Are Remote Workers Happier?

Transcript

Oh, sorry. I was just sending an email. Are remote workers happier? According to CNBC, a quarter of the workforce is currently working remotely. And it's projected that by 2025, 36 million people are going to be working remotely. And this is up 86% pre the COVID pandemic. Some industries said, we could never let our employees work remotely, these positions can definitely not work remote. Yet, here we are. And there are many people in so many industries that are working from home.

In one 2019 study done by Owl Labs of 1200 people, the remote workers surveyed said they were happier working from home. Why? They said they were more productive. They had better work-life balance. There was less distractions and interruptions. They had less stress and they didn't have long commutes. Now, of course, this is personal. Some people can't wait to get back to the office and other people are thinking, oh, I'm terrified. I don't want to go back.

What does remote work offer? It gives you more flexibility. And several of the companies and leaders and teams that I'm talking to actually have a combination where people want to be able to have flexibility. They want to work some days from home and other days they want to go into the office and see other human beings. It's absolutely clear that remote work is here to stay. And so, all organizations need to be looking at how to increase the happiness of the remote workers.

In a Forbes article, it said that managers are having challenges right now, really monitoring the productivity of remote workers. And I would like to challenge managers and say that, don't monitor productivity based on how many virtual meetings people are on or how often your employees are talking in Slack. Look at the results. Look at the output. That is what is most crucial. What is imperative is that remote workers feel that they're trusted, that they have autonomy, that they're not being micromanaged. And this is now a time to really have personalization. This isn't a one-size-fits-all for every single person.

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