Working Remotely Increasingly Controls Employee Expectations
Money, family and mobility drive interest in remote work as 95% of workers would want to work remotely for one reason or another.
More than 1 in 4 U.S. knowledge workers quit a job because the company did not offer flexible or remote work options, according to a new “Remote Work Report” by Zapier.
San Francisco-based Zapier, which provides an automation app for small business, commissioned the survey, conducted online by the Harris Poll of more than 880 U.S. knowledge workers, for a detailed study of American knowledge worker’s opinion on remote work.
Knowledge workers, defined in this report as those who primarily work in a professional setting and use a computer as part of their job, could include programmers, physicians, architects, engineers, scientists, design thinkers, accountants, lawyers, and banking professionals in areas such as financial forecasting, reporting, data analytics and modeling.
Money, family and mobility drive interest in remote work as 95% of workers would want to work remotely for one reason or another. The top five reasons knowledge workers want to work remotely are:
- To save money: 48%
- To have the ability to work from anywhere: 47%
- To spend more time with family: 44%
- More productive at home: 35%
- Better for mental health: 29% workers said become more productive at home than at the office.
Zapier noted it has an entirely remote workforce of nearly 300 people in 27 countries. “When we started Zapier in 2011, building a fully distributed company was very rare. Now, it is a workplace evolution that is shaping the future of work,” Wade Foster, co-founder, and CEO of Zapier, said. “We’ve seen how providing both autonomy and trust in your team not only drives productivity, it also increases retention.”
Other highlights from “The Remote Work Report” by Zapier:
- Nearly all U.S. knowledge workers want to work remotely. Seventy-four percent said they would be willing to quit their job to work at home, and more than 1 in 4 said they already have quit a job because the company did not offer flexible or remote work options.
- The top 10 reasons people want to work remotely extends beyond just work-life balance. Nearly 1 in 4 people want to work remotely because it is more environmentally sustainable and almost 1 in 5 said it is because they want to spend more time with their pets.
- Many employees (42%) believe they gain productivity working from home, while just under a third (32%) feel an office setting make them more productive.
- Women value working from home more, but are less likely to have the option. Women more likely than men consider working remotely a preferable perk offered by an employer (62% vs. 53%). Yet, despite this, there are significant gender disparities for work from home options. Forty percent of female employees said they do not work remotely because their company does not allow it compared to just 25% of men.
- Three in five knowledge workers (60%) said they are able to work remotely, either full-time (27%) or part-time (34%). However, 31% of knowledge workers said their companies do not allow working from home at all.
- A majority of workers believe the traditional workplace will be obsolete within the next decade, with most positions done remotely. Roughly 2 in 3 knowledge workers (66%) believe the traditional office setting will be obsolete for most roles by 2030.
- While co-working spaces have become popular in recent years, only about one in 10 (11%) said they are most productive in this environment.