How Remote Work Is Quietly Remaking Our Lives
Remote work has transformed the way people work, making it easier to have a work-life balance.
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically affected the work culture of numerous companies, which led to a hybrid model becoming the new norm. Moreover, in May 2021, a Mercer study concluded about 70 percent of companies are willing to follow a hybrid work model.
With enormous corporations like Facebook, Microsoft and Goldman Sachs making arrangements to integrate a hybrid model even post pandemic, remote work has started remodeling our work culture. Taking this into consideration, in this article, we’ll be shedding some light on how remote work is quietly remaking our lives.
4 Ways Remote Work Is Remaking Our Lives
Better emotional and mental health.
You have to admit it, remote work has drastically impacted our health in all aspects in a good way. Being able to work from home and not having to commute daily to the office has improved people’s mental and emotional health. When you total up all the time you have spent on travelling back and forth to your workspace, the sum will easily amount to above hundred hours.
Now imagine, with remote work, you are able to save these many hours of your life? Amazing, isn’t it? Remote work has enhanced the well-being of numerous employees regardless of the industry they operate in. With companies implementing a hybrid model, not everyone has to come to the office regularly.
You can avoid the wear and tear of traffic jams and the harmful automobile emission fumes that puts your health at risk. Due to the remote work culture, people are no longer feeling irritated and exhausted from commuting every day. You are able to enjoy a better quality of life instead of having to keep yourself seated on your desk for hours.
Paul Martell, a router table manufacturer, suggested that remote work has provided people with an opportunity to enjoy more time with their family and peers and have a healthy social life as well. Since you won’t have your boss monitoring you all the time, you can relax and work comfortably at your own convenience as long as you meet the deadlines.
Rekindle your hobby/passion
With remote work being the new norm, the 10th Annual Survey that was conducted by FlexJobs’ earlier this year outlines that about 39 percent of respondents are seeking a hybrid work environment while 58 percent wish to work as remote employees full-time. To sum it up, about 97 percent of the respondents prefer some type of remote work.
Keeping these stats in mind, with numerous software like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom, employees aren’t pressurized to travel long distances just to attend meetings. Similarly, clients aren’t worrying about catching flights on short notice for the same. With time saved from all that travelling and exhaustion, people have sufficient time in their hands to rekindle their hobbies and passions. Remote work has led to people shifting towards a healthier lifestyle with getting some time to focus on their exercise, enjoy healthy meals at home instead of junking on fast food at work and more. We are able to see more people investing their free time in things they had to put on hold earlier due to hectic office hours and work schedules. People have also started taking up courses online to upskill themselves and reading more books to acquire more knowledge.
Lower cost of living
People generally move to large cities in search of work. On being allowed to work remotely, there is no need for these people to spend highly on renting expensive apartments in big cities. Many have left crowded cities and are able to work comfortably from home without much expenditure.
People residing in the major metropolitan areas have to pay higher taxes generally. Another benefit of remote work is the fact that you no longer need to pay higher taxes and can enjoy a lower cost of living.
Seek out meaningful jobs
Before the pandemic, people were all about their professional life and career. This will be quite different for the Millennials who will be stepping foot in the job market post pandemic as remote work leads to numerous possibilities. Young people are now in search of companies that offer jobs with a larger purpose, something that’s meaningful and offers value.
People have begun prioritizing their lives due to the adverse toll Covid-19 took on us and keeping this in mind, many youngsters are reinventing themselves, switching jobs and trying their hand in new, trending industries.
Bottom Line
About 94 percent of employers who were surveyed in 2020, when the remote work culture started blooming, reported that the company productivity was not affected. The productivity was 67 percent of the time the same or 27 percent higher in a few instances. Besides productivity, remote work has reshaped our lives in several ways, a few of which we have outlined above.
Porter Gale is Editor-in-Chief at Sleepation. She has 7 years of experience in developing data-driven content for brands, SaaS businesses, and agencies. When not writing you can find her playing her guitar or binge-watching time-travel movies.