Remote work looks inevitable: So let's focus on fixing its bugs

WFH drawbacks like low in-person contact aren't easy to address

- SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL

Employees who work entirely from home are less creative and less productive, according to a new working paper from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Fully remote employees also receive less feedback and must spend more time coordinating, which makes them work longer hours to keep up with their in-office peers.

The researchers also predict we will see even more remote work in the future. If WFH has so many drawbacks, why can we expect more of it? How can we mitigate its downsides?

The Stanford paper, by Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom and Stephen J. Davis, notes that the share of people working from home at least some of the time has doubled roughly every 15 years since about 1980; by 2019, about 5% of workdays took place at home. That figure surged to 60% in 2020 and has now plateaued at about 25%. The authors say the change between 2019 and 2023 levels will fast-forward the remote-work revolution by about 35 years.

They expect to see remote work decline slowly for the next couple of years before accelerating again for the next 20. It will be a continuation of the long-term trend and will be fuelled by pandemic-era innovations. The number of patents mentioning terms like ‘telework’ tripled after March 2020, and in the past, those kinds of advances have sent more workers remote.