GLOBAL – Remember the first few days of remote work when we all thought, “What a nice break this will be for a few weeks!”? That naive March 2020 version of me feels like a fever dream.
Fast-forward two years later and now we can’t believe we used to show up to meetings in slacks and not sweatpants. It’s clear that remote work is now a permanent fixture of our workforce, and for many, this is a change to be celebrated.
This goes far past just the United States, with a study by Owl Labs citing that 16% of companies across the globe are now fully remote. In the U.S., more than 4.7 million people work remotely at least half the time.
The flexibility (and more importantly—accessibility) of working remotely has created the most inclusive job market we’ve seen to date. People who couldn’t sustain an in-person job for reasons including disabilities, family obligations, school, etc. can now find a viable career that works around their lifestyle.
As you would expect, creating a more comfortable work environment led to higher productivity and employee happiness across the board. Of the 2,050 remote workers surveyed in the Owl Labs study, 90% said they were as productive or more productive when they were able to work remotely versus in the office. Now that we’ve all seen the light, 1 in 3 employees stated they would quit their job if they could no longer work remotely post-pandemic. As if we needed even more incentive to keep working from home, studies indicate that the move to remote work also temporarily reduced carbon emissions by 17%.
The list of benefits goes on, however, the crux of my argument here is that the future of work is decidedly remote and will remain so due to its many clear advantages to both employers and employees. Now that we’ve accepted this as our norm, it’s time to turn all eyes to the largest precursor to the workforce — education. If we’ve had to completely reinvent the way we work, then we absolutely must do the same for the way we prepare students for their careers in this new environment.
School, and particularly college, is marketed as the stepping stone to a fruitful career and overall life. This is the case for all types of education at all ages, from K-12 to MOOCs. The promise is that you’ll leave prepared to obtain and sustain a job. As the world went remote, so did these learning environments.
The feedback from students, however, was not as positive as what we heard from employees working remotely. Owen Midgette, a student from Norfolk, Virginia, said the following in response to a New York Times article asking for student opinions on remote learning: “School is a place for building friendships, learning responsibility, and getting an escape from the house, but it seems as though the Coronavirus has taken that all away from us. For me, I loved getting to see my friends every day in the school environment. Now that it’s taken away from me, I realize now that school was my main source of communicating with people.”
