Following the conclusion of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Remote Work has seen a surge in usage across companies across the nation. According to Forbes Advisor, 12.7% of full-time employees this year work from home, while 28.2% work in a hybrid model. The total number of American remote workers is expected to grow to 32.6 million within the next two years. Support for remote work provides perhaps even more drastic figures. 98% of workers have expressed a desire to work remotely, and 93% of employers have stated that they plan to continue to conduct job interviews remotely (Haan 2023). The growing usage of remote work has contributed to a variety of debates about how the mode will affect both corporate productivity as well as numerous other global factors such as the environment and mental health.

Principal arguments in favor of remote work tend to highlight the enormous costs saved for both workers and the environment, as well as mental health benefits to workers. By working from home, workers are able to save enormous amounts of money spent on commuting, work clothes, or company meals. Full-time remote workers can also potentially qualify for a tax deduction on operating a home office full-time. As a result of such benefits, remote workers are uniquely capable of better being paid their ‘real salary’ or the true dollar amount for which a company values an employee which is paid prior to work-related costs such as those listed above (Howington 2022). Remote work is also deemed an effective means of lowering overall greenhouse gas emissions. A decrease in the number of offices used nationally lowers fossil fuel consumption used on commuting, power consumption to operate offices, and has proven to reduce air pollution by transitioning away from the paper-based office (Evreka 2022). Finally, when it comes to mental health, Hetal Parikh of the Forbes Human Resources Council reports that 62% of remote workers feel more productive, and 52% of remote workers like their new situation to such an extent that they would accept a slight decrease in pay in order to be able to continue to work remotely (Parikh 2023). They highlight that by combining comfort and productivity, they have been able to create a more inclusive workplace.

On the other hand, there also exists immense opposition to remote work. An article from Fortune magazine (Thier 2023) reports that there has been a 10-20% reduction in productivity at remote-based companies that have been studied. Collaborative jobs in particular have suffered, with the lack of a shared space for teamwork exacerbating the ability for sub-groups within organizations to effectively work together on company projects. Arguments about the benefits to mental health are also increasingly being called into question. 23% of remote workers are reported to struggle with the loneliness onset by not being able to work in an office space with companions each day. Furthermore, the blurring of home and work life is increasingly being seen as a detrimental factor for many remote workers. Rather than work being confined to bank hours, remote companies tend to lack the boundaries typically associated with in-person offices, harming the work-life balance of numerous workers (Parikh 2023). When one is tasked with performing work in the same setting which they live in, they will struggle to focus, a factor which has very likely contributed to the productivity reduction cited above.

Nevertheless, remote work envisions a transformative means of disrupting notions of the traditional workplace. A diagnostic report of remote work by the McKinsey corporation (Alexander et. al, 2021) advocates means by which companies can account for most of the problems posed within the previous paragraph. They state that in order to assist some of the mental health struggles brought on by remote work, companies must better facilitate boundaries to guarantee a stable work-life balance of their workers. Additionally, companies must clearly establish a post-pandemic growth vision of their company in order to create new standards of productivity in a post-office setting. The report ultimately states that a hybrid model will best be able to weave between the positives and negatives of remote work, allowing workers to experience the best of both worlds. Should such changes be adopted, the modern hybrid workplace postulates a way in which companies can better pay their employees their ‘real salaries’, save costs on commuting and other company-related expenses, assist in cleaning up the environment, and maintain (or even expand) productivity.