No More ‘Business as Usual’

After adapting their personal space for working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, many employees are seeking greater job flexibility

by CHRIS BURRITT

NW GREENSBORO/GUILFORD – For the past year and a half, CBS News Radio reporter Jim Krasula has covered some of the nation’s biggest stories from the deck of his house in northwest Greensboro’s Cardinal neighborhood.

In Summerfield, Paul Lambrecht supervises 19 colleagues at Volvo Truck Group from a room measuring 7 feet by 7 feet.

Andy and Sherrie Young work in opposite ends of their home in northwest Greensboro. They occasionally

Photo by Chris Burritt/NWO After the COVID-19 outbreak curbed travel, CBS News Radio reporter Jim Krasula is spending more time recording broadcasts from the deck of his home in the Cardinal subdivision in northwestern Greensboro

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meet in the kitchen, the domesticated version of the office water cooler.

Even as COVID-19 is still running its course, the habits of employees in northwestern Greensboro and Guilford County illustrate how the pandemic has already reshaped the workplace. National surveys indicate that, after the pandemic wanes, many people want to work some days from home and others from the office. Employers are warming to the hybrid model, betting that workers will remain productive on days they’re not in the office.

“There have been a lot of benefits from the remote work that COVID forced us into,” said Shawn Straub, a Summerfield resident who owns Alt HR Partners, a human resources consulting firm in Greensboro. “I’d be really surprised if we went back to that traditional pre-COVID view of what work and the office look like.”

Instead, Straub concurs with the findings of research by organizations such as Salary.com, a compensation analytics company, and professional services firm Pwc, that a blend of working from home and the office is going to emerge from COVID-19.

A May 2021 survey by Salary.com found that 48% of employees want to remain fully remote while 44% favor a hybrid model; 51% of employers support hybrid work. Only 5% of bosses say fully remote work will be an option, according to the survey.

“It’s a new era, one that’s focused on hybrid and new ways of working,” PwC said in a report based upon surveys of executives and workers last month. Although the surge of the Delta variant has delayed office re-openings by some companies, planning “should still take into account the workforce’s growing embrace of remote work opportunities,” the firm advised.

Even before the onset of the pandemic in early 2000, some people were working a hybrid schedule. Going totally remote has spurred changes.

“For me, working from home has made me more efficient,” said Summerfield resident Beth Kaplan, finance manager for Soil & Environmental Consultants in Raleigh. Before the pandemic, she drove more than three hours round trip between home and work two and three days a week.

“Now they are not losing me to drive time,” she said.

Kaplan tends to her horses in the morning before starting work around 9 o’clock. She’s noticed that she’s more agreeable to tackling assignments late in the day or working at night now that’s she’s not frazzled by the commute. She continues to work more than 40 hours a week, as she did before the pandemic.

“My life is much easier to organize working from home,” she said, although she noted it’s not without inconveniences. She relies upon a wireless internet connection, which slows with high usage on the continued onpage 15