Remote Work: ‘New Normal’ or ‘Back to Normal’?

Things have changed but perhaps not the way we imagined

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic seems like such a blur now whenever I think back to it. The world has been through so much.

Going into 2020, I think many of us had been looking forward to starting that year with a bang. I know my partner and I did. We had spent a few years in the US and had begun the process of relocating back to Japan.

Obviously, the pandemic put a halt to everything we had set in motion, resulting in a very drawn-out process that we were lucky enough to complete by the end of that year, thanks to the help of a lot of people.

Looking back at it now, it was such a unique experience to live and work in two major economies during this challenging time.

For anyone who’s been to both the US and Japan, you’d know that they are worlds apart in almost every way that you can think of.

It really is a reminder of just how diverse different cultures and environments can be. And that brings me to the topic of this article: remote work. 

I was part of the cohort that struggled to find their first job in the years that followed the Global Financial Crisis in 2007–08. And while I ultimately got my lucky break and have been thankful for it ever since, it was a proper grind. 

That’s not to say that work hasn’t always been a grind, but the added pressure from the experience of applying for graduate roles and going up against candidates who had already worked multiple years was not something I wanted to go back to.

I doubled down on everything that I could do to stay employed. 

And when you’re new, you’re basically an extra “pair of hands,” so you could say that I spent a lot of time at the office. For better or worse, those early years stuck with me, and as such, I never questioned the status quo.

While I do have some faint memories of the “work-life balance” movement gaining traction back then, the notion of remote work was pretty much still a myth.

A unicorn that you’d hear about now and then, only to rub your eyes incessantly when you actually saw one.

A dream, that you’d end up dismissing for being unrealistic, and perhaps even convincing yourself that it was actually bad for you.

And then, as if overnight, most of the world was thrust into working from home.

My own perspective

Sudden change is never easy to deal with. The first few months of being forced into this new reality were bizarre and jarring.

Outside of the panic and chaos of trying to stock up pantries and supplies, which literally felt like scenes from some post-apocalyptic movie, huge chunks of free time had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

There’d literally be days on end where I’d feel guilty about not being able to work properly as companies, governments, and organizations the world over were literally figuring out how to get things going again under this “new normal.”

As processes and systems were revamped, some of this freed-up time would dissipate as we all got used to working and collaborating online.

However, a good portion of it would remain. Time we’d normally spend commuting to and from work, time we’d spend networking and getting to know our colleagues at the office, and time we’d plan around work to socialize with family and friends or run errands.

We likely tried new things that trended during the pandemic or rediscovered old passions, but we’d eventually return to many of these activities again as vaccines were developed and lockdowns became less of a thing.

But for some reason, at least for me, it never quite felt the same.

I do wonder if it’s because we’re seeing all of these activities that we used to take for granted in a different light or if our old habits have simply been replaced by new ones, and as we all know, habits are hard to break.

As an example, I cannot imagine going back to working in an office five days a week.

And I say this after working remotely during the peak of the pandemic and going back to the office up to four days a week for parts of 2021 and 2022.

Does this mean I want to be fully remote again? Not necessarily.

I think it’s more the idea of “hybrid work" that I’ve bought into, where as long as the work gets done, it doesn’t really matter where you are. There’ll be times where it makes sense to be in the office and times when it’s just better to work from home.

Prior to the pandemic, the most I had ever “worked from home” had been the odd day here and there, where I had to juggle personal errands or catch up on work over the weekend.

But now, with the flexibility that hybrid work affords, I feel like I’m in more control and being more productive with my time. Whether this is fact or fiction doesn’t even really matter.

The illusion alone has been enough to leave me feeling more empowered and motivated.

I’ve come out of the pandemic valuing the time I have and how I use it more. And I don’t think I’m alone, nor should this be overlooked by employers.

One thing that has been unfortunate to see is the number of companies that jumped on the bandwagon of supporting remote or hybrid work, only to backtrack once it became feasible to bring their staff back into the office.

As a side note, kudos to any organization that has always been supportive of these options or has continued to support them. In addition, I don’t take issue with organizations that never jumped on the bandwagon to begin with.

I say this because it’s not just employers but also many employees who actually prefer working in the office. I can understand where they’re coming from.

From an employer’s perspective, company culture is critical. If they feel strongly about having people in the office and have always been clear about it, then I personally don’t have an issue with it.

For people who like being in the office, it can offer better separation from work and their personal lives. Furthermore, there is a certain magic that does come from working and collaborating in person that can be hard to replicate virtually.

If working full-time at the office isn’t for you anymore, that’s perfectly fine. Things change, and that’s okay. But if the environment around you hasn’t kept up with your change, then you may want to consider your options elsewhere in the long term.

But at the end of the day, these are just my own thoughts. What does some of the data out there actually seem to indicate?

The interest in remote work has increased

Before we jump into a few compelling charts from Chartr, according to media sources, a survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) on employees across 27 countries found that working from home saves them up to 72 minutes a day on average when not having to commute.

Approximately 40% of this time is actually spent doing more work, while the rest is allocated across leisure and caregiving activities. In my opinion, having more time to get things done, whatever they may be, is always a good thing.

Now, onto the first chart below, which looked at some Google search trends during the pandemic. Clearly, when we were locked up at home, we were forced to find substitutes or alternatives to what we had done pre-pandemic.

Substitutes to staying healthy outdoors, like working out at home or signing up for online yoga, peaked only to taper off greatly. While there has always been some level of interest in these activities, there was clearly a huge, albeit brief, surge early on during the pandemic. We saw a similar trend with making bread at home and ordering wine online as well.

While interest in cycling and loungewear has also subsided, there were multiple peaks or bumps in interest that may have coincided with periods of increased lockdowns.

It’s interesting to see the one-time massive peak for downloading Zoom (a video conferencing software for anyone who’s been living under a rock) and the continuing upward trend for online chess as well.

But what really stands out is the search for remote jobs.

Not only has it steadily increased, it even accelerated in 2022 as the world began to open up. I would imagine that as businesses reopened their doors, what were once forced requirements to work remotely shifted to requiring employees to return to offices.

And while there’s a subset of people who don’t mind or even prefer working in “back to normal” conditions, the surge in interest for remote jobs indicates a large share of workers who want to stay in the “new normal.”

Demand and supply are heavily mismatched

This brings us to the reality of the job market we’re seeing today in the graph below.

While the demand for remote work has increased significantly, the availability of remote jobs has not kept up. In fact, the gap has drastically widened over time.

This should come to no surprise as the entirety of modern working history had been working in close proximity to your colleagues up until the point of the pandemic. A reversion to the mean is to be expected.

Having said that, a case can be made that there has been a “step change” in the amount of remote work available and the number of people searching for one. Both were negligible in 2020 and have now risen to 15% and 50% in 2022, respectively.

Whether this gap continues to widen or begins to narrow is anyone’s guess, but I would venture that over time, the supply of remote work will begin to level off, with demand eventually gravitating towards it.

What else has changed

The final chart below shows the state that we’re in three years after the pandemic started in terms of how many vaccines have been administered globally (top), air travel in the US (bottom left), and subway ridership in New York (bottom right).

It’s startling to see that three years later, we still have a massive discrepancy in the number of doses administered between higher and lower income brackets. I certainly do hope that governments continue to actively support vaccination, including through foreign aid, to try and close that gap over time.

If you’ve done any air travel during the pandemic, you’ll definitely have noticed the difference at airports and in the cabin. While it’s nice to see the travel-related industries recover, I can’t say I miss crowded planes.

Subway ridership in New York, on the other hand, seems to have been affected by the step change from increased remote work.

There is still a big gap in ridership share, and while it’s trending upward, it also appears to be tapering off. It’d be interesting to see what public transportation numbers look like in other major cities around the world.

Tying this all together, it really does seem that, at least right now, we’re somewhere in between “back to normal” and the “new normal” that we were forced into.

A reversion to what we used to do is only natural and to be expected, but it also seems likely that some new habits will stick around.

See you in the next one!