggests that after Covid-19, the majority of us will trudge back into the office again.  After a survey of around 1,800 from a range of small and large businesses, the researchers found that just 16% of those currently working from home will continue to do so.

“These estimates suggest that at least 16 percent of American workers will switch from professional offices to working at home at least two days per week as a result of COVID- 19,” the researchers explain. “This would represent a dramatic and persistent shift in workplace norms around remote work, and has implications for companies, employees, and policymakers alike.”

Meager transition

These results should be framed in the sense that during the pandemic, the data found that around 80% of respondents said their employer had adopted some form of remote work, with this most likely among professions requiring a high degree of education and that pay a higher salary.

This reticence is frustrating, as around a third of respondents said that they would significantly more productive when working remotely than they would ordinarily have been.  What’s more, this wasn’t simply a case of those jobs most conducive to remote work seeing a spike, with no tangible difference in those jobs and those that were not conducive to remote work.

Importantly, the researchers suggest that this might not be due to remote work per se, but rather the clear factors that are associated with remote work during the pandemic.  For instance, the closure of schools or the support for relatives have clearly placed added pressure, while it’s also probable that homes ill-equipped for remote work have had to cater for both two working parents and home schooled children.

Managerial buy-in

This is a point that perhaps underpins the importance of managerial buy-in for remote working to be effective.  Working remotely is not without challenges, but they are generally challenges that can be overcome with managerial support, just as the often stated difficulties in terms of promotions and other forms of career progression that often bypass people who work remotely, can be tackled with the right managerial culture.

Unfortunately, the history of managerial opposition to remote work is a long one.  For instance, last year researchers from San Jose State University highlighted managerial resistance as the primary barrier to growth in flexible working.

A survey of Australian workers perhaps helps to explain the difficulties.  It found that 57% of managers thought productivity was the same regardless of where people worked, with 34.6% believing remote working was more productive.

Despite this, the study found considerable resistance among managers about the virtues of working remotely, even though most worked in organizations that were superficially supportive of it.  This resistance revolved around difficulty in monitoring workers remotely, and were often framed in a sense of health and safety, or the impact of technology.  Indeed, the public sector managers were even concerned about feeding the stereotype that public sector workers have it easy.

Forced to change

Obviously the Covid-19 pandemic forced managers to overcome this resistance.  This actual exposure to remote working helped to dispel some of the initial concerns and prejudices raised about remote working, with many more managers now of the opinion that remote work was either positive or neutral for productivity.

Pleasingly, the survey suggests that those managers with exposure to remote work have said that they plan to be more supportive of it in future, with male managers the most swayed by their exposure during the pandemic.  This attitude was perhaps summed up by one manager in particular, who said:

I had always accepted the department line that working from home is a privilege and not a real workplace. Also that working from home makes you unavailable and disconnects you from the workplace. Discovered that I couldn’t have been more wrong.“

The survey unsurprisingly found that employees themselves were overwhelmingly positive about working from home, as they have always been so.  They would highlight the greater productivity they enjoyed, the lack of a commute, the enhanced work-life balance, and so on.  These are all arguments that have been made for decades now.  The key is the alignment of managers with those views.

Of course, working from home is not without challenges.  I’ve written previously about the value commuting can bring in providing a buffer between our professional and personal lives.  The isolation that working from home provides can be very real, and of course, managers need to potentially rethink their measurement and reward strategies so that being physically out of sight doesn’t affect career prospects.

There has clearly been progress made in terms of implementing flexible work policies in the workplace, but considerably less progress had been made in terms of creating a culture whereby flexible work was acceptable.  The perceptual divide between what managers think flexible working involves and what it actually involves has perhaps been a major factor in that.

With many of those managers gaining first hand experience of remote working during the pandemic, we are perhaps on the path to making flexible working a more realistic norm in our workplaces.  Alas, the evidence thus far doesn’t provide us with too much hope.