Report says remote workers are getting little training on best practices
Report says remote workers are getting little training on best practices
Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic hit and most office workers were sent home, many are still working remotely at least some of the time.
About 60% of companies allow most of their employees with office jobs to work a hybrid schedule, according to the 2024 Workplace Flexibility Trends Report from the research and consulting firm Global Workplace Analytics. But few have offered any training on how best to do that for managers or employees.
When many companies suddenly told employees to start working from home, it would’ve been great for them to do training on how to do that well, remarked Jeff Polzer at Harvard Business School.
“But there was a lot of scrambling, just to figure out how to stay safe. And kids were at home, so there was a lot going on,” he said.
Four years later, more than 70% of workers still haven’t gotten training on how to manage people or on best practices for working remotely, according to Kate Lister at Global Workplace Analytics.
That includes things like, “how are we going to interact with each other? How are we going to resolve conflicts? What do we wear when we’re on a team call? What do we wear when we’re on a customer call?” she said.
Part of the reason is that many companies still haven’t fully decided whether hybrid and remote work are permanent, said Stanford’s Nicholas Bloom.
“To give you another example, think of office real estate,” he said. “So there’s still thousands of companies holding on to vast empty offices because they’re unsure what’s going to happen.”
And as much as they’re delaying decisions about office space, he said many are also delaying doing any remote work training.
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