- Position‹2 of 2
- A vaccine will not erase the changes to our daily lives
Working from home during the pandemic has become the norm for many of us. It is likely that even with a vaccine, there will be less people going into offices every day.
The argument
Even before the pandemic began, the world of work was already drifting toward remote arrangements. COVID-19 did not invent that trend so much as compress years of gradual adoption into a matter of months. The distinction matters, because a change that was already underway on its own momentum does not simply reverse when the emergency that accelerated it ends. A vaccine addresses the medical crisis; it does not undo what employers learned while managing it. What they learned is that distributed work is viable at scale. For months, many employers have been weighing the option of keeping remote working as a permanent change in working conditions rather than a temporary accommodation, and the evidence they have been weighing points the same way on both sides of the ledger. Many employees report higher job satisfaction and higher productivity when working from home, and that combination feeds directly into employer profitability: a workforce that is more content and more productive is also less costly to sustain. An arrangement that improves outcomes for both parties has no natural constituency pushing to abolish it. The cost case is what makes the shift durable. As early as April, a survey conducted by Gartner of CFOs and finance leaders found that 74% intended to permanently increase the amount of work done remotely, with just under a quarter saying they intended to move at least 20% of their workforce to remote roles permanently. The reasons given were mainly to reduce costs: more remote working requires less office space, and it cuts commuting time for workers. Those savings do not evaporate when infection rates fall, which is precisely why they were described as permanent rather than provisional. The pandemic has not had many silver linings, but it has presented the perfect test for telework and human adaptability — and having passed that test, remote work will not be surrendered simply because it is once again safe to gather in an office.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Not all work can be done from home. To those who work on a laptop all day, perhaps it is possible, simple even to continue their daily job without leaving the house. For many others, it simply isn’t possible. For anyone who needs specialised equipment, facilities or resources, going in to work will be the only option.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] The pre-pandemic trend was small and concentrated in a few sectors, and an emergency adoption under lockdown is not evidence that the arrangement was chosen on its merits or would be retained once the constraint lifted. [Rejecting P2] The satisfaction and productivity findings rest largely on self-report during an unusual period, and they apply only to work that can be done on a laptop — anyone requiring specialised equipment, facilities or premises has no remote option at all. [Rejecting P3] Stated intentions in a survey taken months into the crisis are forecasts rather than outcomes, and a partial shift in office work does not settle whether daily life returns to its pre-pandemic pattern.