What The Pandemic Workday Is Alike & Will Remote Work Be The New Norm?

We are living in a pandemic, remote work by necessity reality for over 6 months now and who knows for how much longer. What we know is what the pandemic workday looks like (at least for 3.1 million people) and what some big corporations (like Facebook) decided regarding the new norm. 

Here is a brief outline of what working from home means, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a list of companies that already decided how they are going to work in the foreseeable future.

What the pandemic workday is alike in the pandemic work from home reality 

The NBER’s most recent study on exactly 3,143,270 employee’s digital behavior across 16 big cities in North America, Europe and the Middle East, was conducted over an 8-week period before and after Covid-19 lockdowns, respectively. The results go as follows:

During lockdown has been tracked the following changes: 

*Source: The National Bureau of Economic Research

From these findings, we can see how the nature of work has changed for many. With having the above info in mind, you will better understand how companies and their employees are adapting and performing during the global pandemic.

List of companies that decided how they will work during the pandemic

Source: various/web search

The above are just a handful of companies that prolonged the work from home policy throughout 2020/2021 or indefinitely. What happens globally is not much different, so that makes us ask ourselves, will remote work became a norm after the pandemic?

The ultimate question: Will remote work be the new norm? 

As we can notice, every company is deciding on its own how they will respond to the COVID-19 crisis, all under the regulations of the country of operating.

However, companies expect many of their employees to remain working from home after the pandemic. To be more precise, here are BCG’s most recent numbers from their Workplace of the future Survey:

Companies expect 40% of employees to continue working from home. While 37% of companies are positive that 25% will be working in hybrid models including onsite and remote working.

We can conclude that remote work culture will be deeply incorporated from now on. Be it fully remote or hybrid, remote will be the new normal whereas onsite presence will happen when there is no other option.

What is obvious is that slowly but surely we are getting used to this new reality. We will shift from work from home by necessity to work from home by choice.

COVID-19 crisis turned out to be the major reason to reinvent new working mode, culture, and habits. Yet the reasons to continue in the same pace are increased productivity, lower operating costs and well-being of employees.

We believe in most of the cases employees will have bigger freedom in terms of when to work and when, as long as it is in line with the business objectives.

If you liked this article, stay tuned for more updates. Last but not least, contact us if you need help with maintaining a healthy corporate culture during and after the pandemic. Don’t forget, happy employees are productive employees.

We are always ready to offer a way out, cut out to your needs and budget.

Schedule a call with us at your convenience!