Don’t Judge the Work-From-Home Experiment by the Last Year Alone
Vaccines are being distributed, restrictions are being lifted — and you’re still Zooming into daily meetings from the couch in your sweats. Here’s what’s working with remote work (and what’s not), and what the future might hold.
By Chloe Albanesius & Chandra Steele
The shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic has been transformative for those who have said goodbye to soul-crushing commutes and embraced the flexibility of working from their own space. In some cases, that’s meant being able to relocate from expensive cities to regions closer to friends and loved ones, with lower costs of living.
But there is a class divide. As the Pew Research Center outlined in December, only 23% of people without a four-year college degree have been able to work remotely during the pandemic. And those who have been lucky enough to hold onto full-time jobs and shift to remote work have faced other hurdles, from lack of childcare to burnout.
For all the positive shifts we’ve seen in employer attitudes toward working from home, the fact remains that we are still in the midst of a pandemic, and have yet to really experience the new normal. When and if that does happen, these are the lessons to consider.
