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Home Sweet Office? INTERVIEW BY KRISTEN WALSH
Working from home is now business as usual for some 62% of employed Americans, according to Gallup Inc. About two-thirds of those polled say they want to continue that arrangement when COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. Here, Bentley faculty member Susan Vroman and Alan Hubbard ’83, MBA ’92 of the nonprofit National Telecommuting Institute discuss the impact of these unplanned at-home work arrangements — now and in the future. COVID-19 caused a quick pivot to remote work for many employees. What was the impact of this shift? Alan Hubbard: The internet made it so a good percentage of us could continue to do our jobs from home. For some people it meant schedule flexibility. Another plus is that it eliminated the commute, which for some meant saving hours of their time each day.
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Susan Vroman: Building off that, the ultimate plus is that so many companies that didn’t think it was possible to have employees work remotely have now found there is a possibility for this to be successful. A minus is that the lack of pre-planning isn’t painting a true picture of what remote work would truly look like. But the upside will hopefully outweigh that.
How does this differ from a planned flexible work arrangement? SV: Number one, of course, would be the planning: the ability to make sure a remote workplace is viable from an infrastructure and management perspective. Another major difference is that during “normal times,” you would have the option to pull back. If an employee wasn’t performing well remotely or with a flexible work arrangement, you could pull them back into the ILLUSTRATION BY GRAPHICFARM/SHUTTERSTOCK
