Before COVID-19, “remote work” was represented by the cliché of digital nomads looking at their laptops on unique seashores. However, the pandemic revealed that remote work is hardly ever that glamorous. Mostly, it’s working at a kitchen desk in pajama bottoms and a enterprise high. It’s working from the in-laws’ basement for three weeks on an prolonged vacation go to. Occasionally, sure, it’s working from an Airbnb within the mountains or on an prolonged summer time trip.
Yet judging by latest commentary, enterprise leaders are nonetheless labored up about remote work. It can’t simply be work from one other location–it’s too common to be innocent. Even Malcom Gladwell, a author recognized to work from his sofa and occasional retailers, stated that working from residence is just not in our “finest curiosity.”
Everyone has opinions about remote work, myself included. Since becoming a member of my employer Topia in 2016, I’ve had the perfect of each worlds. Although I primarily work from our workplace in Tallinn, Estonia, my residence base, I’ve labored remotely from Iceland, Norway, Finland, Italy, Nepal, the UK, and France. I credit score remote work with my psychological well-being and life steadiness (don’t decide till you’ve spent winter in Estonia).
Because I handle merchandise for international expertise mobility (enterprise journey, relocations, distributed workforces, and many others.), I communicate incessantly with CEOs and HR leaders who concern that remote work is a looming catastrophe. Their fears largely stem from false assumptions.
Assumption #1: Remote staff are unproductive
When lockdowns closed places of work within the early days of the pandemic, many employers made their distrust of remote work clear. Some applied surveillance software program that displays workers by way of their communications, software utilization, and webcams. More lately, Elon Musk instructed Tesla workers they will both work 40 hours per week from an workplace or “…fake to work someplace else.” Data collected because the pandemic means that Musk has it improper.
Stanford researcher Nick Bloom, who has studied “work from residence” since 2004, finds that remote work interprets into more time working. On common, of the 70 minutes saved by not commuting, workers spend half-hour on additional work. Other research concur: Remote work both has no destructive impact on productiveness or barely improves it.
To be truthful, individuals may be productive at one thing that isn’t vital. Data from Qatalag and GitLab suggests that remote staff waste 67 minutes on daily basis proving to colleagues that they’re accessible and dealing (for instance, by posting memes in Slack). But doesn’t that habits say more about administration and tradition than remote work itself? If managers deal with availability throughout arbitrary hours as more vital than hitting significant KPIs, workers will faux 67 minutes of work for a good evaluation irrespective of the place they’re positioned.
Lest we neglect, a 2016 survey discovered that in a median eight-hour day, U.Ok. workplace staff consider they did just below three hours of “precise” work. Whether achieved remotely or in individual, a job is no matter administration incentivizes workers to supply.
Assumption #2: Remote work throughout borders is an unmanageable compliance mess
Companies typically reject remote work insurance policies primarily based on danger. They concern that if workers are permitted to work from residence, it’s a slippery slope. They’ll find yourself in French chalets and Italian villas, masking their location with Zoom backgrounds and VPNs. Inevitably, they’ll break immigration legal guidelines, create tax publicity, violate labor rules, and set up authorized entities in random international locations.
Here’s the fact: Only a few staff can really spend a month overseas or go full nomad. Family obligations, funds, well being, and passports restrict how freely somebody can journey. For the sake of argument, although, let’s think about a CEO proclaims on a whim, “Work from anyplace you need!” Should HR have a coronary heart assault?
Let’s contemplate immigration danger first. My crew at Topia has documented 69 international locations the place many individuals can work remotely with out immigration sponsorship. 21 of those—together with Brazil, Canada, France, and Thailand—don’t contemplate non permanent remote work to be “work” for the needs of needing immigration work permits.
In one other 20 international locations–similar to Iceland, Germany, India, and New Zealand–it’s understood that in case your major motive for visiting is just not work, then chances are you’ll work remotely (throughout an prolonged trip, for occasion). Come for the fjords, keep for the WiFi. Some 28 different international locations (and counting) provide remote work visas to workers. Which nation wouldn’t need prosperous knowledge staff to come back and spend cash? The U.S. and Australia, apparently.
So, about a third of the world’s international locations welcome if not promote remote work. The U.S. is one other story. If an worker lives in Denver, Colorado, and spends one month at an Airbnb elsewhere in Colorado, no drawback. If that Colorado worker makes over $3,500 whereas working throughout a trip anyplace in California, for any period of time, they owe California revenue tax on that compensation. Their employer has a responsibility to withhold taxes accordingly. Every U.S. state has completely different guidelines about tax publicity—therefore the complexity.
In surveys we carried out between 2020 and 2022, roughly a third of workers admitted to working remotely exterior their residence state or nation, however solely a third of these workers stated they reported all these days to HR.
At the identical time, 91% of workers stated they’re snug with having their location tracked all the way down to town stage, which is all an employer must adjust to tax and immigration legal guidelines worldwide. The message from workers to employers is straightforward: Do no matter you want for compliance, simply don’t burden us with paperwork.
So no, compliance is just not a motive to reject remote work or work from anyplace. Employers can steer workers to the numerous areas that welcome remote staff and use expertise to handle dangers in the event that they do come up.
Assumption #3: Sooner or later, most individuals will return to the workplace full time
Some employers assume that remote work is a pandemic fad and need to see that tide flip. Even Google, a purveyor of software program that makes remote work productive and simple, has known as staff again to the workplace (with out a lot success). So have Tesla, Twitter, Apple, Comcast, Shake Shack, and others. Sure, they will threaten staff who refuse to conform–however that’s prone to backfire.
Of the 125 million full-time jobs in America, 60 million may be achieved from residence, based on Gallup. In different phrases, about half the jobs in a complicated financial system are remote-friendly. Every survey I come throughout–from McKinsey, Gallup, Buffer, and Owl Labs, amongst others–finds mass help for remote work. In Topia’s 2022 survey, 94% of knowledge workers agreed that they should be capable of work from anyplace, as long as they get their work achieved.
How critical are workers about this? In payroll platform ADP’s international survey of 32,000 staff, 64% stated that they might contemplate wanting for a new job in the event that they have been required to return to the workplace full time. CareerBuilder says that remote and versatile jobs listed on its platform acquired seven occasions more purposes than in-office jobs.
Everyone has completely different motivations for wanting flexibility in the place they work–however there may be a widespread thread. Going into the pandemic, Americans specifically have been more and more burnt out and overworked. By 2019, more than half of Americans weren’t utilizing their trip advantages and collectively left 768 million days unused (4.9 days per employee). Whether it was guilt or concern of utilizing too many “limitless” trip days, individuals pretended to like the #hustle, as if the worth of their lives may very well be measured in work hours.
Then got here COVID-19. People confronted day by day, unavoidable reminders of their mortality. Locked down and now not commuting, knowledge staff had more time and will select how you can spend it. Countless individuals picked up new hobbies and habits. People reengaged with family members (or disappeared into their screens).
Then the belief hit: If I don’t should be within the workplace, why do I should be cooped up on this overpriced metropolis house with my associate and two youngsters? The exodus to small cities, mountain cities, and seashore resorts started.
Words like “autonomy” and “flexibility” have been now not empty company propaganda. Employees have been exercising each by way of their selection of location, hours of work, and life. No employer can take these away with out pushback.
Facing the data, it’s exhausting to wager in opposition to remote work. Remote work is just not a fad, and never even a recession is prone to change that.
Remote work may be a privilege reserved for laptop staff. Still, privileges have a manner of turning into entrenched. Workers will more and more view flexibility as a primary labor right, alongside day off and well being care. The 70-minute commute to be distracted in a noisy workplace will become more durable and more durable to justify.
Eventually, a workday on the kitchen desk, within the in-laws’ basement, or within the mountain Airbnb gained’t be “remote work.” It’ll simply be work. It has been all alongside.
Chantel Rowe is the VP of product administration at Topia.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary items are solely the views of their authors and don’t essentially replicate the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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