While some companies continue to thumb their noses at The Great Resignation and insist that employees come back into the office, data scientists at Ladders insist that the writing is on the wall. Remote work is here to stay. According to their projections, 25% of all professional jobs in North America will be remote by the end of 2022, and remote opportunities will continue to increase through 2023. Researchers from Ladders have been carefully tracking remote work availability from North America’s largest 50,000 employers since the pandemic began. Remote opportunities leapt from under 4% of all high paying jobs before the pandemic to about 9% at the end of 2020, and to more than 15% today. “This change in working arrangements is impossible to overhype. As big as it is, it’s even bigger than people think,” said Ladders CEO Marc Cenedella, who says it’s the largest societal change in America since the end of World War II. “Hiring practices typically move at a glacial pace, but the pandemic turned up the heat so we’re seeing a rapid flood of change in this space. It’s really rather amazing.”
The Downstream Effects of Job Burnout
As the workplace headed into 2022—the third year of the pandemic—the rise of job burnout jumped to an all-time high. The American Psychological Association’s Work and Well-Being survey found that 79% of the 1,501 employees experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey. Three in five workers said work-related stress caused them to have a lack of interest, motivation and energy at work. A total of 36% had cognitive weariness, 32% emotional exhaustion and 44% physical fatigue—a 38% jump from 2019.
According to the report, issues like the politicization of masks and vaccines and feelings of lack of support from the government and workplaces have caused workers—especially those in public-facing jobs—to become cynical about their jobs and about the public in general. “This kind of cynicism is powerful because it undermines the people’s feelings about the value of their work, which can help motivate them during hard times,” said organizational psychologist, Michael Leiter, honorary professor of organizational psychology at Melbourne’s Deakin University. The report stated that because pandemic-related stressors won’t stop anytime soon, stress-reducing measures should be top of mind for employers and legislators. And Christina Maslach, professor emerita of psychology at University of California, Berkeley added, “As demands increase, organizations need to focus on maintaining balance, taking things off the plate when they add something new. That’s especially important in health care settings where attrition rates are especially high.”
Remote Work Is A Permanent Fixture
According to the 2021 State of Remote Work Report from Owl Labs, 2021 was the year the world stayed remote, and 90% of the 2,050 full-time remote workers surveyed said they were as productive or more productive working remotely, compared to when they toiled in the office. Another 74% said after the pandemic, working from home is better for their mental health, and 84% reported that working remotely after the pandemic would make them happier, with many even willing to take a pay cut.
A January 2022 survey of 1,000 full-time workers from Ergotron corroborates the Owl Labs study, revealing that as workers have become more acclimated to hybrid and remote office environments since the onset of the pandemic, they are experiencing benefits to their physical and mental well-being. Taken together these two findings indicate that American businesses listen up and look beyond today to build more progressive workplace policies that will help employees thrive. The report concluded that leaders must rethink their workplace culture to be more inclusive of remote and hybrid work—this is the new normal...