Would You Change Jobs To Ensure Permanent Remote Working? Over Half Say Yes.

With ever rising cases in Covid-19 and remote work seemingly the norm for the forseeable future, it’s an open question whether this trend will continue once we are all permitted to return to our workplaces.

The biggest U.S. tech giants of Google, Apple, Facebook etc. have all said yes to the newer ways of working, but what say the workers?

It is uncontroversial to say some have loved the potential idea of working remotely permanently, while others have shown a little more apprehension.

This piqued the interest of tech company Tehama, whose core "Desktop as a Service" (DaaS) business relies on prolonged industrial remote working. Tehama commissioned a questionnaire to ascertain the future of work patterns — Is this feasible? What extra demands would remote workers want from a company? What compromises might someone accept?

Methodology 

602 respondents, all of whom are employed full-time by various companies and based in the United States and Canada were surveyed during October 2020, with an even split of male (50%) and female (49%) respondents. The average age of the respondents was 40 years old.

To be selected for the survey the qualifying criteria were:

• Respondents had to be working as a full-time employee
• The employer had now be offering remote work facilities due to Covid-19,
• Respondents must have some interest in working at least partly remote post-pandemic.  

This last point could be seen to be self-selecting as it has the potential to skew results favourably towards digital nomadism, despite the criteria stating remote work. They are slightly different, but worth noting nonetheless.

Remote Work vs. Digital Nomad

The distinction between these two are primarily down to lifestyle.

Being a remote worker is the situation most of us are in currently—we have some kind of permanent or semi-permanent dwelling with established connections and obligations to our place of residence. It’s just that a remote worker’s job does not require him to commute to a mandatory place of work.

Digital nomads, on the other hand, do not even have the obligations of a long-term place of residence and so choose to live anywhere. This could be literally on the other side of the world, and they continue to perform their work as before.

Both regimes of work will obviously need to have the correct digital infrastructure and employers’ permissions to enable such a working pattern.

The headline results

Of those asked by Tehama, 85% of full-time workers expressed interest in becoming a digital nomad and 83% stating that if given the opportunity, they would travel while working remotely, suggestion strong underlying correlation to the qualifying criteria though not a perfect alignment.

97% said they had taken necessary steps to remain equally focused during this period of remote work, combined with 56% saying they planned to switch jobs if their employers did not permit remote working after this pandemic, it seems many employers will be playing a catch-up role to meet the demands of their staff.

What would people do as they worked remotely?

With travel being a key reason for remote working, it seems quite a surprise that a number as high as 48% planned to mostly travel domestically within either the US or Canada, with only 23% entertaining the idea of mostly international travel.

Only 27% said they would rent out their current residence an 7% said they would terminate their lease or sell.

Would their employment type change?

Not all employers have the possibility to allow for remote work, that’s just a fact of many industries. So during this pandemic period 63% of the respondents have been made more interested in self-employment, of which 87% the primary driver was keeping flexibility in their own schedule.

Unanswered Questions

It is not known in what industry the 602 respondents work, their city of residence nor their earnings. All have significant impact on the disposition for or against remote work. It seems a fairly universal view now that employers should at least be able to offer the option to work remotely, even if someone chooses not to do it.

Another reason which is likely to change one’s response is whether they have children and the responsibilities those bring—schooling, healthcare etc. Similarly with elderly parents, many prefer not to stray too far away, hence the all-important distinction between digital nomadism and remote working. Upon inspection of the results this information is not presented. With an average age of 40 (uncertainty lies as to whether this is a mean, median or other form), one wonders about the spread of demographics.

The future is remote working anyway

In truth the shift towards remote work was happening prior to Covid-19 under a different label—outsourcing.

Expensive employees have long been the target for being reorganized out of their own jobs for cheaper employees or workers elsewhere. Such was geographical arbitrage and long will it continue.

So it remains to say many of those surveyed stated they may change jobs to allow for more remote working, but do they realise it may end up being decided by the employer instead?