Why does your organization offer remote work?
- Foreign expansion: 17%
- Improve staff retention: 52%
- To reduce office costs: 47%
- Employees demand it: 45%
- To scale staff numbers more flexibly: 44%
- Lets employees get closer to clients: 37%
Remote work is no trend; it is a practice that is only increasing.
Flexible working
Forty-nine percent of U.S. companies now offer flextime. (Singapore is number one, allowing the most workers to set their own hours. The country offers 66% flextime).
Nearly 50% surveyed said they expected flexible working to increase over the following year, and an even larger percentage said they expected it to increase in the next five years.
Of course, there were some cultural concerns about flexible and remote working.
Some people worried about flexible working, in that they thought it created too much of a “fun environment,” creating an office where people went to for “social reasons.”
Others surveyed were concerned that remote workers could not keep up productivity at the level of in-office workers.
These attitudes will surely be softened as remote and flex-time become more and more normalized.
The general consensus is that working three days a week and two in the office is optimal (49%.) Anything more is pushing the current norm.
After all, it’s just good business to show your face in the office every now and then.