Future of Sustainability: Hybrid Workspaces and Remote Work

Luz Ramirez COVID-19, Global Future, Sustainability

From mitigating the impact of coronavirus attributed deaths to lowering carbon emissions, here’s a review of hybrid and remote work.

Photo by: Scholarly kitchen

Background

As businesses continue to contemplate the future of work, embracing hybrid workspace models and remote work can seem an attractive and sustainable path forward. This review will analyze all three pillars of sustainability (economic, social, and environmental) and determine whether digitalization is at all the sustainable future our planet needs. 

A workspace is anywhere an employee works at any given time. A hybrid workspace is an evolution from a location-centric view of where work is done (workplace) to a more human-centric view of where work is done (workspace), with seamless mobility in between (hybrid workspace).

Cisco

Economic Factors of Remote Work

A major factor underlying the global workforce’s ability to resume operations during the pandemic is in how efficiently employees adapted to new working methods such as working from home. Contrary to what some articles claim, this innovative approach to working increased business prospects for many in the Global North. For example, Accenture’s consulting firm, which has more than 500,000 employees worldwide, told the New York Times Magazine that employees’ productivity increased while working remotely. 

As countries look to the post-pandemic future, many have recognized the economic value of shifting to remote work. So much so that in the U.S., 33 cities and three states have already developed incentive programs that will pay companies for job-creating investment. 

The sensible decision to invest in hybrid virtual models is even more imperative in developing countries. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggest that out of the 30 countries, middle-income countries faced the most challenges with the transition of remote work. The main reason stems from variation in demographics and limited access to supportive equipment such as high-quality internet access. 

So is working from home/ hybrid better for the global economy?

The idea of remote work financially benefiting a country really depends on several factors. In higher advanced economies, businesses and financial services will find that supporting hybrid work models has substantially more economic benefits. On the other hand, lockdowns and working remotely revealed that middle and lower-income countries have a substantial disadvantage to adopting these kinds of work models for reasons like;

One other aspect to think of is that the building of hybrid teams (made up of full-time employees and freelance workers) has allowed companies to hire talent from across the world, often within underrepresented groups. This combination of socially inclusive hybrid models fosters and spurs innovation within the workplace.

The Environment

While most companies in the U.S dismiss commuting emissions in their annual emission reports, closures of businesses -driven by the global COVID-19 pandemic- have indeed taken a toll on the amount of emissions emitted. This next section will focus on the implications for energy use and greenhouse gas emissions if a significant amount of people continued to work hybrid or regularly working from home. 

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions

Two of the most discussed environmental benefits that remote work provides is: 

  • Less commuting to work
  • Reduction in transportation congestion
  • Lowering fuel consumption

Other environmental benefits that remote and or hybrid workspaces provide are: 

  • Digitized work has led to less paper usage 
  • A decline in natural resource utilization and environmental costs, specifically from the construction of office building space
  • The hybrid workplace model allows companies to be less reliant on leases of ample office space while retaining similar levels of production and output from their employees or teams. A concept known as “hub-and-spoke offices,” which is the setting up of smaller presences in urban “hubs” and suburban “spokes” is already being implemented in the U.K and U.S.

However, there is no guarantee that personal car use will remain low, and thus negating the lack of commuting does not necessarily translate to overall greenhouse gas emissions reduction. In China, for example, a survey reported a 57% reduction in journeys made by bus and metro, but a doubling in private car use causing an overall rebound in oil consumption.

Energy Demands

The transition of work to home has also affected the average residential demand for energy. Regional differences, household size, heating, and cooling needs, and appliances efficiency must be considered when working from home. 

  • For example, days after the lockdown, the United Kingdom experienced a 15% increase in residential electricity consumption, and in the United States, residential electricity went up by 20% to 30% (iea.org). 

A report from the World Economic Forum, suggests that “the biggest energy savings are found when staff work from home full-time, rather than split time between the office and home.”

Can we claim that remote work is more environmentally friendly than conventional working models?

Since the impact of home-working on transport and residential energy consumption varies widely, it’s hard to claim that this is the most environmentally friendly option. That’s not to say that the potential for energy savings and GHG reduction isn’t there, especially in developed countries with access to efficient energy infrastructure. 

Social Implications

The shift to remote working helped lower GHG emissions, but questions remain on whether flexibility to work from a place of convenience has been advantageous to our society. This section will focus on the social consequences that can come with working remotely.

The pitfalls of working remotely

  • Remote work has been reported to impact workers’ mental health. Microsoft, for example, explains that the isolation that people have experienced (as a result of lockdowns and working remotely) revealed that social interactions with distant networks have diminished. This continued isolation has created new mental health issues among workers.  

“A 2019 survey by cloud infrastructure company Digital Ocean found that 82% of remote tech workers in the U.S. felt burnt out, with 52% reporting that they work longer hours than those in the office, and 40% feeling as though they needed to contribute more than their in-office colleagues.” Forbes

  • Accessibility to efficient technology in lower-income individuals can hinder and possibly instigate stress among workers.  
  • Because working online is often tied to education level and access to higher education, many individuals are hampered by these requirements. 
  • Cultural barriers. While remote work intends to bridge cultures, specific ways of dealing with business can also create uncomfortable moments and even invade cultural values on workers from other countries. 

The social benefits of remote work:  

  • A diverse workforce and opportunity for career progression. By removing the need to attend an office, companies have expanded the candidate pool by hiring people from different socioeconomic, geographic, and cultural backgrounds and with different perspectives (Fastcompany). 
  • Neurodivergent Individuals still benefit professionally and mentally from working remotely. For example, “employees on the autism spectrum or people with mental conditions like OCD, benefit from working from home as loud noises, distractions, and pressure to appear neurotypical in front of colleagues takes an emotional toll and impacts performance.” –Vice.
  • Flexibility with work schedules and geographic locations allows employees to spend more quality time with family, save money on transportation expenses, and alleviated stress often triggered by commuting. More importantly, it has also given workers the flexibility to migrate out of high-cost cities and into the suburbs, cheaper urban centers, and remote areas.
  • As more people become vaccinated, experts have already started to report the mental health impacts of returning to work. The Limeade Institute’s Employee Care Report 3.0 found that “100% of formerly onsite workers said they were anxious about returning to the office, 71% said they were concerned about less flexibility, and 77% said they were worried about exposure Covid-19.” Provided that work becomes the new normal for individuals who need these types of accommodations will help them in the long term. 

Bottom Line

In a post-pandemic world, building social capital from a digitalized work model takes effort, especially for the developing world. Working from home models depends on a unique set of factors such as industry, individual education, and accessibility to technology to thrive economically. Then you have the environmental aspects of remote work, which indicate that long-term sustainable climate goals can be attained if and when governments and companies invest in clean energy sources. It would also require accurate accounting of commuting emissions and energy demands (regardless of the workplace). Creating a culture where breaks are encouraged and respected, giving employees the liberty to choose the place of work, and creating a diverse workforce gives remote/hybrid work models the leverage.

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