Everybody Still Loves Working in Their Sweatpants

In our recent collaboration with RW3 Culture Wizard, we take a look at remote work and its implications. An analysis of employee sentiment data finds that positive reviews mentioning remote work still greatly outnumber negative reviews. Not surprisingly, the number of positive reviews with remote mentions increased dramatically at the beginning of 2020, Revelio Labs labor market analytics show.

A recent employee survey by RW3 CultureWizard had similar results. In 2020 Trends in Virtual and Global Teams, more than 70% out of 2,600 respondents said that they would prefer to continue working remotely even after offices reopened. While 20% were undecided, only 10% of employees surveyed said that they would not want to continue working remotely.

Remote workers also tend to be happier with their work-life balance despite worries of less clear boundaries while working from home.

Additionally, while survey results show that leaders of remote teams perceive some challenges with maintaining team engagement and motivation at virtual meetings, sentiment data counters those results, revealing that virtual employees give higher ratings of senior leadership than non-remote workers.

It is a common assumption that relationship-building on remote teams is more challenging than on non-remote teams. However, RW3’s 2020 Trends in Virtual and Global Teams survey reveals that communication and relationship-building on virtual teams doesn’t pose as great of a challenge as expected.

When asked how much more difficult it is to communicate in a virtual work setting than in person, 35% said that there was no difference, close to 60% percent said that it was slightly more difficult, and less than 10% felt that it was much more difficult.

Surveyed remote employees felt that managing conflict and building relationships were only “somewhat challenging,” while making decisions, responsiveness, and participating during virtual meetings were not challenging at all.

Key Takeaways:

• The number of positive reviews with remote mentions increased dramatically at the beginning of 2020, according to Revelio labor market analytics.
• Remote workers rate their companies better on work-life balance and senior leadership than their non-remote counterparts.
• Survey results by RW3 reveal that communication and relationship-building on virtual teams doesn’t pose as great a challenge as commonly expected.