You found our list of popular remote work trends.
Remote work trends are patterns emerging among businesses regarding flexible work hours and working away from the office. Examples include an increasing number of freelance specialists, hybrid work arrangements, and the use of Bossware. These trends are significant because they inform critical business decisions and how firms can stay up-to-date with their remote work policies.
For more information on remote work, check out remote work statistics, remote work-life balance tips, and the ultimate guide to remote work.
This article contains:
- global remote work trends
- work from home trends
- remote work hiring trends
- virtual work trends
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List of remote work trends
Some businesses need their employees to be on-site from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday, but the trend toward flexible work hours and remote work is growing. Typically, remote work policies allow workers to choose between working from home and coming into the office at the most convenient times. In addition, businesses that rely heavily on technology might benefit from the growing trend of remote workers. The following are exciting trends that will affect remote work.
1. More Employees Prefer Remote Work Over More Compensation
According to a poll conducted by Ivanti for their “Everywhere Workplace” report, 71 percent of workers said they would prefer to work from home rather than get a pay raise or promotion. According to the poll, the top three reasons why workers would choose to forego a promotion or increased pay in favor of working remotely include the ability to avoid commuting, improve their work-life balance, and save money.
2. Increasing Number of Freelance Specialists
Freelance experts will make up a larger share of the American workforce as remote work becomes the norm. Skilled professionals now have more options for finding contract employment because of the proliferation of remote work platforms and freelancing websites. This climate is also beneficial for businesses, as generalists are not always the best match for onsite work, and it is often more cost-effective to hire experts on a contract basis.
According to Upwork, independent contractors made up approximately 36 percent of the labor force in 2020, up 8 percent from 2019. Furthermore, freelancers now contribute up to $1.2 trillion to the US economy annually. With this growing trend, more businesses will outsource specialized tasks to freelancers located remotely.
3. Cybersecurity Is More Critical Than Ever
A greater focus on cybersecurity is one of the most important work from home trends. Companies are starting to take cyber security more seriously as the average data breach cost reached up to 4.24 million in 2021.
A Cisco survey found that 85 percent of businesses worldwide believe cybersecurity is more crucial today than ever. The switch to remote work was also difficult for many companies. According to an EY survey, 71 percent of respondents named remote work support their top security problem. As remote work becomes more commonplace, the value placed on cybersecurity teams has increased.
Cybersecurity companies will promote remote work solutions more actively to address this problem. Similarly, investments in endpoint security solutions and zero-trust cloud architecture will likely increase across industries. However, some businesses will not adopt this trend, and some off-site businesses may suffer severe and expensive breaches.
4. More Investment in Home Offices
Working from home may save expenses like transportation and eating out, giving workers more disposable income for home offices. These workers will spend more time at home as hybrid employment becomes more commonplace. When these tendencies combine, more workers will feel compelled to upgrade their homes to accommodate private offices.
Instead of a garage or extra bedroom, most homes will include dedicated office space. Office supply stores will increase advertising targeted at this group, and this pattern may also spread to the housing market. Since homes are quickly replacing traditional workplaces, real estate agents may begin emphasizing the presence of multipurpose spaces inside residences.
Check out this list of work from home office tips.
5. Employees’ Health is Taking Center Stage
A Deloitte study found that “enhancing employee wellbeing” was a current top priority for CEOs and other business leaders. Increased opportunities for remote work have coincided with a greater focus on the psychological wellbeing of employees in the workforce. As a result, remote employees seem more likely to experience mental health issues, affecting one in five Americans annually.
The results of a poll called “Social Connection in Remote Work” show that employees who work from home often feel alone and lonely. Data shows that 68 percent of employees report having social interactions with coworkers is at least somewhat significant to their job satisfaction. Nevertheless, over 55 percent of employees regularly experience feelings of loneliness.
Employees’ mental health will precede physical ailments as home offices gradually replace traditional workplaces. As a result, businesses will increase their efforts to solve these problems. Such measures may include counseling and other mental health options, improved remote communication, and more team-building activities. Workers may also begin exploring options for mental health benefits throughout the job search process.
Here is a list of virtual wellness activities for employees.
6. The Global Growth of Remote Work
There has been a nationwide increase in the workforce in recent years thanks to the rise of remote work. As the years go by, global remote work trends will expand exponentially, crossing international boundaries and increasing multinational workforces. As a result, more and more businesses are learning they can hire top professionals from anywhere in the world by using remote work technology.
The IT sector will experience a major part of this trend. Tech businesses depend significantly on foreign expertise and are hence among the largest H-1B visa sponsors. Nevertheless, visa systems and travel limits may be difficult to navigate. By eliminating these constraints, hiring specialists from other countries is much simpler.
More businesses will be able to hire the best employees, no matter where they reside, as remote work capabilities develop and become more widespread. Globalization and more diversity in the workforce are inevitable remote work hiring trends.
7. More Sectors Will Embrace Remote Work with Tech
Most remote employment currently is office work, since most of the tasks are doable from home. The manufacturing industry, which relies more on manual labor than any other, has been slow to adopt hybrid work models, but this is beginning to change. Expanded opportunities for remote across industries will be possible as technology advances.
Virtual reality and remote-controlled robots enable humans to carry out physical, hands-on chores from great distances. As these tools get better and more widely available, more and more sectors, including manufacturing, will be able to reap the benefits of remote employment. This change may be gradual but will accelerate in the coming years.
8. Increasing Questions about Fairness
Fairness is sure to be a hot topic as remote work becomes increasingly common across sectors. Inequality will become evident if the gap between office workers and remote employees widens. Eventually, companies will have to confront the effects of their flexible work practices on diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
A Zappier study found that just 25 percent of male workers are restricted from working remotely, compared to 40 percent of women. As mixed work becomes the norm, this chasm will widen, perhaps prompting changes in the system. There has to be a focus on equity as companies increase their use of remote workers.
For more advice, check out this list of DEI books.
9. Hybrid Work Arrangements Will Offer a Compromise
Back in 2020, working from home became more than a Silicon Valley benefit to a requirement for many businesses. However, now that regulations imposed in the wake of the pandemic have relaxed, a new trend, which is hybrid work, is emerging. The COVID-19 pandemic changed traditional work arrangements.
Many workers now opt for a form of remote employment. According to a report from the Pew Research Center, 60 percent of employees prefer the option to work remotely some or all of the time. However, such an arrangement is unsettling for many businesses. In a PWC study, only 13 percent of CEOs said they favored a totally remote workforce. A survey by Salary.com found that just 5 percent of corporate executives want to keep using an entirely remote workforce.
A hybrid setup seems to provide companies and workers with the best of both worlds. According to the Salary.com survey, the hybrid arrangement is the most preferred workplace setting. Up to 50 percent of managers agreed that their staff would spend some time in the workplace and some time away from it.
A McKinsey report showed that some 58 percent of the US workforce has reported being able to work remotely at least one day per week. Moreover, according to the research, nearly 90 percent of workers who are offered a hybrid work arrangement take it.
Check out this list of hybrid team building activities.
10. Freelance Marketplaces Grow in Popularity
Companies are increasingly using freelancing marketplaces as they grow used to a more diverse workforce. Millions of individuals are actively searching for freelancing jobs for the first time. According to information compiled by Upwork, the number of self-employed Americans rose from 53 million in 2014 to 59 million in 2021.
In the future, over half of the top-level business leaders want to make extensive use of digital talent platforms, according to a study conducted by Harvard Business School. Almost 90 percent of corporate executives believe remote talent platforms are critical to their company’s long-term success. Therefore, the number of online resources that provide access to competent remote workers is expanding rapidly. In 2014, about 190 different freelancing platform businesses existed with approximately 600 million in investments. The number is up to 330 companies, with investment reaching almost $1.9 billion. This number signifies a growth of 75 percent.
Fiverr and Upwork are two of the most well-known online freelance marketplaces and publicly traded companies. However, in the freelancing platform sector, VC interest remains high even if there are already several industry behemoths, like Fiverr and Upwork. The reason is that many new freelancing platform competitors provide distinctive advantages over incumbents like Upwork, whether it superior business models, superior go-to-market fit, or unique features.
11. Reliance on Bossware to Monitor the Efficiency of their Remote Employees
Some business owners rely on employee monitoring technology, called Bossware, to keep tabs on staff’s output and efficiency as they work remotely. According to a poll by digital.com, 60 percent of businesses now mandate that their workers install monitoring software on their personal devices. Also, about 17 percent of businesses are considering adopting such measures.
Different kinds of Bossware are available. For example, some software will record mouse clicks and key presses, while others will capture random screenshots. Some Bossware, however, reaches much further into an employee’s life by arbitrarily activating the device’s microphone or camera or snapping images. Many employee tracking services utilize AI to sift through all this data and provide a productivity score.
Nonetheless, many remote workers are not thrilled about being monitored, assuming they even know. The Berkeley Labor Center at the University of California published research highlighting the adverse effects of constant surveillance on workers. The authors warned that data-driven technologies might harm employees’ mental health by limiting their freedom and privacy.
However, due to the lack of federal rules governing this kind of surveillance, many workers are unaware they are being watched. New York, Connecticut, and Delaware were the first states to mandate that employers notify workers about monitoring.
Check out this.list of employee monitoring tools.
12. Culture and Collaboration
Despite the challenges of managing a distributed workforce, many companies place a premium on fostering a strong sense of company culture and encouraging employees to work together. As a result, most workers do not see remote work as having any significant impact on the company’s culture. However, a Gallup poll shows that 30 percent of American employees worry that culture may suffer due to long-term remote employment.
Over 66 percent of CEOs in a 2021 SHRM Omnibus Survey cited the difficulty of sustaining company culture as a significant talent management concern when dealing with remote workers. Facilitating interaction and cooperation amongst a dispersed workforce was a close second.
Further evidence for this pattern comes from a BCG study that found remote workers are less productive on group projects. As a result, software that helps the culture and cooperation of remote teams is growing in popularity as a solution to these problems.
For instance, Alibaba’s DingTalk, a platform for remote workers to communicate and collaborate on projects, is gaining popularity. The market for virtual whiteboard applications is one of the most promising subsets. Conceptboard, MURAL, and Miro are just a few common examples.
These companies offer collaborative whiteboard platforms and other visual tools with the same goal of improving workplace communication. Cleary is another startup that helps businesses implement systems to make workers feel like a part of the company’s culture. For example, team members may use the site to see accomplishments and milestones and offer congratulations and other positive messages to one another. As a bonus, workers may form social groups to discuss relevant topics and network outside regular business hours.
Check out these lists of online collaboration tools and tips for building successful virtual teams.
13. Virtual Interviews are Becoming More Popular
According to a Gartner survey, concerns regarding COVID-19 led 86 percent of companies to turn to virtual hiring. During the COVID-19 pandemic, several businesses began using videoconferencing technology to conduct interviews. This phenomenon shows no signs of ending anytime soon. According to a SHRM survey, 93 percent of respondents said they expect to use virtual interviews in the future.
Furthermore, Jobvite research found that 61 percent of recruiting managers want to keep using a combination of online and in-person techniques. Nonetheless, 22 percent plan to stick to virtual interviews only. Many company executives are pleased with the results of remote recruiting. Hiring managers often prefer online interviews over in-person ones because of the ease, speed, and cost-effectiveness.
Candidates also like virtual interviews. For instance, RecRight found that more than 80 percent of respondents were pleased that video interviews were part of the hiring process. More firms are using video technology for remote interviews, and that figure will likely rise.
The recruitment process is sped up with the use of AI and ML technologies used by the organization. Their software supposedly allows businesses to save 70 percent of the time normally spent on this task.
Check out these lists of interview questions and virtual interview tips.
Conclusion
Millions of employees and companies have benefited from, struggled with, and benefited from remote job options. However, as remote workspace arrangements grow, one can anticipate more changes to the setup, perception, and importance.
Being able to work from home was once a luxury. However, virtual work is becoming the norm in various fields and workplaces now. In addition, workplace flexibility is evolving to accommodate the rise of remote and hybrid jobs. The virtual work trends mentioned here are but a taste of what the future of remote work may hold. Industries may evolve as more businesses adopt and foster a remote workforce.
Also, check out our articles on list of top work from home books, and tips for creating strong remote work culture.
Grace He