Social Debt 2.0: The Social Recession

We need community more than ever.

Last year, I wrote about the dark side of remote work — Social Debt — and how humans aren’t meant to work alone all day. While politicians and healthcare workers are rightfully focused on containing COVID-19, there’s a second pandemic looming. My fear is that as the world embraces remote work, we may be heading into a Social Recession.

How big is the remote workforce?

In the last 2 months, the full-time remote workforce in the U.S. has exploded from around 4%¹ to more than 60%². And that doesn’t include more than 33 million unemployed Americans who find themselves job hunting from home. Many of these people will go back to the office at some point, but most experts believe the remote population will settle somewhere between 10% and 30%. The most compelling data I’ve seen is from Gartner’s survey of more than 250 CFOs, in which half said they plan to move 10% or more of their employees to permanently remote.³ A similar survey of 300 CFOs by PwC showed half (49%) are planning to make remote work a permanent option — and the number is higher for tech/media companies (55%) and financial firms (60%).⁴

Why is remote here to stay?

For one, companies are looking to cut costs, including expensive and underutilized office space. At the same time, many old school managers are discovering that work still gets done remotely, even when they can’t look over employees’ shoulders. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, most employees (over 50%) never want to go back.⁵ Despite the current reality of being trapped at home and unable to enjoy many remote benefits, like working from your favorite coffee shop or taking an afternoon workout class, one thing is clear: people hate commuting and love autonomy.

Just a few weeks into social distancing, millions of people are realizing what seasoned remote workers have known for years: working at home alone is just plain lonely.

WFH ≠ remote work

Twitter is full of statements like, “I love working remotely, but I can’t wait to stop working from home.” What does that mean, exactly? Whether you’re a new adopter of remote work or you’ve been doing it for years, you’re probably struggling to stay productive right now. Maybe it’s because you have kids to look after, or maybe you’re simply stressed and anxious about the state of the world. But working from home during a pandemic is nothing like working remotely in normal times. The problem isn’t productivity — in fact, in a Zapier survey of recently-remote workers, two-thirds reported feeling more productive, with none of their tasks taking longer to complete.⁶ The problem is that we’re stuck at home, with no social outlet, and each day blurring into the next.

Just a few weeks into social distancing, millions of people are realizing what seasoned remote workers have known for years: working at home alone is just plain lonely. You can’t overstate the mental health impact of switching from 40 hours a week in an office, saying “good morning” to coworkers and making small talk around the water cooler, to suddenly having ZERO human interaction outside your house.

But what about virtual happy hours?

Don’t get me wrong, even in an office, we spend the majority of our days behind screens — on email, Slack, and…Instagram. But FaceTime® just isn’t the same as face-to-face time. Sure, we all had fun cheers’ing our laptops during the first week of shelter-in-place, but “Zoom fatigue” has officially set in. Until we’re all living in the Matrix, the virtual version of life just doesn’t cut it.

Just like financial debt, you can easily drown in social debt if you ignore the problem.

The Social Recession

Everyone gets lonely. In a poll of more than 10,000 adults, Cigna found that 3 in 5 Americans classify themselves as lonely.⁶ But remote workers are especially susceptible to the loneliness pandemic because they’ve been robbed of their in-office community and social connections. At my company, Out Of Office, we call this “social debt,” and we believe our collective debt is approaching recession levels.

Just like financial debt, you can easily drown in social debt if you ignore the problem. But most employers — and even remote workers themselves — aren’t talking about loneliness or social debt. Maybe it’s due to the general stigma surrounding mental health, or maybe it’s because we’re so focused on stopping this damn virus. One thing is for sure though, our social debt will only get worse if we continue to WFH alone. So when things open back up and our home offices become the local coffee shop or coworking space, we need to find ways to safely work together.

Make remote work not suck again

At Out Of Office, we’re dedicated to fixing the social debt problem. Earlier this year we launched Work Club, a casual way to connect with other remote workers in real life (IRL). Before the pandemic, Work Clubs were 2–4 hours long, with 3 to 6 people sharing a table in a cool cafe or coworking space. You just showed up, met your coworkers for the day, and got to work.

As the economy opens back up, we’re working hard to make sure we can relaunch Work Club in a safe way that follows social distance guidelines. But the essentials won’t change: we’ll still give you a great place to work, with friendly coworkers for accountability and coffee breaks.

Soon it’ll be time to get off Zoom and get back to life. Safety is our new #1 priority, but we won’t let our sanity suffer. Our goal is to help you get out of the house and out of your own head, so you can better balance your life. We’re “all in” on building and IRL community, and we hope you’ll join us.

[1] Global Workplace Analytics. (March 13, 2020). Telecommuting Trend Data https://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics

[2] Gallup. (April 7, 2020). How Leaders Are Responding to COVID-19 Workplace Disruption https://www.gallup.com/workplace/307622/leaders-responding-covid-workplace-disruption.aspx

[3] Gartner. (April 3, 2020). Gartner CFO Survey Reveals 74% Intend to Shift Some Employees to Remote Work Permanently https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-04-03-gartner-cfo-surey-reveals-74-percent-of-organizations-to-shift-some-employees-to-remote-work-permanently2

[4] PricewaterhouseCoopers. (April 27, 2020). COVID-19 CFO Pulse Survey https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/covid-19/pwc-covid-19-cfo-pulse-survey.html

[5] IBM Institute for Business Value. (May 1, 2020). COVID-19 Is Significantly Altering U.S. Consumer Behavior and Plans Post-Crisis https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-05-01-IBM-Study-COVID-19-Is-Significantly-Altering-U-S-Consumer-Behavior-and-Plans-Post-Crisis

[6] Zapier. (April 6, 2020). Half of America just started working from home. So, how’s it going? https://zapier.com/blog/wfh-report/

[7] Cigna. (January 23, 2020). Loneliness is at Epidemic Levels in America https://www.cigna.com/about-us/newsroom/studies-and-reports/combatting-loneliness/