The biggest change coming to remote work and RTO in 2024, according to a tech CEO
In just five years, remote work has gone from a fringe benefit to a sought-after privilege people are competing for.
The demand for remote jobs continues to outstrip supply: As of December 2023, remote jobs made up less than 10% of postings advertised on LinkedIn, down from a high of 20.6% in March 2022 — even though close to half of jobseekers prefer remote roles.
Remote jobs won't disappear entirely, even if some become harder to find, Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Scott Farquhar tells CNBC Make It. The Australian software company adopted a "Team Anywhere" policy in 2020 that allows employees to choose between remote, in-person or hybrid work.
Instead, Farquhar says the biggest change we'll see to remote work in 2024 is companies introducing stricter, more permanent guardrails around their remote or hybrid work arrangements.
"It will become increasingly untenable for people to sit in the middle with a foot in each camp — to tell employees, 'You have to come into the office 1-2 days a week,' without specifying which days or enforcing in-office attendance, and then at the same time, give employees who don't live close to the office permission to work from home," he explains.
More companies are moving to a hybrid structure to balance employees' demands for flexibility with employers' desire for office attendance, according to a new report from LinkedIn, which notes that hybrid job postings are overtaking remote job ads on its platform.
Regardless of the structure employers select, Farquhar anticipates more organizations will shift from the experimental, lenient phase of flexible working and make a clear commitment to a specific arrangement instead.
"I think more employers are realizing that it's not very productive to have some people in the office, some fully remote, and try to make it work where half of their team is on a Zoom call on a single screen in a conference room, and the other half is in person," says Farquhar.
Mixed messages about remote work and RTO
Although more companies have introduced stricter in-office requirements for employees, office occupancy remained relatively unchanged between 2022 and 2023.
According to Farquhar, that's because employees are getting mixed messages about return to office from their bosses. "Companies have flip-flopped on return to office so many times that it's hard for employees to understand and trust what, exactly, their stance is on it," he adds.
The same applies to companies that have adopted fully remote arrangements, like Atlassian. Without clear guidelines in place, conflict can easily arise.
At first, Atlassian allowed employees to work in the time zone of their choosing, as long as managers approved it, and they were located in one of the 13 countries where Atlassian is considered a legal entity.
"What we've found is that we'll make exceptions, for example, for one or two people to work in Japan, but the rest of their team is 12 or 14 hours behind, and at the end of the day, their happiness at work suffers," Farquhar says.
Introducing some restrictions to employees' location flexibility, like designated time zones for each team, has helped, Farquhar says, but he acknowledges that Atlassian "hasn't nailed it down yet."
"We've had to say no to candidates who couldn't accommodate their team's time zone and adjust our location policies so they're clear and specific," he adds.
Farquhar says he wouldn't be surprised to see more remote companies introduce some restrictions to employees' locations soon, mainly to avoid tax and workflow issues.
Ultimately, employers will realize that they "can't have it both ways," says Farquhar.
In other words, "if you're already letting some people work remotely, you can't force your local employees to come into the office to justify your lease expense," he explains. "You need to have a consistent, clear policy, and give employees fair access to the same benefits, otherwise, they'll vote with their feet."
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