The last two years were transformative years for remote work. The arrival of the COVID-19 Pandemic boosted remote work trends.
Before the Pandemic, only 6% of employees were working remotely worldwide. But, experts predicted that 25% of employees worldwide would work remotely by the end of 2023.
68% of employees in the United States want remote work permanently. 91% of the employees are comfortable with the hybrid work model in the United States.
Many trends are going on in 2023 regarding remote work. Without wasting time, please have a look at it.
What Is Trending In Remote Work In 2023?
There are many trends going on, but here we are presenting to you the top trends of remote work.
In this article, we have compiled the top 12 trends of remote work that everyone should know.
1. Adaption Of Remote Work
Remote work has become familiar to everyone from the Pandemic. Even non-working people also now know what remote working is. Working remotely has become common for workers.
Remote work is not new to us. Before the COVID-19 Pandemic, people were working from home. But, the COVID-19 Pandemic has triggered remote work. People started working remotely like never before.
Working remotely also helped people to follow the guidelines of the Pandemic. When everything was shut down due to the lockdown, that time these people were working from home and contributing to their economies to stand strong during the Pandemic.
In 2023, three years after the Pandemic, people still are working remotely. Now the intensity of the Pandemic has become less, but the remote work trend is still going on.
Remote work is here to stay for a long period of time. This trend also will go on after 2023.
2. Preferring Remote Work Over More Compensation
Working remotely gives significant benefits to employees. Employees can work from their homes and spend more time with their families and friends.
Employees have saved their traveling time as well as money to go to the office. Working from home gives a safer feeling to workers.
Employees can choose their working place according to their comfort zone. Nowadays, destination working is also trending. Many businesses have started working places at beautiful and calm tourist places. So, people can come there and work with nature.
Remote work gives flexibility to live people where they choose to live, provides flexibility in how employees spend their time and gives them the ability to focus on their work.
Because of all these reasons, employees prefer remote work over more compensation. Employees are more likely to be ready to accept a salary reduction to have full remote work. This trend will continue in 2023.
3. Increasing Trend Of Freelancers
Nearly almost half (47.00%) of the workers in the world are self-employed. Freelancing has become popular due to the recent surge of layoffs, furloughs, and many other career problems that come with the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Freelancing platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork will continue to achieve steam in 2023. Freelancing platforms are connected with clients from every corner of the world.
Many clients like the flexibility of freelancers. Freelancers can work at any time and in any time zone. They can work as per the requirements of the clients.
Freelancers are also earning a good amount of money from freelancing. They also work according to their availability.
They can also spend more time with their families and friends. They can save more money due to no traveling expenses.
They are also getting every one of the benefits that remote workers are taking.
Many industries are ready to ramp up outsourcing to cut costs and improve their efficiency. The experts predicted that IT outsourcing is expected to spend $519 billion by the end of 2023. And business process outsourcing is expected to spend $212 billion by the end of 2023. This trend can increase the popularity of Freelancers.
The uncertainty in the economy can create more opportunities for freelancers. Today the world is in danger of recession. Due to this, many companies are looking to save money, and for that, they are planning to cut off their workforce.
All these circumstances can lead to an increase in the popularity and opportunities for freelancers in 2023.
Source: outstaffer.com.
4. Cybersecurity Become A Concern
According to a survey by Cisco, 85% of companies say that cybersecurity has become far more important than before the Pandemic. The use of remote work software and cloud computing has increased due to remote work. This led to the cybersecurity concern.
This survey also reported that the organizations were not ready for a full transition of work into remote work due to cybersecurity concerns.
According to the poll of EY, 7 out of 10 respondents say that supporting remote work was the most important security challenge in their company.
Additionally, in this survey, organizations said the concern about cybersecurity was 43% before the Pandemic, but after the Pandemic, employees started working remotely, so this concern has become 70% now.
Due to the increasing concern about cybersecurity, employers are conducting training sessions to train their employees on basic security practices, like strong passwords, recognizing phishing attempts, etc.
In 2023, cybersecurity concerns will continue for organizations that provide remote work.
Source: explodingtopics.com.
Also Read: Astonishing Cybersecurity Statistics
5. Hybrid Work Model Is Here To Stay
The hybrid work model has become popular among employees. Many employees like to work from home, but they get some distractions at home, such as child distractions.
And some employers are also concerned about fully remote work for security reasons. So employers started providing hybrid work.
The hybrid work model is the option that works for both employers and employees.
In this work model, employees some days can work from home and some days from the office in a week or month.
More than 58% of employees in the United States said they have an opportunity to work from home at least one day a week.
The hybrid work model trend is continuing in 2023. This is a middle path of full remote work and office work. This trend is also here to stay for a long.
Source: explodingtopics.com.
6. Growing Employee Well-Being
According to the survey by Deloitte, corporate executives say improving employees’ well-being is one of the most important goals to achieve in a short time in the future.
While employees said, their well-being is their third priority in work transformation efforts.
It is important to pay attention to employees’ well-being because not being well can impact the efficiency of employees.
There are many benefits of remote working, but there are many challenges that employees face during remote work, such as work-life balance, not being able to unplug after work, etc.
According to OwlLab’s report, 55% of employees said they are working more hours than the office. This could be good news from the point of view of the productivity of employees, but this can lead the burnout in some cases. Moreover, remote work can cause serious mental health problems for employees.
This trend will continue in 2023 because it is important to take steps for employees’ well-being.
Source: outstaffer.com.
7. Companies Are Depend On Bossware To Track Remote Workers’ Productivity
The Wall Street Journal published that 67.70% of leading North American organizations that have more than 500 employees rely on some of the employee monitoring software.
This software tracks the activities of employees, such as time tracking, mouse tracking, screenshots of desktops, etc.
In 2023, many organizations are likely to use this software to keep track of their remote employee’s productivity.
It is very easy to get frustrated by the idea of being tracked by their employers, but it is important from the point of view of employers. However, there are many benefits of keeping surveillance on employees.
According to Spring 2022 survey, when they conducted the survey, then the employers said as follows:
- 39% of employers said it is providing more insight into daily business operations.
- 38% of employers said this software ensuring them that employees are paid correctly.
- 37% of employers said they could catch the mistake of employees sooner.
Many employees do not have a problem with this surveillance software if their employer is transparent about utilizing this software.
Source: outstaffer.com
8. Increasing Virtual Interviews
During the Pandemic, it was not possible for employers to conduct interviews face-to-face. So employers started conducting virtual interviews. The hiring process for employees was completely online during the Pandemic.
Now, the fear of the COVID-19 Pandemic’s spread has decreased notably. But still, virtual interviews remain popular.
Employers continue to conduct virtual interviews after the Pandemic. Not just virtual interviews but also the whole process of hiring has become virtual in many organizations.
According to the LinkedIn survey, 70% of respondents say they want to adopt a remote hiring procedure that integrates virtual interviews and in-person.
According to the survey of SHRM, 23% of organizations plan to conduct only virtual recruitment.
Conducting virtual interviews can save time and money for both employees and employers. In 2023, this trend will continue.
9. Loneliness Has Become A Concern For Many Employees
According to Slack’s report, many employees struggle to experience a feeling of belonging at work. Before remote work, they worked from the office; there were feelings of work at that time. But during remote work, they lost it.
Many employees feel lonely during remote work. Remote workers often feel lonely while working.
68% of employees said during work, social interaction is important. 55% of employees feel lonely at least some of the time during remote work.
Here are some of the data showing how often remote workers feel lonely:
- 3%-all of the time
- 12%-often
- 40%-some of the time
- 26%-hardly ever
- 10%-never
The sense of feeling of loneliness is affecting the mental health of employees. Employees that feel lonely often want to join offices and work from there. They mostly prefer a hybrid work model.
Source: explodingtopics.com.
10. Employees Started Investing In Home Offices
Remote workers started to save more money than traditional workers. They saved money from expenses like transportation, not eating outside, coffee breaks, etc.
They got a disposable income to make home offices. During the Pandemic, many workers were working from home, then later, some organizations implemented a hybrid work model.
So, employees need a nice “office-like” place to work at home. They started investing in the home office to get a sense of work like offices.
Instead of some garage, bedroom or store room, employees started building a home office now a day.
This trend will not just continue in 2023 but this trend will continue for many more years in the coming future.
11. Trend In Job Losses
Nowadays, the world is under the circumstances of recession. Recession-like conditions are here due to the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Due to the lockdown, all economic activities were stopped in the world. Many economies fallout from the Pandemic. Almost half a billion people are in extreme poverty in the United States because of the COVID-19 Pandemic impact.
Many companies started laying off their employees in the Q4 of 2022, and this will continue in 2023. Companies over-hired employees during the Pandemic. Now companies are not making enough money to cover expenses. So they started laying off.
In the Q1 of 2023, many big tech giants laid off their employees, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Twitter laid off almost 50% of its employees as of 2023.
Source: wionews.com, thewire.in, christenseninstitute.org.
12. Increasing Importance Of Online Communication Platforms
During the Pandemic, everything was shut down suddenly. The world was in lockdown, from grocery shops to big companies. Working from home became a need at that time.
From that time, employers started using online communication platforms to establish good communication with their employees.
Employees also needed online communication platforms to communicate with their teammates while working remotely.
The use of online communications platforms has become important not just for remote workers but also for educational purposes. During the Pandemic, all school, colleges, and universities conducted their online classes through these online communication platforms.
Online communication platforms like Microsoft teams, Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, Knox, Slack, etc., become popular during the Pandemic. But still, people are using these platforms.
After the Pandemic, as remote work is still trending, online communication platforms also will trend in 2023.
Read about some of the advanced HR software assisting in hiring and managing remote working employees from our list here.
Conclusion: Remote Work Trends (2023)
Many remote work trends are going to be popular in 2023. But all over, we can say this, remote work is here to stay for a long period of time. Over the last two years, remote work culture has become common to everyone.
With the increasing trend of remote work, the use of online communication platforms will increase. Additionally, employers also will use bossware software to track the productivity of employees.
Due to remote work, employees started saving money. They can save the expenses like transportation expenses, outside eating expenses, etc.
With the increasing remote work, the mental health issues of employees are increasing. Many employees feel loneliness while working remotely. In many cases, employees feel burnout because of long working hours and not being able to unplug on time.
For more latest updates on remote work trends, keep revisiting the article. We will be updating this article from time to time.
FAQs
Obviously, YES, remote work is here to stay. Even 28% of new jobs advertisement mention complete remote work in 2023. Remote work will not just continue in 2023, but it will continue for many coming years.
The experts predict that 25% of the total workforce will work remotely in the world by the end of 2023. In the United States, 68% of workers wish to work remotely completely.
According to Buffer, 22% of employees say flexibility in the use of their time is their biggest benefit of remote work. Many employees also said they could save more money and spend time with families and friends are the benefits of remote work.
Almost 74% of employees reported that their relationship with the family became better, and 51% of employees said they strengthened their friendship. But, here is to notice that many employees also feel loneliness while working remotely.
