From Contact Tracers to COVID Screeners and Testers. The COVID-19 Crisis has spawned a myriad of previously unknown job titles that will provide work to hundreds of thousands of people living in a post-COVID society. Many of these new jobs are remote positions, and can be found right here on MotherWorks.com
As the popularity of telecommuting ascends rapidly in this “new normal,” the benefits and realities of work at home jobs are coming into sharper focus, for employees and employers alike.
Positive Effects of Telecommuting
- You don’t need to live in a major metropolitan area to enjoy working for a great company. This could have a ripple effect into many aspects of the economy. Lower cost of living and choosing where you want to live are among the benefits.
- You have a real-shot at achieving work-life balance. Remote jobs provide the flexiblity to work from home and spend more quality time with your family, and hopefully still have more time for YOU! MotherWorks likes to express it this way: Live Your Life, Love Your Job!
- Real estate values could be affected for the better. With remote jobs, more people will have the flexibility to move away from big cities, affecting real estate values for the better outside metropolitan areas.
- Your daily commute could get shorter! If a lot of people leave big cities, and the ones that stay work remotely more often, then quite possibly, the traffic you’ve been tortured by for years will be reduced.
- You’ll have the flexibility to pursue a job you love! Telecommuting levels the playing field. Talented people from less populated areas will no longer be forced to accept a job if they’re over-qualified.
And now, some realities and consequences of remote work you may not have considered.
- You may have to worker harder. Avoiding the daily commute is all good, but in terms of intensity and hours worked, many telecommuters actually work longer hours. It’s harder to set boundaries of when the workday begins and ends, and some employers may take advantage of that as they try to retool their companies for remote work.
- There could be a glut of office space. With our migration to remote work, what’s going to happen to all of that underutilized office space? It will surely become a burden to many companies, and an opportunity for others.
- Remote work will likely lead to an increase in online shopping. With the reduced need for retail space, what will our commercial landscape look like going forward? The efficiencies realized as we work online are too impactful to be ignored and they could change and reduce our need for the existing infrastructure of our society.
- As we all spend more time working in our homes, will infection rates for all contagious diseases decline or will we be more vulnerable when we eventually start spending more time outside if the COVID crisis abates?
- How will remote work affect our emotional health? Some people may be forced into remote work even though they don’t really like it.
The migration to telecommuting and more broadly to remote living has many benefits relating to work-life balance, efficiencies, and cost saving. It also carries with it a need to stay connected when and where we can. Zoom meetings can’t replace face to face human interaction. We are social beings, and we all need to see and hear other human beings directly.