“Work” is no longer a place we go, but an activity that we do. Gone are the days when the vast majority of employees made the daily commute to a corporate office, sharing a communal space on a regular basis. Thanks to globalization, working 9 to 5 hasn’t been most employees’ reality for many years. But now those same workers — who used to arrive early or stay late at the office to get all their work done — are pushing the boundaries of where, when, and how they work.
Contrary to popular stereotypes, remote workers don’t spend so much time in their home offices that they lose all their social skills and never see the light of day; nor are they all “road warriors” dashing from the plane to an Uber to the hotel. Today’s remote workers are more likely to spend part of their time in the office and the rest of it juggling work and home life. In fact, according to the Census Bureau, the average remote worker is a 49-year-old college graduate who works for a company of more than 100 employees and earns $58,000 a year. That sounds like it could be just about anybody you know, doesn’t it?
A 2017 Gallup survey had two noteworthy findings: not only are more employees working remotely than ever before, but they’re also doing so more often. The survey of over 15,000 American workers found that 43% have worked off-site at some point in the last year. The figure is even higher — up to 61% — in industries that are more conducive to working remotely, such as finance, real estate, IT, and media. The survey also found a shift in the amount of time employees spend working remotely: the number of employees working remotely less than 1 day a week dropped, while those who work remotely 4 to 5 days a week increased by about the same amount. Needless to say, remote working is here to stay.
If all of this sounds familiar to you, you’ll be interested in TPx’s whitepaper The New Workplace Reality. It’s full of insights on how the “knowledge economy” is redefining the modern workplace. You’ll also learn about the communication and collaboration tools that can support today’s workforce, today.
We may not all be full-fledged road warriors, but we can all benefit from applications that enable us to productively work from anywhere, at any time.
About the Author
Stacey Kendall is a Product Marketing Manager at TPx Communications. Her role is focused on marketing for TPx’s suite of Communications & Collaboration offerings, including the UCx Hosted Unified Communications Service and SmartVoice SIP Trunking. Stacey holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing with a specialization in Information Technology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She typically works from the TPx office in Waltham, MA, but sometimes works from her home office (a.k.a. the kitchen table) too.