According to Upwork’s “Future of Workforce Pulse Report,” 36.2 million Americans are anticipated to be working remotely by 2025.
The analysis has revealed that the pandemic is having a lasting impact on how businesses operate, as well as the way hiring managers view their organization.
“As businesses adapt and learn from this remote work experiment, many are altering their long-term plans to accommodate this way of working,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork. “What’s interesting is that remote work is getting better for the vast majority of companies as they adapt to the new model. Only 5% of respondents of the survey said it was getting worse.”
Remote working has quickly become a mainstay for many companies, with 41.8% of American workers remaining in this position at the moment.
Additionally, managers said they believe that 26.7% of the workforce will continue to operate completely remotely in one year. This indicates that some employees will return to the office, but a distributed workforce will still play a significant role in the future.
Remote working has also become easier to manage, with 68% of hiring managers saying that this arrangement is going more smoothly now than at the beginning of the pandemic.
Not only has working remotely been a necessity for companies trying to operate safely throughout the last nine months, over half of respondents said that a reduction in non-essential meetings, increased schedule flexibility and lack of commute have helped boost productivity.
