Since the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, employees across the United States have grown accustomed to telework. Many have found that working from home has improved their quality of life, and they are now hesitant to return to the office. Before the pandemic, American workers had become used to less-than-friendly job conditions, such as short vacations and little or no maternity leave. The experience of working from home has left them wanting more. This has left companies struggling to bring employees back to the office.
According to Kastle, which manages the entry badges of 40,000 companies around the country, American offices are still only half-full compared to February 2020. There are also significant disparities between different regions and cities. For example, offices in California’s Silicon Valley have recovered only a third of their pre-pandemic occupants, compared to around half in New York and Washington, and as much as two-thirds in the Texas cities of Austin and Houston.
Many CEOs have ordered their employees to return to the office, citing the benefits of in-person collaboration. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for example, wrote in a memo to the company’s vast workforce back in February that collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective when people are in person. But many Amazon employees disagreed so strongly with the in-person working requirements that they took to the streets in front of the company’s Seattle headquarters last month to protest the move.
Elon Musk, the billionaire boss of Tesla and Twitter, went a step further than Jassy, banning telework in the name of productivity and morality. He argued that people who make food that gets delivered or come to fix your house cannot work from home, so why should other workers be allowed to do so?
The Benefits of Telework
Despite the push to return to the office, many employees are hesitant to do so. For example, Claire, a consultant in her thirties living in Washington, has replaced her five-day-a-week commute with irregular visits to the office, usually once every two weeks or more often. She has found that telework has improved her quality of life, as she no longer wastes time dressing for the office and can sit outside with her laptop whenever the sun shines.
Claire said that she sometimes misses conversations with colleagues, but she also realizes that small talk led her to be less productive. She believes that a mix of in-person and remote work is the ideal balance for her. She is not alone in thinking this way. According to a recent ADP study of 17 countries, a third of employees in the United States currently have complete freedom about where they work, compared to just 18 percent in France.
Many managers have also embraced telework, recognizing the benefits it can bring to their employees. Gayle Smith, chief executive of the Washington-based anti-poverty NGO One, has seen no decline in efficiency since the onset of the pandemic, despite some of her employees leaving the Washington area to be closer to their aging parents or to follow a spouse who relocates for work. She believes that telework has become “part of a cluster of benefits and options that companies can choose to offer workers.”
The question now is how to replicate the positive dynamic that comes from face-to-face work while preserving the lifestyle improvements that telework can bring. For many employees, the key is flexibility. They want the option to choose when they work, not necessarily where they work.
Telework has become an increasingly important option for employees in the United States. Many have found that it improves their quality of life and are hesitant to return to the office. While some CEOs are pushing for a return to in-person work, many managers have embraced telework and are looking for ways to preserve the positive dynamic that comes from face-to-face work while continuing to offer their employees the flexibility they desire.
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