Great Pajama Jobs. Kerry E. Hannon

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Introduction

      I love my job. I log in to my computer in the quiet predawn from my comfy couch with a steaming mug of black coffee and get to work tout de suite.

      This spring, in what felt like a blink of an eye, remote work suddenly was thrust onto many workers and employers who had never wished for this to be the only work option. And there were millions of workers like me, logging into the office without the commute, not because they wanted to, but because they had no choice.

      The coronavirus has radically changed our workplaces. Unprecedented, unprepared, and uncharted, working from home became the norm. Adjust and get on with it. Kids scrambling underfoot, teenagers sitting at the table beside us engaged in their online classrooms, ramping up tech skills to make virtual connections, feeling isolated. Oh boy, all of the above became a stark and somewhat frightening reality for many workers.

      Everyone in the world has been impacted by this pandemic. And our workplaces may be changed forever. As I finish this manuscript, there is no way to predict our future. But this I do foresee: An increasing number of employers will become remote-friendly and probably institute a formal remote work policy. During the mandated time with offices shuttered, they'll have recognized the benefits of having remote workers.

“An ongoing, formal shift in the way people can work will happen in stages as it becomes increasingly clear a return to ‘normal’ won't happen overnight,” says Cali Williams Yost, chief strategist and futurist at Flex+Strategy Group. “After a year to a year and a half of remote and flexible working, it will be part of the ‘way we work here’ cultural DNA, and there will be no going back,” she says. “Then the flexible work genie will be officially out of the bottle, and all employees will benefit beyond the crisis.”

      Not surprisingly, in a Gallup national poll conducted in April, three in five U.S. workers who had been doing their jobs from home during the coronavirus pandemic said they would prefer to continue to work remotely as much as possible, once public health restrictions are lifted.

      And a study from economics professors Jonathan Dingel and Brent Neiman of the University of Chicago estimates that while less than a quarter of all full-time employees worked from home at least sometimes before the pandemic, 37 percent of jobs could be done entirely from home.

      That said, industries where telework is a practical option at the moment tend to employ better-educated workers—fields like professional, scientific, and technical services, as well as finance and management, according to the report. Among the ones least flexible for telework: retail trade and food service, which typically employ sizable numbers of low-wage older workers.

      “I don't think there will ever be a company again that doesn't consider that some element of emergency preparedness has to be made and working remotely in some form needs to be addressed and hopefully turned into a formalized policy,” Sara Sutton, founder and CEO of the job boards FlexJobs and Remote.co, tells me.

      “It is the tipping point for work from home as a valid and important component of a healthy СКАЧАТЬ