C8 The BulleTin • Sunday, March 21, 2021
Will work from home outlast
virus? Ford’s move suggests yes
BY TOM KRISHER AND
CHRISTOPHER RUGABER
The Associated Press
It’s a question occupying the
minds of millions of employees
who have worked from home
the past year: Will they still be
allowed to work remotely —
at least some days — once the
pandemic has faded?
On Wednesday, one of
America’s corporate titans,
Ford Motor Co., supplied its
own answer: It told about
30,000 of its employees world-
wide who have worked from
home that they can continue
to do so indefinitely, with flex-
ible hours approved by their
managers. Their schedules will
become a work-office “hybrid”:
They’ll commute to work
mainly for group meetings and
projects best-suited for face-to-
face interaction.
Ford’s announcement sent
one of the clearest signals to
date that the pandemic has
hastened a cultural shift in
Americans’ work lives by eras-
ing any stigma around remote
work and encouraging the
adoption of technology that
enables it. Broader evidence
about the post-pandemic
workplace suggests that what
was long called tele-commut-
ing will remain far more com-
mon than it was a year ago.
A report this week from
the employment website In-
deed says postings for jobs
that mention “remote work”
have more than doubled since
the pandemic began. Such job
postings are still increasing
even while vaccinations are ac-
celerating and the pace of new
confirmed COVID-19 cases is
declining.
The share of Indeed’s job
postings that mention “remote
work” or “work from home”
reached 7% last month, up
from just below 3% a year ago.
But in some industries, the
gains were far more dramatic,
including those that haven’t
traditionally welcomed remote
work.
In legal services, for exam-
ple, remote-work postings for
jobs including paralegals and
legal assistants jumped from
under 5% in the second half
of 2019 to 16% in the second
half of 2020, according to In-
deed data. In banking and fi-
nance, for such jobs as actu-
aries and loan underwriters,
remote-work postings surged
from 4% to nearly 16%. For
mental health therapists, they
rose from 1% to nearly 7%.
Such shifts could, in turn,
trigger changes in where peo-
ple live and affect the vary-
ing economic health of metro
areas. Some highly skilled
workers could migrate from
high-cost coastal cities, where
they had clustered in the de-
cade after the Great Recession,
to more affordable cities or
small towns. Downtown of-
fices could shrink and exist
mainly for collaborative work.
The tax revenue of large cities
could tumble as fewer work-
ers patronize downtown bars,
restaurants and coffee shops.
“The pandemic has broken
the social and cultural norms
for how we work,” said Tim-
othy Golden, a professor of
management at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute. “Remote
work has become much more
accepted.”
Ford is just the latest com-
pany to allow more work from
home after the pandemic.
Salesforce, Facebook, Google
and other tech firms have said
they’ll continue work-from-
home policies indefinitely. Tar-
get Corp. will leave one of four
downtown Minneapolis office
locations because it’s moving
to a hybrid model for 3,500
workers.
Flexible remote work is
hardly an equal opportunity
perk. It is disproportionately
concentrated among more ed-
ucated, well-paid workers. The
jobs of lesser-paid employees
generally require on-site work
or face-to-face contact with the
public.
More than one-third of
Asian employees and a quarter
of whites worked from home
because of the pandemic in
January, according to an anal-
ysis of government data by the
Conference Board, a business
research group. Just 19% of
Black workers and 14% of His-
panics were able to do so.
Ford has found over the
past year that employees and
supervisors believe that more
work can be done remotely,
that they can still connect with
each other and that they have
the means to do their jobs, said
Kiersten Robinson, chief peo-
ple and employee experiences
officer. w
Robinson said a flexible
schedule will also help Ford
compete for talent.
“I do think we’re seeing
a real shift in expectations
among candidates,” she said.
Among the employees
pleased by the new policy is
Kelly Keller, Ford’s chemis-
try and material compliance
manager. Keller, who has been
working a hybrid schedule
since the pandemic erupted a
year ago, wouldn’t want to go
back to commuting to work
each day.
“I definitely enjoy the flexi-
bility,” Keller said. “I would be
grateful for the opportunity to
continue the hybrid arrange-
ment, for sure.”
Of the workers she super-
vises, seven commute to the
lab every day; four work from
home. The at-home workers,
Keller said, have been more
productive than they were be-
fore the coronavirus struck be-
cause they often work during
the time they would have been
commuting.
“For most,” she said, “I think
they put in longer days.”
A study last month by Al-
exander Bick, an economist
at Arizona State University,
and two colleagues found that
nearly 13% of workers they
surveyed plan to work from
home full time after the pan-
demic — nearly double the
7.6% who did so in February
2020. An additional 25% ex-
pect to do so at least one day a
week, up from 17% before the
pandemic.
Company executives over-
whelmingly report that remote
work has succeeded during
the pandemic, according to re-
search by consulting firm PwC.
About 55% said they envision
allowing continued remote
work, according to the survey
of 133 executives of mostly
large companies. Just 17% said
they wanted employees back in
the office as soon as possible.
An additional 26% said they
preferred only limited remote
work but recognized that it’s
become popular with employ-
ees.
Ford and other companies
have been redesigning their of-
fices, or considering doing so,
to reflect fewer cubicles and
personal offices and more con-
ference rooms and other spaces
for workers, who may be on-
site for just part of the week, to
collaborate.
One telling detail: Even as
the number of homes for sale
has tumbled nationally in the
past year, the supply of for-
sale houses in New York, San
Francisco and Los Angeles has
actually increased, according
to the real estate brokerage
Redfin.
Daryl Fairweather, chief
economist at Redfin, said the
pandemic has accelerated a
trend that predated the vi-
rus: More Americans have
sought cheaper homes in less-
er-known cities and suburbs.
Fairweather herself left Seattle
last summer after wildfires in
Oregon turned the city’s skies
smoky and dark.
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