The New World
of Work

Business response

As is now known, a significant impact of COVID-19 on business was that it triggered a sudden transition to a fully remote working environment where all employees worked from home. Our survey confirmed this – nearly two-thirds (62.6%) of respondents cited going fully remote as one of the actions their business took.

A third (32.3%) of respondents said they moved part of their operations to a remote environment. It bears noting that nearly a third of all respondents work in IT/technology – considered to be one of the most remote-friendly sectors. 

A sizable percentage of businesses introduced precautionary measures at their working location (37.9%) and/or reduced capacity at work, if remote was not an option for all workers (18%). 

What actions did your business take
in response to, or as a result of, COVID-19?

“It's going to look very different without a doubt  … Personally, I think it will be good for us, we were starting to lose focus of who we were, it was becoming less important to talk to people face to face and more important to stare at phones  … Yes, we will be using technology more in our day-to-day lives due to COVID-19, but now we are focusing more on what's actually important.”

Respondents who chose to layoff or furlough
(categorized by number of employees)

The economic impact of COVID-19 is also significant in our dataset. A full 12% shut down business altogether – albeit temporarily in most cases. All but one in hospitality and 26.1% of those in education shut down. In terms of company size, 21.7% of those in the 1-9 employee-size bracket opted to shut down temporarily, a far higher rate than any of the other size categories.

More than a fifth of our respondents reported that their businesses laid off or furloughed employees. When breaking down by company size, we found those in the 50-99 and 100-499 employee-size brackets were statistically more likely to lay off workers, with percentages choosing this option being 12.3 and 10.6 percentage points more than the percentages of total respondents in those brackets. The opposite was true for those with 10-49 employees, with just 17.1% in that category choosing to lay off or furlough workers, compared with 26.1% of total respondents falling into that size bracket.

And by industry, those in hospitality (62.5%) and manufacturing (50%) were more likely to turn to layoffs and furloughs as an option, whereas those in healthcare (7.4%) and education (4.3%) were far less likely to choose that route.

When asked about the changes businesses are planning going forward, the response was comprehensive, with all listed options being selected widely. The most popularly selected moves are travel reduction (59.3%) and a shift to remote (56.5%). Closely following are plans to switch to staggered/flexible work schedules (44.9%) and a redesign of the physical working environment (44.1%).

Many of those in the “Other” category stated they aren’t entirely sure yet, with one indicating they want to see how other businesses fared before taking action of their own. Others plan to increase personal protective equipment (PPE), sanitation protocols, and overall employee safety either in the field or in the workplace. One respondent in the business/consulting sector plans to require clients to be tested beforehand.  

Most striking is that just 6.2% of respondents stated that nothing is being planned going forward.

Whether it’s layoffs, a shift to remote, or redesigning workplaces, this response tells us that COVID-19 impacted the majority of businesses in our survey, and drastically altered their planning.

What (if any) changes will your business make,
in response to or as a result of COVID-19?

How has your business's
hiring been impacted by COVID-19?

Impact on hiring

COVID-19 was also readily felt in the hiring space. Two-thirds of respondents (65.2%) said they were hiring less during the crisis or had frozen hiring altogether. Just 8.1% said they increased their hiring in response. Although our own survey results don’t reflect it in terms of healthcare hiring, it’s well documented that healthcare, supply chains, telecommunications, and the mortgage industry are sectors that aggressively ramped hiring in the early days of the crisis.

Company size also dictated responses: smaller companies (1-49 employees) and larger, enterprise-sized companies (>1,000 employees) were the most likely to report that they’ve frozen hiring completely, while a full half of companies with 500-999 employees said they were hiring less than planned.

None of the six size categories saw more than 10% of respondents hiring more than planned.

How has your business's hiring been impacted by COVID-19?
(categorized by number of employees in company)

Shift to remote work

The majority of respondents (68%) reported that, prior to the COVID-19 crisis, a quarter or less of their employees worked remotely. Just 11.2% of businesses reported that three quarters or more of their workers operated in a virtual environment before the crisis hit.

Approximately how much of your workforce
operated remotely before the COVID-19 crisis?

Right now, approximately how much of your
workforce is currently working remotely?

And now? A significant portion of respondents (nearly 60%) said at least three quarters of their staff currently operate in a remote working environment.

The stark difference between these two graphs (pre-COVID and current COVID environment) indicates that COVID is a major catalyst in moving to remote, and that this change was very sudden. It also tells us that many companies hit the ground running in that shift – in many cases, literally one day to the next.

Shift to remote is permanent

When asked about a permanent shift to remote work, 41.3% of respondents said they will move at least some positions to a virtual environment, and an additional 9% said they will be fully remote after COVID. Just over one-fifth (21.9%) said they will not permanently move any positions to remote.

Is your business considering a more
permanent shift to remote work?

All of the following have been touted as potential paradigm shifts in the post-COVID work environment. Which do you think will be the top three most significant changes?

Remote work and distributed teams led by and far in a list of predicted paradigm shifts post-COVID, with a full 71.1% of respondents citing that shift as a new standard. This is well ahead of other options including rules around physical distancing, more tech adoption, and updated workplace design.

Of those businesses considering a more permanent shift, one-third (33.3%) of respondents said that they plan to move half or more of their workforce to remote going forward. Another 40.8% said they will move 26% to 50% of their workforce to a remote environment.

The difference in the pre-COVID remote work numbers and post-COVID plans – and the large number of businesses who moved some or all their workforce to remote during the crisis itself – tells us that COVID-19 not only is a significant catalyst in shifting to remote, but also heavily impacts future plans around remote work.

Of course, each business has their own unique experience in this shift. Three potential stories are:

• Businesses were already planning to move some of their workforce to a remote environment for a variety of reasons (economics, logistics, engagement, etc.), and COVID-19 merely expedited those plans (for example, Twitter);
• Businesses were considering remote as a possibility, but not as a priority until COVID-19 hit; or
• Businesses did not think remote was feasible or even a good idea, but changed their perspective when forced to operate in that environment by COVID-19.

If your business is considering a more permanent shift to remote work, how much of your workforce will be moved to remote going forward?

All of the following have been touted as potential paradigm shifts in the post-COVID work environment.
Which do you think will be the top three most significant changes?
(categorized by top four industries)

Shift to remote is doable
- to a degree

Two thirds of respondents (64.3%) reported that, of their workforce not already working remote, more than a quarter can move to a virtual environment without disruption. And 15.2% said they’d be able to move their entire workforce to remote.

But that’s just one side of the same coin. The other side is that more than a third (35.7%) of respondents can only move at most one quarter of their current non-remote workforce to a virtual environment without disruption. In other words, a full three quarters or more of their workforce cannot go virtual.

So, what’s stopping them? We asked that, too.

Of your workforce that isn't already working remotely, approximately how much of that workforce do you think can shift to a fully remote environment without disruption to workflow?

Of your workforce that can’t go remote without disruption to workflow, what's stopping them? (categorized by top four industries)

Challenges to remote work

Predictably, the need to be physically present for work was a dominant challenge in shifting to a remote-first environment, particularly for those in healthcare (81.5%) and education (73.9%). Yet, those same sectors didn’t consider adaptability/resilience/readiness of workers to be a major issue when transitioning to remote-first.

In the “Other” category, respondents cited logistics, the value of physically being in the same space, and lack of management buy-in as leading factors.

When asked about what does enable them to go remote, a full 69.6% of education workers said they didn’t need to be physically present at work, tops across our four major sectors, while at the same time trailing all other sectors in terms of technological readiness.

One could dive deeper into the “why” of this, but one potential takeaway is that those in education feel they can work remotely if they have the technology to do so. There are myriad reasons for not having the technology, for instance, a digital divide among students, budgetary challenges, or lack of buy-in or support from key stakeholders and users.

What we do know is that many major schools from K-12 to college/university – including in California and at Harvard – are moving to a digital-first curriculum and may even remain so for the foreseeable future. Technology has enabled that to happen. Perhaps that’s a permanent shift and a major change in a sector that traditionally has required physical presence. We may see similar trends in other sectors.

So – the paradigm shift continues to be remote, and technology helps that shift to happen – but some sectors are not as ready as others.

Of your workforce that can go remote without disruption to workflow, what makes them able to do so? (categorized by top four industries)

For those continuing to hire during COVID-19, a whole new set of challenges surfaced. Remote onboarding/training challenges (37.4%) and hiring in a remote environment (33.1%) are top of mind among respondents, with uncertainty among candidates about job security (31.7%) and economic anxiety within the business (30.6%) also listed as major concerns.

If your business is continuing to hire during the COVID-19
crisis, what are the top three biggest challenges in filling job positions?

 If your business plans to hire after the crisis passes, but do so remotely, what will be the three most challenging aspects?

In terms of remote hiring/onboarding/training, perhaps the lack of remote experience indicated in the previous graphs is a factor. The recruitment process – so familiar to entry-level and veteran recruiters alike – looks very different in a remote environment. For recruiters and hiring managers, this can be a steep learning curve.

So, we asked respondents what they thought the biggest challenges in hiring remotely would be going forward. The top responses were candidate engagement (51.7%), candidate onboarding (49.7%), and candidate evaluation (42.4%), easily doubling and even tripling any tech-focused concerns such as insufficient tech stacks and lack of buy-in/adoption.

So, evidently, the problem isn’t technology itself – also shown in previous graphs where tech adoption or availability lagged behind other challenges in shifting to remote. Rather, the problem may be worker know-how in conducting standard recruitment/HR practices in a virtual world. As above, recruiters need to relearn large parts of their work. This places a greater value on soft skills around adaptability and willingness to take on new skills.

In fact, our respondents highlighted these soft skills when asked about what the most valuable traits they would be looking for in new hires. Adaptability and resilience (67.4%) and self-motivated/self-starter (54.2%) led the way as sought-after traits.

One custom response in the “Other” category succinctly put it: “Ability to work remotely with limited supervision”.

This suggests that respondents see an uncertain road ahead, that requires plenty of pivoting for businesses and their employees – in a remote environment, no less – and so, they will look for candidates who thrive in that new world.

Recruiters are themselves also operating in that ambiguous, fast-changing environment. But there are many tools available that empower hiring teams to find, evaluate, and hire candidates in the new world of work.

Technology – the great enabler

When we asked respondents what made them able to move to a remote workflow without disruption, more than two thirds (68%) reported it was because they already had the technology in place to do so.

Of your workforce that can go remote without disruption to workflow, what makes them able to do so?

If you’re moving some or all your business to remote operations or distributed teams, which of the following will be considered?

Of those planning to move to remote operations or distributed teams, nearly half plan to introduce or increase digital capabilities in that transition.

Those in senior-level management prioritized tech adoption in the post-COVID work environment, much more so than those at entry/mid-level. Perhaps executives see tech adoption as a company-wide, internal digital transformation while entry/mid-level employees see it as tools to assist their daily work.

Which of the following do you think will be the top three
biggest challenges in the new post-COVID work environment?
(categorized by entry/mid-level vs. senior-level employees)

Working in a new
remote work environment

When asked what they think will be significant challenges in a remote-first environment, 73.2% of respondents highlighted individual employee engagement and motivation. Team-building and morale (54.7%) are next, followed by by team collaboration and logistics (41.1%).

In your opinion, what will be the top three most significant challenges in a new remote-work environment?

If you’re moving some or all your business to remote operations or distributed teams, what will be your top three focal points to ensure employee engagement?

What makes engagement a major concern? Is it that our respondents are worried that if employees cannot physically see each other at work, can’t have lunch together, or work together in the same space, they’ll start tuning out? Maybe.

In a follow-up question, we asked about the top focal points to ensure employee engagement. The responses were predominantly focused on communications and getting synced, with 54.5% of respondents planning more team meetings (virtually) and 52.8% planning to incorporate more communications technologies (chat, video, etc.).

About a third (33.7%) said they plan regular all-hands from top management as one of their top three major focal points going forward. Just 27.8% said they plan remote-work trainings and seminars.

It’s striking that given the overall worries about working remotely, there’s less emphasis placed on upskilling and retraining employees for remote work than there is on connectivity and synchronous work in that same environment.

 In your opinion, what will be the top three most significant challenges in a new remote-work environment?
(categorized by entry/mid-level vs. senior-level employees)

A perceived shift
in engagement

Employee disengagement is a dominant concern in a post-COVID world for many in our survey – with a full 54.8% including it in their list of top challenges going forward. New logistics (i.e. staggered schedules, virtual meetings, etc.) comes in at a distant second (32.3%).

Respondents who picked “Other” listed lower budgets for financial stability, maintaining company culture, and employee mental health as additional challenges.

Which of the following do you think will be the top three biggest challenges in the new post-COVID work environment?

This question is about your candidates and the criteria your candidates use to consider job opportunities or offers in your business. It's possible that their criteria has changed as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. So - for each option below, please indicate whether you think the crisis has made it more important to candidates, less important to candidates or has had no impact.

“There will be more focus on the person rather than on what the person produces. Companies will start asking why people do what they do before asking them to just do their job.”

A potential insight is that candidates – and employees – will be more concerned about their physical and mental health now more than previously. The ability to determine one’s own hours and workspace is a huge benefit for many in that regard.

The uncertain economic climate also means job security is predicted to be a huge, huge deal for candidates. Most of our respondents are aware of this going forward – and they’ll need to include assurance of job security in their communications with candidates to attract them.

Post-COVID world

So when do we return to normal or at least return to some semblance of stability? We asked that question as it applies to business operations and to the overall industry.

There was no clear consensus – only that 4-6 months was the most popular answer for both own business operations and for industry. The differences between “business return” and “industry return” were quite marked in the 0-3 month category, with 21.9% of businesses saying they’d return to “normal” within three months compared with 13.5% saying their industry would return to “normal” in the same time frame.

The opposite was true for a return to “normal” within 1-2 years – with just under 10% of respondents seeing their business returning, compared with 16.9% for their industry returning.

When do you think your company's (business and operations / industry) will return to “normal” or at least stabilize in a post-COVID world?

When we dissect the “business return to normal” responses by senior-level positions versus entry/mid-level positions, senior-level workers projected a longer road to recovery than their entry/mid-level counterparts. They were also more likely to say their business had already gone back to normal or hadn’t been affected in any way.

But it’s interesting to note that nearly twice as many senior-level as entry/mid-level employees think their business has already returned to normal.

Overall, a very small percentage of respondents across the board think it won’t return to “normal” or take longer than two years to do so. The short interpretation of this is that most respondents do think there’s an end date to the COVID-19 crisis and its impact on business and industry. It’s just a matter of when.

When do you think your company's (business and operations / industry) will return to “normal” or at least stabilize in a post-COVID world?
(categorized by entry/mid-level vs. senior-level employees)

Business return

Industry Return

Our initial goal in the survey was to identify when businesses thought they would return to some kind of “normal” after COVID-19. That part of the survey, however, resulted in the most inconclusive findings.

What we learned, instead, is that remote work is clearly the way forward, digitization of processes is the way to enable that shift, and employee engagement is – understandably – a mounting concern.

Also, most of our respondents either have the tech tools to operate in a remote world of work, or are at least aware of or plan to introduce more tools to support that new work environment. The basic know-how of work has not changed; recruiters and hiring teams, for instance, still know how to source, evaluate, hire, and onboard candidates – but they aren’t fully versed on how to do all that in a remote environment.

Finally, the emphasis on the solutions of more meetings, more “coffee dates”, and all-hands to maintain employee engagement in a virtual work world as opposed to new trainings for a new world echoes Einstein’s famous quote: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

The remote world of work is here to stay, and there’s a clear willingness to adapt to that new world – at least in the adoption of new technology. But in order to really succeed in this new model of work, we need to loosen up on the traditional operational practices, and start thinking about different solutions and practices so we continue to set ourselves for success. In short: the new world of work requires a new way of thinking.