The Future of Work
Source: unca.edu
Just about everyone seems to have an opinion about the future of work, especially the future of remote work. At one extreme, Elon Musk believes that working remotely is a privilege to be accorded only to “exceptional workers.” Thoughtful people offer more nuanced perspectives, including Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., CEO and President of the Society for Human Resource Management, who estimates that 60 to 65 percent of companies will have some remote work in the next five years.
I find it fascinating to speculate about the future of work, but I’m skeptical about jumping to conclusions. I do think it’s valuable to share experiences about remote work and to put them in a context that pays attention to the many variations on remote work, even though it may be premature to project trends.
I spoke recently with someone who has been working remotely for a bit over a year now. While remote work is relatively new to her, it’s pretty much business as usual for the company she works for, which has been a largely remote operation for ten years. Her take on the will they or won’t they debate about workers coming back to the office is through the lens of a millennial with decades of work ahead of her. She believes that work will be both remote and on-site, and it can be both. Companies and employees will have to figure out through trial and error what works best for them. She expects that the next five or more years will involve workers and employers trying to strike a balance and discovering the right path for them. There may be no definitive yes or no to remote work, nor should there be. Furthermore, a worker shortage may mean that employers have to be open to employees choosing their own work location and model.
As we dug further into the topic, she divulged a bit about what she feels she gains as well as what she loses by working remotely. She perceives a lot of pros to working from home: no aggravating commute, the ability to truly unwind on breaks in the comfort of her own home, and the freedom to wear pajamas if she so chooses. But it’s not without its cons: the struggle to “turn off” for the day, the constant distractions, and the battle for self-discipline. One of the biggest challenges is the lack of social interaction that can come with working remotely.
Communicating with managers and co-workers is simply not the same when it’s done through a screen. If little effort is made towards building and nurturing virtual relationships, spending forty hours a week at work can begin to feel isolating, even for the most introverted employee. Feelings and intentions can easily get lost in translation through emails and messaging, and even video calls struggle to bridge that gap. Instead of asking what the future of work will look like, we should perhaps be pondering what shape our professional relationships may take and what skills will be needed to nurture those relationships.
The pandemic caused a lot of unpredictability, which seems to be carrying over into the aftermath, if we can call it that. It should come as no surprise that some people are desperate for definitive answers after experiencing wishy-washy decision-making on multiple levels over the past few years. The pandemic may have taken away our regular social and work routines, but it did allow some space for many people to begin reflecting on what was best for them and their families, with some coming to the conclusion that the old 9-5 wasn’t for them anymore, remote or not.
I’ve pointed out over the years that the concept of “a job” is fairly new in human history. So is the idea of separating work and home. Before modern industry developed, which happened as early as the late 18th century in Britain, then continued through the 19th century and into the late 20th century in other regions, no one except sailors, soldiers, and travelling merchants and entertainers worked “away from home,” and those folks worked wherever they traveled. The pattern in which people leave home daily “for work” has probably never felt comfortable for many people, although it may have seemed necessary, at least to factory owners who wanted to get the most out of their investment in industrial machinery. The centralization of production was more than a little controversial back then, so it’s probably to be expected that, after a couple of hundred years, we still aren’t in agreement about the best ways to create and deliver products and services. If your work schedule and location matter to you, by all means join the conversation and the experiments as we collectively figure out how work works now.