DETROIT (AP) – This is a question that occupies the minds of millions of employees who worked from home last year: will they be allowed to work remotely – at least for a few days – once the pandemic has disappeared?
On Wednesday, one of America’s corporate titans, Ford Motor Co., provided its own answer: it said about 30,000 employees around the world who worked from home could continue to do so indefinitely, with flexible hours approved by managers. their. Their programs will become a “hybrid” of office work: they will commute to work mainly for group meetings and projects best suited for face-to-face interaction.
The Ford announcement sent one of the clearest signals to date that the pandemic has accelerated a cultural shift in Americans’ working lives by erasing any stigma surrounding remote work and encouraging the adoption of the technology that allows it. Wider evidence of the post-pandemic workplace suggests that what has long been called tele-shuttle will remain much more common than it was a year ago.
A report this week on the employment website indeed, it states that posts for jobs that mention “distance work” have doubled since the beginning of the pandemic. Such jobs are still on the rise, even as vaccination is accelerating and the pace of new cases confirmed by COVID is declining.
“If job offers are a guide, employers are increasingly open to distance work, even as some employees return to work,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist at Indeed.
Indeed, the share of jobs that mention “distance work” or “work from home” reached 7% last month, up from just under 3% a year ago. But in some industries, the gains have been much more dramatic, including those that have traditionally not welcomed remote work.
In legal services, for example, remote job postings, including legal assistants and legal assistants, increased from less than 5% in the second half of 2019 to 16% in the second half of 2020, according to Indeed . In the banking and financial sector, for jobs such as actuaries and loan subscribers, remote registrations increased from 4% to almost 16%. For mental health therapists, they have risen from 1% to almost 7%.
Such changes could, in turn, trigger changes in where people live and affect the different economic health of metro areas. Some highly skilled workers could migrate from expensive coastal cities, where they had grouped in the past decade after the Great Recession, in more accessible cities or towns. Downtown offices could shrink and exist mainly for collaborative work. Tax revenues in big cities could collapse as fewer workers patronize downtown bars, restaurants and cafes.
“The pandemic violated social and cultural norms for the way we work,” said Timothy Golden, a professor of management at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “Remote work has become much more accepted.”
Ford is just the latest company to allow more work from home after the pandemic. Salesforce, Facebook, Google and other technology companies have said they will continue their work-from-home policies indefinitely. Target Corp. will leave one of the four cities Minneapolis office locations as they move to a hybrid model for 3,500 workers. It will keep other offices in the city center.
Flexible remote working is hardly an equal advantage. It is disproportionately concentrated among the more educated, well-paid workers. The jobs of lower paid employees generally require on-site work or face-to-face contact with the public.
More than a third of Asian employees and a quarter of whites have worked from home due to the January pandemic, according to an analysis of government data by the Conference Board, a business research group. Only 19% of black workers and 14% of Hispanics were able to do so.
Ford has found over the past year that employees and supervisors believe that more work can be done remotely, that they can still connect with each other, and that they have the means to do their job, said Kiersten Robinson, director. boss and hired experts. So when its hybrid program begins in July or soon after, Ford will give teams the opportunity to choose when to come to the office.
Robinson said a flexible program will also help Ford compete for talent.
“I think we see a real change in expectations among candidates,” she said.
Employees happy with the new policy include Kelly Keller, Ford’s chemical manager and materials compliance. Keller, who has been working on a hybrid program since the pandemic broke out a year ago, would not want to return to the shuttle every day to work. He now generally works three days from home and then commutes for the next three working days, one hour each way, to a laboratory in Dearborn, Michigan.
Sometimes, when she is at home, she takes her daughter to elementary school and starts working a little late before finishing later.
“I definitely enjoy flexibility,” Keller said. “I would be grateful for the opportunity to continue the hybrid arrangement, for sure.”
Of the workers he oversees, seven commute to the lab each day; four work from home. Homeworkers, Keller said, were more productive than they were before the coronavirus hit, as they often work while commuting.
“For most,” she said, “I think longer days have passed.”
A study conducted last month by Alexander Bick, an economist at Arizona State University, and two colleagues found this almost 13% of workers surveyed plan to work full-time at home after the pandemic – almost double the 7.6% who did so in February 2020. Another 25% expect to do so at least one day a week, increasing from 17% before the pandemic.
The company’s executives report overwhelmingly that remote work was successful during the pandemic, according to research conducted by consulting firm PwC. About 55% said they intend to continue working remotely, according to a survey of 133 executives of mostly large companies. Only 17% said they would hire back in the office as soon as possible. An additional 26% said they only prefer limited distance work, but acknowledged that it has become popular among employees.
Ford and other companies have redesigned or thought of redesigning their offices to reflect fewer cabinets and personal offices and more conference rooms and other spaces so that workers, who could be on site only a part of week, to collaborate.
A more flexible attitude towards jobs could hit the biggest cities in the US. Many Americans are already capitalizing on remote work to leave New York, Los Angeles, Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area in favor of Phoenix; Tampa, Florida; Austin, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; and other less expensive areas, real estate data show.
A telling detail: Even though the number of homes for sale has declined nationwide in the past year, the supply of homes for sale in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles has increased, according to real estate brokerage Redfin. And the decline in available housing has been much lower than the national average in other large coastal cities, such as Seattle, Boston and Washington.
Many cities can also absorb a financial impact even if distant workers do not move. An academic study estimates that workers’ spending on downtown businesses will drop by 5% to 10% after the pandemic.
Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, said the pandemic accelerated a trend that preceded the virus: more Americans were looking for cheaper homes in lesser-known cities and suburbs.
Fairweather herself left Seattle last summer after fires in Oregon turned the city’s sky into smoke and darkness. Initially, she, her husband, and their two young children planned to stay only a month in a small town in Wisconsin with her family. Soon, however, they decided to make it permanent, and Fairweather managed to work remotely.
“We liked the pace of life – we liked being close to family,” she said. “It’s so accessible here.”
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Rugaber reported from Washington. AP Business writer Alexandra Olson contributed to this report from New York.