A work-from-home economy has cascading effects, some of which are only now being revealed, after more than a year of COVID-19–induced changes in how, when, and where people work. For retailers, the pandemic immediately created staffing challenges, whether because they had to shut down and thus could not continue to employ their existing staff members or because workers refused to take frontline jobs and put their own health at risk.

But the persistence of the virus and the associated implications for the workforce go well beyond these immediate impacts. Economists predict that due to the widespread realization that many jobs could be done remotely, because COVID-19 forced that option, the character of work has irreversibly changed. One estimate indicated that about half of all employed people worked from home at the height of the coronavirus lockdowns, and about 20 percent of the overall workforce is continuing to do so, even after the lockdown mandates have eased. That level represents a quadrupling of the number of at-home workers that existed prior to the pandemic.

This shift offers both benefits and risks. Notably, some companies prefer employees to commute to offices and incentivize them accordingly. For example, Google warned employees who wanted to keep working from home, especially in remote locations (i.e., which likely have lower costs of living than those near its Bay Area headquarters) that it would be adjusting (i.e., lowering) their pay accordingly. Yet in nearly the same breath, it noted that its planned office reopening was going to be delayed further, in response to the devastating spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19, pushing it at least until January 2022.

But other firms encourage the dispersion of their corporate employees; REI dismantled its centralized headquarters and told the approximately 1,800 people who previously had desks there that they could work from home. If they wanted to interact with coworkers, they also could visit one of the multiple, smaller, satellite offices it would spread throughout its home region.

If centralized offices disappear though, a variety of other businesses that have served the people working at them likely will disappear too. For example, coffee shops and lunch spots nearby urban centers would be hard pressed to survive if, say, 20 percent of the office workers they previously targeted as customers simply stopped coming to work. In Atlanta, as one example, whereas employment levels have rebounded pretty much to the same level they were before the pandemic, the leisure and hospitality sector has lost 13 percent of its jobs.

To find both employees and customers, companies thus may need to rethink their strategies for reaching them. Recruitment drives will need to address how and when employees can work remotely; staff management will have to figure out how to coordinate and supervise employees without interacting with them personally. To market and sell to customers in their homes, companies also must reconsider the channels they use, which in turn will have more far-reaching implications for delivery and other such supply chain considerations.

Discussion Question: 

1. Do you expect your ideal future job to involve remote work? Offer a prediction of what that might entail.
2. Should companies accept remote workforces, or should they develop incentives to keep people in one location?

Source: Dror Poleg, “The Winners of Remote Work,” The New York Times, September 4, 2021; Eduardo Porter, “The Work-from-Home Economy and the Urban Job Outlook,” The New York Times, September 3, 2010; Daisuke Wakabayashi, “Google Delays its Return to Office until January,” The New York Times, September 6, 2021